This government is presiding over the greatest expansion of State surveillance capacity in NZ in recent memory. Done without fanfare, or even being minimised by govt Ministers. Three Bills, two before Parliament and one that is coming, are making these changes.
The first bill is the Telecommunications and Other Matters Bill. A small part of this Bill amends the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act 2013, changing only a couple of words, but the effect of those words is enormous. As a result of those changes, the government can now insist that overseas providers of end-to-end encrypted (E2E) communications provide it with an interception capability, a ‘backdoor’, into those communications.
Basically, the government is legislating to force WhatsApp, Signal, Apple’s Messages, Facebook Messenger, and any other E2E messaging service to give it ‘backdoor’ interception access when required. If they don’t, the government will be able to literally ban their use by New Zealanders.
When this was proposed overseas, messaging services and the tech community pushed back. For some reason, that hasn't happened here. The Free Speech Union and I opposed this, but the Select Committee has not chosen to listen to us, and the changes are going through. The only problem is that if the E2E messaging services were to provide such a backdoor, there would be no end-to-end encryption. A backdoor open to a government is open to everyone with the requisite skill to exploit it. The foreign governments backed down, but NZ is not deterred by technical impossibilities; it is made of sterner stuff than that!
The second bill amends the Policing Act. It has been presented by @MarkMitchellMP, the police minister, as simply restoring to the Police some common law powers taken away by a recent Supreme Court decision. That is patently and unequivocally false. The Police Commissioner is now also saying that it gives them the operational capacity to introduce body cameras, but that is disingenuous.
The wording of the Bill gives the Police powers that allow them to make an end run around the Privacy Act, the Search and Surveillance Act, and private property owners' rights, and that far exceed any common-law powers they ever had.
Historically, Police surveillance has been legally permitted only for people suspected of crimes. To be fair, the Police often forget this, hence the recent Court case, as well as the Privacy Commissioner and the IPCA throwing a fit at the Police a couple of years ago over randomly photographing young people for ‘intelligence purposes’. Under the new Act, surveillance will be allowed for ‘an intelligence purpose connected with a function, or an activity, of the Police, or any other lawful purpose connected with a function, or an activity, of the Police.’ In other words, the Police can conduct surveillance of the NZ public for any reason they can come up with. There is no limit.
Further, the Police will now have the authority to conduct surveillance against any private property, so long as they do it from a public space. The Police could, for example, legally set up a surveillance site in a hillside park that could easily look into private property, 24 hours a day. No warrant required; no suspicion of wrongdoing needed, even. They just need to “consider that the information will or may support the Police in performing a function, or carrying out an activity, of the Police”.
And if they can’t be bothered coming up with a reason like that, they can do it under the ‘any other lawful purpose’ justification. Like, I don’t know, checking every backyard in the city for a cannabis grow.
Except that if they are using the same camera they use on the Eagle helicopter, they can see more than your backyard; they can read what is written on the paper stuck to your fridge door.
When the Police Minister says that the law simply gives the Police back powers they already had, it is so wrong as to be laughable.
Then there is the third piece of legislation, the so-called under-16 social media ban. Which hasn’t even been introduced yet, but for which the Dept. of Internal Affairs has already been given $30 million to implement.
This legislation will require every person in New Zealand to provide proof of age to every designated social media platform before accessing social media. If you are over 16, you will be permitted to continue. In fact, assuming we adopt the Australian model, the government won’t have to designate a platform; unless a platform is excluded, it will be subject to the requirement to perform an age-check.
In other words, the government is going to impose a gate on your access to social media. This will include platforms you might not consider social media; so long as you use that platform to communicate with others or receive communication from them, they qualify. You will have to show your age and, almost certainly, your identity, before you can use it. If you choose not to provide that information to the social media platform, you will not be permitted to use it.
The government has not provided us with any reasons why this is necessary. It has not provided any research that justifies it. There is no overwhelming evidence that it is necessary. And it is clear that, although superficially popular, when the methods necessary to implement it become known, it becomes exceptionally unpopular. Yet, the Minister for State Control, @EricaStanfordMP, is keen to proceed with this as soon as possible. That is because this is not based on evidence, but on ideology.
The ideology it's based on is not just about keeping children safe, a noble concept that relies on strongly debatable and heavily contested social science. It is also about protecting them from information that politicians and activists don't like. Misinformation, disinformation, harmful information, call it what you will. Politicians can dress it up as protecting children from harm, but when it boils down to it, the UK government in recent days has come into the open with the reasons why it feels a need to take control of social media, especially for under-16s, but even for older young people. Or adults.
The recent attempted beheading of a Belfast man, which saw riots following the distribution of the video on social media, particularly on this platform, prompted the UK Labour government to immediately call for controls on this platform, plus explicit calls for control of social media algorithms in order to prevent what is called misinformation from spreading. In fact, what the UK government wanted was for genuine, truthful information to be prevented from spreading, so that bad news it didn't like would not spread, and criticism of its policies and the consequent public response to their effects would not be felt.
But this policy is doomed to failure. The Australian implementation has shown that it is easily circumvented, not only by using a VPN, but also by children themselves, who find simple workarounds.
It also creates a privacy and information-protection nightmare for the people of any country in which it is implemented. The UK is already finding this out through its existing online safety laws and is now looking at banning VPNs and other measures that might be used to circumvent the rules.
To comply with laws designed to satisfy regulators, social media platforms, or the security firms they use to ensure their customers are over the age of 16, have to store some form of data. Unfortunately, that makes them an irresistible target for hackers. Even government systems in places like Estonia and India have been targeted and breached. More recently, Discord was breached, leading to the identification of a huge amount of its users' private data.
There is also the problem of what happens with the next government or the one after that. Whilst a supposedly centre-right government may say it is only concerned about the safety of children on social media, the Department of Internal Affairs has no such pretensions. It simply wants to regulate the internet, and it will do so by any means necessary. It will spend its time patiently convincing politicians, if not this government, then the next or the one after that, to allow it to become a super-regulator, imposing its view of what is acceptable on the public of New Zealand. And you'd be surprised at what the Department of Internal Affairs considers acceptable or not. I assure you, they do not align with the views of the average New Zealander. Put bluntly, the Department of Internal Affairs is a pack of wowsers.
Which brings me back to the beginning. This is all being done under a @NZNationalParty-led coalition government. The biggest increase in state surveillance capacity in a generation is being undertaken by a supposedly centre-right government. That is because the National Party lacks senior politicians with a strong commitment to liberty. People like Erica Stanford and Mark Mitchell are politicians whose first impulse is to use the power of the State to ensure the safety of the people, as they see it. Whether the people like it or not. And they have been quite open about that.
For Ministers such as @chrisluxonmp, Stanford, and Mitchell, an increase in the government's power over the private individual is a feature, not a bug. Keeping children and the public safe is worth trampling on the freedom and privacy rights of those same people, or invading the family in order to be a Nanny State.
After all, you cannot put a price on public safety, now, can you?
https://t.co/OSDIKG7j82
Who was aware that the MOE has yet another curriculum consultation submission deadline tomorrow? It slipped past me.
But Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa (Family Planning) knows. Activists know.
How many parents know?
See thread below. Send a filing. 🧵1/4
@Bridgetpee@Suitandtie9999 Except we are talking about massive advertising campaigns promoting and coercing teens, not the “lite” product insert or an A5 printout reminder to worry later, while they were being administered.
@hinemaggie@Suitandtie9999 Relative risk can be considered ONLY with INFORMED consent, they hid the truth and people died and suffered and still suffer as a consequence. Probs shouldn’t have signed the Pfizzer contract indemnifying pharma, now they face the please explain. People are entitled to the truth.
🚨 WOW! Erin Brockovich completely destroys the AI data center narrative. She confirms these massive facilities emit a non-stop, 24/7 deafening noise that is literally driving local residents crazy!
She exposes the total lack of environmental oversight. Pure corruption!
Protests in Albania are exploding for a seventh straight day like nothing before.
Thousands of Albanians are refusing to surrender their land to Jared Kushner’s elite private island wish.
They are also demanding the immediate removal of their prime minister for colluding with Jared Kushner and Israel.
"Albania is not for sale."
UPDATE: An Official Information Act (OIA) response from the Ministry of Health (Manatū Hauora), obtained by @KiwiAly late on Friday the 29th of May 2026, confirms that from PM to PM on Friday, 13 August 2021, a high-level "Vaccine Ministers" meeting took place via Zoom.
The Ministry of Health has officially confirmed in this response that Chris Hipkins served as the Chair of this meeting in his capacity as Minister for COVID-19 Response. Joining him were then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Finance Minister Grant Robertson, Health Minister Andrew Little, and Associate Health Ministers Dr. Ayesha Verrall, Aupito William Sio, and Peeni Henare, alongside top officials from Medsafe, the COVID-19 Directorate, and the Director-General of Health.Ministers Dr. Ayesha Verrall, Aupito William Sio, and Peeni Henare, alongside top officials from Medsafe, the COVID-19 Directorate, and the Director-General of Health.
Where they all agreed to " It was requested that references to increasing dosing intervals potentially providing some protection against myocarditis be removed from communications. This has been actioned."
THEY HID THE TRUTH !
This is the final piece of the puzzle . MORE TO COME SOON !
SIGN THE PETITION CALLING FOR HIPKINS TO RESIGN https://t.co/61DhLeAPmR
@HopeRising19@nzdsos In the mean time its of Such public interest here is a fun little video on a very serious matter! NZOFP - Join the NZOFP https://t.co/Hfb4e9tdiC support us holding them to account! #resign #dishonesty #accountabilty #suppression #safetyinformation #nzpol #nzpolitis
Most people missed this in the budget,
National have allocated $30M on developing the U16 social media ban.
Read that again, 30M.. Luxon is the antipodean version of Keir Starmer both are full bozo.
Economist Dr Eric Crampton who has been warning of this digital age authoritarianism condemns the Govt for throwing money into such an Orwellian project.
Wakey wakey NEW ZEALAND.
If a politician in NZ is campaigning on ‘climate alarmism’… go look into who funds the party.
And think about how our entire financial landscape looks as we’re forced to bow to the climate cult.
And use your vote to get it gone
Your doctor will never tell you about Nattokinase.
But it dissolves clots, lowers blood pressure and a new study showed it shrank arterial plaque by 36%.
No med or statin does that.
Here are all its health benefits (& how to use it properly):🧵
@Dame__Jane I dehydrated some sourdough starter and have a sullen guy in fridge. My daughters flat mate has a huge oooooold rewena starter in their fridge. Makes sense!
There’s a generation a lot of people forget exists. We were born at the tail end of the Boomers, but we are not culturally the same as people born in the 40s and early 50s. We are Generation Jones.
And honestly, it explains a lot.
We grew up in a world that still felt fundamentally analog, but we were young enough to be dragged headfirst into the digital revolution. We are the bridge generation between rotary phones and smartphones, between slide rules and AI, between Walter Cronkite and algorithm driven media.
We remember when there were only a few television channels and the entire country watched the same thing at the same time. We also adapted to the internet, email, forums, social media, streaming and now artificial intelligence. We lived before and after the technological singularity hit everyday life.
That is not a small thing.
People born in the 40s came of age in a post World War II America that was still industrial, deeply hierarchical and institutionally stable. Their formative years were shaped by the Cold War, Vietnam, the civil rights era and a society where information moved slowly.
Generation Jones came later. We inherited the aftermath of all of that.
We were the kids who watched Watergate destroy blind trust in government. We watched manufacturing begin to collapse. We saw divorce rates explode. We were the first truly latchkey generation in massive numbers. We learned independence early because many of us had to.
We grew up with one foot in old America and one foot in whatever this new thing was becoming.
We played outside until the streetlights came on but we also learned DOS commands. We learned cursive and keyboarding. We had card catalogs and Google searches. We went from vinyl records to cassette tapes to CDs to MP3s to streaming in one lifetime.
We remember maps. We remember memorizing phone numbers. We remember life before GPS and before every human interaction became filtered through a screen.
And because of that, I think Generation Jones developed a very unique perspective. We are adaptable because we had no choice but to adapt. We learned technology as adults instead of being born into it. We remember a slower world but were forced to survive in a rapidly accelerating one.
That creates a very different mindset than either older Boomers or younger Gen X and Millennials.
A lot of us also reject the caricature people now associate with “Boomers.” We were not buying houses for the cost of a sandwich in 1965. The interest rate on my first house was over 14% and that was after buying down a point. Many of us got hit by recessions, outsourcing, pension collapses and economic instability just like younger generations did. We watched promises evaporate in real time.
We understand older generations because we were raised by them. We understand younger generations because we had to evolve alongside them.
That’s why the Jones generation often feels culturally homeless. We are rarely discussed, rarely defined and usually lumped into categories that don’t actually fit us.
But we exist.
We are the human transition point between the industrial age and the digital age.
And frankly, there will probably never be another generation quite like us again.
If your supermarket won’t protect your consumer choice? Will you? 😲
Under the governments proposed gene technology bill “gene edited” foods will not require mandatory labelling on your ingredients list.
The P1055 amendment is a controversial regulatory change by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) concerning the definitions of gene technology and genetically modified (GM) foods.
This change makes new generation GMOs, such as “gene editing” excluded from regulation, public oversight, pre-market safety testing, or labelling.
Please share this to help inform others. 🥝
@GEFreeNZ@brandnewzealand
KEEP NZ GE FREE. 🇳🇿
STOP THE GENE TECH BILL. ✋
#newzealand
#farming
#trending
#nzpol
#nofarmersnofood
Ivermectin is so effective and so safe, but @SimeonBrownMP@dbseymour@minhealthnz and NZ Medical Council are actively blocking it being readily and affordably available and accessible over the counter (OTC) to Kiwis in NZ
Why?