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What defense against surveillance?

Ed Snowden probably surprised nobody with his revelations that all NZers are the subject of mass surveillance last night.

By using a "thin end of the wedge" strategy, successive governments have desensitised the citizens of the nation to the very real threat that the multitude of surveillance programmes represent to our rights, freedoms and privacy.

"Only those with something to hide have anything to fear"?

Tell that to Arthur Alan Thomas and the multitude of other innocent citizens who have effectively become victims of incompetence, dishonesty and corruption within the halls of power.

Right now, on the one hand we have "honest John" telling us that the claims of mass surveillance are not true -- yet we know from past experience that he is very much prepared to lie or conveniently "forget" at the drop of a hat when it is politically expedient to do so.

By comparison, what does Ed Snowden have to gain by lying about this matter? Nothing.

The PM himself gave a glowing example of the levels he's prepared to stoop to when he told the nation that he would release previously classified documents to prove his case if it was alleged that he'd authorised mass-surveillance.

Now surely, if a document is "classified" and thus hidden from public scrutiny, that is done for a very good reason. For the PM to unilaterally decide to declassify such a document simply to cover his own arse and help himself get re-elected makes a mockery of the whole classification process. Either something ought to be classified or it ought not -- such decisions ought not be reversed simply because the PM is afraid he might lose some votes.

It seems that when national security goes head-to-head with the MPs own political ambitions, those ambitions win hands-down. That is not acceptable.

So now we have to accept that the government (either directly or via its 5-eyes partners) is keeping a dossier on each and every one of us.

Sure, this dossier isn't a manila folder with all your emails, phone calls, SMS messages and logs of your movements around the country -- but that information *is* available if the huge database of information collected is mined appropriately.

Now I'm sorry but this is far, far worse than anything the Stasi did in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

We (as a collective of Western Nations) roundly attacked the policies of the Soviet era and the way its peoples were surveilled and the state intruded on their everyday lives -- yet now we are doing worse, far, far worse.

Hypocrisy... is most surely the currency of politics.

Now while I'm sure there are millions of "innocent" Kiwis who are prepared to accept the government's word that either the surveillance is not taking place or that it is simply "benign" and being done to protect them -- but I'm not one of those people.

No, I have nothing to hide but I demand the right to privacy!

Until such time as our politicians and security agents allow members of the public to trawl through *their* phone calls, bank transactions, emails, SMSes and logs of their movements then I'm damned if they should have any right to go trawling through mine.

This is simply a matter of principle (a word that has been deleted from the dictionary used by our politicians and bureaucrats).

What we perhaps need is not only encryption but also an anonymising mail service that allows us to send and receive messages in a way that even the meta-data being collected is of no use to those who collect it.

Sure, the use of hard-encryption may slow down those who seek to completely destroy our right to privacy but it doesn't stop the collection of the metadata that effectively allows the spooks to see *who* you're engaging with.

Perhaps readers could contribute their own preferred list of options for "raising shields" against the NSA and their partners in this battle to protect our right to privacy.

In the meantime, the small fragments of Mr Key's credibility have been pulverised by Ed Snowden's comments last night -- although I'm sure the fanbois will continue to believe JK based on faith rather than fact.

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