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Idiots with hammers

If we think that our government is paranoid and running amok by striking out our rights, freedoms and privacy without consulation then you've seen nothing.

I could not believe what I read yesterday when it was revealed that in the UK, GCHQ security experts had ordered the Guardian to destroy hard drives which allegedly contained material related to the information disclosed to a reporter by Ed Snowden.

In the process, a Macbook Pro was reportedly destroyed, presumably so as to ensure that its hard drive was no longer a threat to national security. But the national security of *which* nation?

The USA of course - yet this was all being overseen by a British spy agency who were clearly so dim as to think that the physical destruction of one computer would effectively close the door on Snowden's disclosures.

And these are the people the world trusts its security to?

But wait... there's more!

When the partner/boyfriend of the Guardian reporter who broke the Snowden story attempted to leave the UK and had to pass through British emmigration, he was held for nine hours and almost all of his consumer electronic gear was seized.

Although the authorities say that there actions were 100% legal and taken under specific provisions of UK law, the implication here, and in the forced destruction of The Guardian's computer equipment, is obvious and very worrying.

The word is "intimidation".

This is what happens when people with an IQ smaller than their shoe-size are given power without oversight. They abuse that power -- perhaps in the misguided belief that the ends justifies the means.

The message being delivered to The Guardian was "we are so stupid we don't understand how this internet thing, or backups or any of thise computer stuff really works but we're going to make it very clear that we will do whatever we want to shut you up".

The message being delivered to reporter Glenn Greewald and his partner David Miranda is "the media has no right to go publishing facts that we don't approve of and if you do so, you will be punished by whatever means we have at our disposal".

Meanwhile, John Key has now claimed that he will resign if the GCSB oversteps the powers granted to them by law.

Where was this sudden heroic stance when they were spying on Kim Dotcom I wonder? Surely, if JK truly believes that he should place his job on the line to prove the integrity of his security agency then he ought to have already cleared his desk and removed his potted plant from the Beehive.

I hope the Minister for Police has the same attitude to her department and next time the police are found to be breaking the laws they are empowered to enforce, then he'she also falls on their sword.

But of course Key's grandstanding is just that -- grandstanding.

If/when the GCSB overstep their authority again, Key won't have to resign, he will be already skidding down the footpath on his arse -- because even the most laid-back Kiwis will have had enough. Therefore, his promise is a hollow one.

And the fact is that, as we've seen, those who stand to be exposed are quite prepared use stand-over tactics to intimidate those who might spill the beans.

It seems that every day, new revelations prove that The West is plumeting headlong towards the kind of facsism that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers gave their lives to save us from.

How sad that the greed and paranoia of the few is destroying the freedoms and rights of the many (and this has nothing to do with terrorism, Islam or anyone other than those who work within our own political systems to further their own selfish interests).

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