NZ's intelligence oversight is a bad joke

The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has released their report into NZSIS access to Customs data, and it is an appalling litany of criminal behaviour by our spies. The short version: for years, the SIS accessed customs and immigration databases giving details on everyone's travel movements, and copied the data to their own servers for future mining (so, they know where you've been, if they ever care to look). In November 2014, they were told that this was illegal, so following their usual pattern, they had the government ram through an urgent law-change to legalise it (you may recall the democratic atrocity of the government holding sham select committee hearings, where submissions were solicited, but never read). They then systematically violated the constraints imposed by the law they had written, and did not stop even when informed by the Inspector-General that it was illegal. It was only in August last year that they finally began obeying the law (and of course, they then had another urgent law rammed through to broaden their access).

It gets worse. The SIS is refusing to admit that they behaved unlawfully, and refusing to provide the Inspector-General with information about the extent of their unlawful access or what has happened to the data. That in itself is contrary to the Intelligence and Security Act (and the Act which preceded it), and a criminal offence, which the Inspector-General all but accuses them of. So will anyone be prosecuted, or even sacked? Of course not. Because when push comes to shove, the spies are above the law, and the Inspector-General (like the IPCA) is there to provide pretty lies to the public about how they are under control, rather than actually keep them under control (or at least, that is the effect in practice when their recommendations are ignored and there are no prosecutions even in cases of clear and systematic criminal behaviour, as here).

As I noted when this story first emerged earlier in the week, Parliament needs to put its foot down. They have told us very explicitly that the spies will be controlled and their powers scrutinised. They've passed laws saying so. And those laws are being ignored. Their legitimacy as a parliament depends on their standing up for our rights, upholding those laws, calling the SIS to account and sacking people. And if they don't, then we might as well give up on laws and elections, because they will have shown that in practice, its the spies who call the shots.