A Tale of Two Countries: New Zealand Apologizes for Illegal Domestic Spying

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A Tale of Two Countries: New Zealand Apologizes for Illegal Domestic Spying, While US Still Refuses to Acknowledge NSA’s Warrantless Wiretapping

Imagine this: A government, faced with public evidence that its foreign spy service was conducting domestic surveillance on its residents—instead of claiming the information is somehow secret and the people responsible are above the reach of the law—admits in public and in the courtroom that it violated basic rights.

A Tale of Two Countries: New Zealand Apologizes for Illegal Domestic Spying, While US Still Refuses to Acknowledge NSA’s Warrantless Wiretapping | Electronic Frontier Foundation

New Zealand’s Prime Minister said he became aware of the illegal spying a few weeks ago and ordered an inquiry with the agency’s Inspector General. Immediately, the Prime Minister also publicly admitted that the GCSB “had acquired communications in some instances without statutory authority." He also filed a memorandum with the court in the Megaupload case in New Zealand, making the same admissions to the judge.

What out Prime Minister neglects to tell you is that in order for such a high level interaction between the FBI/NSA he would have to have been informed before any action was taken, indeed further more he would have to have signed off on a release for this to have happened.

Mr Key is going into damage control on this one I can assure you on that as it was a serious breach of our bill of rights and legal sovereignty.

The New Zealand spy agencies clearly erred when they illegally spied on Dotcom, but the government’s response to the scandal has been commendable, and serves as a good example of how a government can prevent this type of spying from happening in the future. If only Americans had a government that would do the same.

Yes clearly the right things are being done now but this is after the fact and should never have happened at all. We saw a break down in our intelligence agencies on the legality of this situation which should never have happened if the rule of law had been followed correctly in the first place.

This serves as a reminder that indeed there are good people working for us but on the other hand power can and will be abused by those with special interests.

This should serve as a warning to remain ever vigilant on the conduct of our Governments.

Read the article and you will get where I am coming from.