Recent Articles

Heightened State Surveillance in New Zealand, Post-"9/11" - Privacy under Threat

The way some of our political leaders and commentators talk, one could easily believe that there was a time before the tragic events in New York and Washington in September 2001, and a markedly different time since then. “The world changed", they say "The rules changed. Whether we like it or not, we are now at war" - combating the so-called ‘War on Terrorism’, that is. "The innocent world we once knew and enjoyed is no more."

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Our Emerging Surveillance Society – Is Privacy a Goner?

Two years ago, UK’s Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, warned that people in that country were “in danger of sleepwalking into a surveillance society”. Earlier this month (2 November), he came out with an even-more sobering forecast – “today I fear that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us”.

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New Zealand’s Post-‘9/11’ Anti-terrorism / Security Laws
– A Privacy Advocate’s Perspective

Speech notes from a presentation to a privacy forum, organised by the NZ Law Commission and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (1 May 2007). The paper includes reference to the outcry that greeted government proposals to give the SIS wide-ranging interception powers in 1977, compared with the muted reaction to date to the outpouring of ‘post 9/11’ legislation with major privacy (and other human rights) implications.

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