The other spy bill II
   While attention is focused on the GCSB Bill, John Key's other spy bill, the 
Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill is currently before select committee. The bill updates the 
Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Act 2004,  which requires "telecommunications providers" to have built-in  interception capability for police and spies. But it goes further than  that, requiring ISPs to register with police like printing presses in  pre-Enlightenment monarchies and giving the GCSB power to micromanage  individual ISPs procurement decisions. More importantly, it allows them  to require that internet services, such as Gmail, Dropbox, or any other  website, also provide interception capability. And apparently the  government is 
planning to impose this requirement in secret:
Para 104 of the December 2012 "Technical Paper:   Telecommunications Interception Capability and Network Security" by MBIE  (page 19 of the combined document); para 109 of the paper to the  Cabinet Committee on Domestic and External Security Coordination (page  62); and para 37 of the Cabinet paper (page 74) all confirm the same  thing:
A Ministerial directive will be used to secretly/confidentially impose  an obligation to create interception capabilities by individually named  service providers (referred to as "deem-in" but what I call a backdoor)  "so as not to publicly announce a lack of capability in a particular  service."
The Government is therefore going to be using secret orders to specific  service providers directing the creation of interception capability,  allowing real-time access by surveillance agencies
(The documents referred to are 
here)
So, its not enough for John Key to have the capability to spy on all  your domestically sent emails and phone calls, he also wants to prevent  you from being able to take any steps to protect your privacy. And while  he says this will only be to "protect" us, overseas we've seen where  this inevitably leads: to pervasive spying on whistleblowers,  journalists, and others who expose wrongdoing by the bureaucracy and the  government of the day.
Microsoft has already 
threatened to leave the country  in response to TICS, and they'd be wise to. but the real victims will  be our small internet startups, whose services will be spook-compromised  from the outset, and thus unmarketable overseas. The cost of this law  may well be to strangle our internet industry, making us even more  reliant on (poisoned) milk.
 
			
		
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