In 2003, the SIS adopted a new archives policy which saw material declassified and able to be released to the public for the first time. Since then, various people have taken the opportunity to gain copies of their records. And the results have revealed just how much of a threat to democracy the SIS is. A piece in the Dominion-Post today reveals details of their spying on CAFCA - the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa. CAFCA is a classic lobby group, issuing press releases, submitting to Parliament, organising petitions, promoting or opposing legislation, and issuing an annual "Roger Award" to highlight its cause. This is perfectly normal political activity in a democracy, and you would have to be absolutely demented to regard them as a "threat to security". So naturally the SIS spied on them for over a decade, invading the privacy of hundreds of people while doing so. And what did they find? The usual garbage:
"A lot of it is salacious gossip, with analyses of named people's marriage problems, drinking habits, etc, etc," Horton said.Quelle horreur! Clearly a dangerous threat to national security!"Some of it is laughable, like a report dedicated to the likely impact of feminism and different gender views on abortion on the marriages of named couples."
One report contained this reference to Horton: "He likes the sound of his own voice and keeps interrupting the other speakers."
Like the police SIG, this speaks of an organisation with not enough real work to do, which has turned its sights on ordinary political activists in order to justify its budget. By doing so, they have shown themselves to be a far greater threat to democracy than their imaginary "subversives". The scary thing is that their budget has tripled in recent years due to the "war on terror", but there is still nothing for them to do. There are no real terrorists in New Zealand, just as there were no Russian agents. Which raises the question: who are they spying on now?
The past history of the SIS shows that rather than protecting New Zealand's democracy, it has worked systematically to undermine it. That is not acceptable. The organisation should either be disbanded, or gutted back to a rump sufficient to its task (which is probably less than ten people). Either way, our democracy will be safer for it.
