Privacy and the State: Government Intercept Bill (& Yet More Powers for IRD?) Also, Tax Exempt Status: Week's Theme - IRD and IRS.

Another weekly run-down of the police-states being grown in the West.

This is not specifically a post about the increasing erosion of our privacy and right to be left alone by an out of control surveillance state under this Government’s Intercept Bill – others have written on this well enough:

Vikram Kumar: A Jackboot Intercept Bill;

Paul Brislen: Intercept Bill Takes Cavalier Approach to Privacy.

My concern is the further powers this bill will, I assume, be giving to IRD.

I’ve already written on the breath-taking police state powers IRD wields: A Riposte to Jacinda Ardern’s Privacy Concerns Regarding the MSD. (Powers of IRD).

And I’ve written on the invasion of our privacy by the taxing authorities world-wide through their increasing analysis of Big Data: Privacy – Tax Authorities Can Only Be Mining Social Media for Thought Crimes.

In that latter piece I posed the following question about this proposed new intrusion in our lives from the Fortress of Legislation. In response to this from the Minister:

ICT Minister Amy Adams has just released a statement outlining how the government plans to "modernise" the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Act 2004

Under the proposed changes, network operators such as phone companies and ISPs "will be obliged [newspeak alert] to engage [newspeak alert] with the Government through the GCSB on network security, where it might affect New Zealand’s national security and economic well-being."

Ms Adams says telecommunications providers are already required to have interception technology in place, to assist police and security agency investigations, under current legislation. The update was designed to make the process easier [newspeak alert].

I asked:

Amy, I don’t want it made easier for the state to share information on individuals, especially our incompetent spooks who've been proven remiss in even knowledge of their own governing legislation. And really, what can’t be justified under ‘economic well-being’? Going after tax evaders, or even those thought to be avoiders? Does this add to the considerable police state powers IRD already have, recourse to New Zealand’s other branches of secret police: GCSB and SIS?

Vikrum’s piece above seems to answer to this concern, with an ‘of course’:

On the application of a surveillance agency (Police, SIS, GCSB, and any government department declared to be a law enforcement agency for the purposes of the TICS Bill) the Minister can require a service operator (or a class of service operators) to provide full interception capability like a network operator. There is a provision for the Minister’s directions to be looked at by a three member review panel but, again, there is unbounded discretion.

When it comes to government believing it essential they have complete access to your life, enough is never enough, and having been brainwashed through the state school system that our liberty must be sacrificed to the bloodied altar of the common good, we're - in the numbers that matter under mobocracy - too stupid to defend ourselves anymore: result: our lives are owned.

And related to the increasing power of the IR’s as the uber-department that governs the country, which profligate politicians and ministers must bow down to and grant their every whim, I initially thought this story out of the US was a bit of a beat up, and it is, but there is an issue in this that reflects a story in New Zealand last week, relevant to every concern I have expressed above: when you hand the power of God to a government department, then everything becomes politicised: just as Family First have had their tax exempt status revoked in New Zealand, so the IRS has been targeting the Tea Party movement in America regarding their tax exempt status in that country. Surely, even the minister can now see that because of this politicalisation, we have to discard the notion of charity, for tax purposes, because it’s too vague: the only acceptable criteria must be if members of whatever group are able to make pecuniary gain from the operations of the group. But that won’t happen, of course. IRD and the state will simply keep assuming those political powers – upon the death of classical liberalism - by which they own your life.

And so to my final link from the MSM this week. Amidst an article wherein another state official now promotes citizen ratting on citizen (as in England, children are being taught to dob in adults to the theocracy of state), we have this further insight to how broad and widely the state now shares information on the individual:

Meanwhile, IRD remains an outlier because it is not allowed to share information. SFO will provide information to IRD, but IRD can't reciprocate.

However, a discussion paper now out could allow changes in that area.

"Our view is, confidentiality and privacy - yes, but not when there is a serious threat to the economy in bribery and corruption. There's a case to lift some of that secrecy."

Which is of course newspeak, Mr McArley, CEO of SFO (Serious Fraud Office), for ‘Our view is, confidentiality and privacy – no.’

These are black times, indeed, for the individual in the West. The state theocracy, fostered in every classroom, inserts itself every day ever more insidiously into The Lives Of Others. That movie, if you follow the link, is perhaps the most important work you have this week, watch it if you’ve not already seen it, for it shows where we are heading, inexorably. The sad thing being we are not forced to that dark place, again, by tanks on the street; we're voting ourselves there because enough of the clueless believe that in the prison cells of state, is the eternal free lunch.