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Can't bluff in this poker game

Right now, New Zealand (and a fist-full of other nations) are involved in trade negotiations with the USA -- in the form of the TPPA.

We're told that these negotiations have to be done behind closed doors but the exact reason for this secrecy has never been made adequately clear.

One would assume that in any form of negotiation, you play your cards close to your chest and don't tell those you are negotiating with exactly what your bottom-line is.

Well how the hell is New Zealand (or any of the other nations) going to do this when the NSA is spying on the email and online activities of every man and his seeing-eye dog?

If the NZ government thinks its own email servers and traffic are secured against such surveillance then they're dreaming. Remember that this is the government who couldn't even secure WINZ kiosks and keeps sending private data to the wrong people on a regular basis.

Perhaps Brazil has the right idea.

They have plans afoot to create a secure national email service that, they tell us, will protect messages from the evil eyes of the NSA spies.

Although details are sketchy, it would appear that all government communications sent via this email system will he subject to strong encryption and use a raft of countermeasures to thwart monitoring by external sources.

Even President Obama's claims that "America is not interested in spying on ordinary people" gives no confidence that our own government's confidential email-based discussions regarding what we're prepared to give and take in TPPA dealings isn't a number-one priority for the NSA spooks.

Entering any negotiation with the USA is now like trying to play poker with an opponent that can see your cards -- while you can't see theirs. It's a decidedly one-sided arrangement in which you can only lose.

Of course, based on observations to date, John Key won't be concerned by this decidedly uneven playing field. It would appear that the interests of NZers are secondary to the interests of his own inner-circle so this is a game he personally can't lose.

However, when it comes to creating a totally secure email service, many experts claim that it's simply impractical. It only takes a single compromised point on the network for data to be monitored by or relayed to third parties. Unless you're making the hardware, right down to a chip-mask level then you can not be 100% certain that there aren't back-doors or inbuilt surveillance mechanisms at work.

Just as the USA has suggested that China's telco-equipment manufacturers are untrustworthy, it would be folly to imagine for a moment that US-made gear is any more free from covert spyware.

I think we have to face the fact that in the 21st century, we as individuals have no privacy and our nation has no security to protect its secrets.

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