Readers' Comments

Reader Comments on Aardvark Daily 23 July 2001
Note: the comments below are the unabridged submissions of readers and do
not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher.

From: Martin Wehipeihana
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Nothing to hide - nothing to Fear?

I doubt very much that govt agencies will only be using
their super powers for good. The only option left is to
encrypt everything with programs like PGP. Then what? Will
the govt ban encryption or demand backdoor codes to all
encryption programs? Perhaps the simplest answer would be
to have all netizens tag their mail with as many evil key
words as possible and force the scanning programs to read
every email. (iran iraq bomb usa evil helen bad things)




From: David Mohring
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Very short memories...

Remember this news story from last year.

Hacking law has insider flaw Cases of police staff
unofficially accessing "Wanganui computer" dealt with.

The abuse of computer systems by employees authorised to
access an organization's computer has not really been truly
"dealt with" properly with the new proposed amendments, only
glossed over.

It is not in the police's or any other organizations best
interest for such abuses of it's system to become public
knowledge. The resulting loss of the public's confidence in
the system would be very damaging to the careers of the
organization's upper hierarchy. Where possible the internal
disciplinary action will always be held far from the
public's gaze.

Also this become a real problem when it is a member of the
organization's upper hierarchy who's "orders" the internal
users are carrying out.

With the introduction of such invasive technology the NZ
government has a duty to make sure that counter balances
exist to insure that the ability cannot be abused by people
with the authority to do so.

Logging of all activity for every individual request and
interception must take place and must not be able to be
evaded, deleted or falsified.

Who watches the watches? We should at least have a publicly
elected ( not existing MP's ) oversite committee to post
review each/all interception requests, for not only the
police but all government agencies.
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