Sponsor's Message

Are you worried?

Maybe you should be.

The proposed new Counter-Terrorism Bill (CTB) could see you landing in jail for an unlimited time even if you didn't do anything wrong.

How can that be? Isn't this a land where we all have rights and freedoms protected by law?

Errr... well that used to be the case but it appears very much as if those rights are being slowly but surely whisked away by those who value their own power above all else.

Take the case of Ike Finau, an Aucklander who has committed the heinous crime of displaying some signs on his front lawn. Poor old Ike has been told that he's not allowed to express his opinions and beliefs by placing those signs on his lawn and now he faces arrest for defying a court order that forbid this evil act.

Maybe Ike needs a website -- or would Auckland Mayor John Banks get a court injunction to force the hosting company to remove it?

Readers Say (updated irregularly) Signs... - Russell Lymree.co.nz... - Peter Increased police powers... - Chris Divulge Encryption Keys... - Stuart Ike... - Simon Hello???... - Dominic Have Your Say

But back to your PC...

The CTB will force you and I to hand over the decryption keys to any file found on our computer and, if we fail to comply, we could be jailed for contempt.

Of course the objective is allegedly to help control the threat of terrorism -- which sounds all well and good -- but where are the safeguards?

Most net users know (but a hell of a lot don't) that there are evil little sods out there who delight in slipping trojans onto other people's computers. These trojans, more often than not, arrive in the form of an attachment to a seemingly innocent email.

Clicking on that attachment (or if your software's out of date, simply viewing your inbox) is enough to give the cracker full control of and access to your PC -- including its hard drive.

Now, if you were a terrorist, where would you store your incriminating computer files? On your own PC?

Hell no!

You'd be far better off identifying some stupid trojan-infected PC user with a DSL connection who left their PC turned on most (or all) of the day. You'd have little trouble uploading your encrypted and incriminating data files to their machine and making the address of that machine known to all your evil terrorist mates.

It's 2:30am -- Knock, knock. Hello, what are the SIS counter-terrorism squad doing in your bedroom?

What's that you say? I'm a terrorist collaborator? You want the decryption key for those files on my PC?

Just try telling these people that you don't know what those files are and that you don't have a decryption key. They might believe you eventually -- but your life will probably be hell until they do.

And what happens when they discover that you've got most of the ingredients to make plastic explosives? (cotton wool, the acid from your car's battery and a couple of other not too uncommon chemicals).

See that smoke alarm on your kitchen ceiling -- sorry, it's chock-full of radioactive material, now you're (technically) in even hotter water!

Of course this is all completely silly isn't it?

We know by now that those in the employ of government, charged with acting in the best interests of taxpayers would never abuse that privilege (would they?) -- and I strongly doubt that any of our NZ police would be as crooked as this bunch of bobbies.

I'm sorry, but as long as the laws of the land (especially the draconian ones that involve usurping previously held rights) are administered by people with human weaknesses, we really do need to be very careful about what we, as citizens, are prepared to accept.

If we don't tell our lawmakers to pull their heads in and stop assaulting our right to privacy and free speech then let's face it, the terrorists have already won their war against freedom -- willfully aided and abetted by our politicians.

Personally, I'm kind of worried that NZ is going the way of the USA where this "War Against Terrorism" seems to have been used as an excuse for significantly increasing the government's rights to snoop, assume guilt, and ride rough-shod over what should be the inalienable rights of its citizens.

What do you think?

Contacting Aardvark
As always, readers are invited to submit their comments on material covered in this column. If you'd like your comments published here then please be sure to use this form and select For Publication.

Other media organisations seeking more information or republication rights are also invited to contact me.

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Linking Policy
Want to link to this site? Check out Aardvark's Linking Policy.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!