Makes complete sense. Violent Muslim political groups operate throughout Malaysia, Indonesia and the Phillippines and NZ wants to make sure they don't use polynesian islands for covert training or staging attacks.
New Zealand spying on Pacific islands, Snowden leaks say
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Re: New Zealand spying on Pacific islands, Snowden leaks say
#22So is it mostly about French territories ? I don't think that the Vanuatu or the Fiji are a huge threat on the global scale.
Fiji has had a series of military coups in recent times. Of course NZ (and others) monitor them.
By all means, if New Zealand is worried about Fiji military coups, then it's the duty of New Zealand's intelligence service to monitor the Fiji military.
The problem isn't that some nation is spying on some other nation, it's a problem of scale and scope. Fearing a military coup does not warrant "intercepting and storing content and metadata of all communications" happening on that island.
Re: New Zealand spying on Pacific islands, Snowden leaks say
#23Full take, my a... Put those chaps in prison. There is simply no other place on earth for them.
To all the downvoters, I censored the a - if you have other reasons to not agree, please elaborate in a reply. Thank you.
The comment has so little substance that it's not promoting any meaningful discussion. I don't think the problem is your opinion or that you are outraged, it's how you chose to express it.
Add details like who should go to prison, why, where did they cross the line, are they actually violating a law or do we need a new law, is it a problem with the system or with the individuals. All of these would be interesting things to discuss and would make your comment more meaningful. Right now I'm not even sure who you would like to see in prison.
Re: New Zealand spying on Pacific islands, Snowden leaks say
#24So everyone's spying on everyone. Wonder if these guys could all get a wiki up and running, would save so much trouble.
There is essentially a wiki for the major English-speaking countries to share intelligence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement
Re: New Zealand spying on Pacific islands, Snowden leaks say
#25I wonder, are all these leaks actually still from Snowden himself or is the name being used as a cover/branding for other sources now?
Re: New Zealand spying on Pacific islands, Snowden leaks say
#26"a foreign intelligence service that wasn't gathering some foreign intelligence, I'd ask him 'what the hell are we paying the money for?" The ye old argument of a defensive force. Why should we spend all this money on a army that just sit at home and wait for others to attack? This is of course different from when you have a defined target which threatens the country in a specific way. At that point, a defensive forc…
Surely the point of the intelligence services is to find out who is threatening a country in a certain way?
Re: New Zealand spying on Pacific islands, Snowden leaks say
#27So everyone's spying on everyone. Wonder if these guys could all get a wiki up and running, would save so much trouble.
Re: New Zealand spying on Pacific islands, Snowden leaks say
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's your opinion. My comment was to express my outrage - if that can't be part of a discussion, then...?
Welcome to HN, where your comments aren't censored, but insead they are 'groomed' by those who consistently cherish 'valuable' conversations by pandering to 'karma' points. The 'correct' dialog is to discuss how it's natural for our systems of governance to want to spy on everyone, and the 'correct' actions fall between accepting this or petitioning our masters to roll back 'some' of these advances. Your individual o…
How would the incentive of 'karma points' drive down votes? The two don't seem related to me (I say this from having a balance -10 karma points at the moment).
Some comments, like the OP's clearly lack the elements of reasoned thought.
In my experience, my downvotes seem to have been wielded when my comments offend the values of the down voter's social group - not when they fail to logically interface with the discussion.
I think its clear that the majority of users seek to reinforce others who share their beliefs and penalize those they disagree with. Which seems rather primitive.
Re: New Zealand spying on Pacific islands, Snowden leaks say
#29"a foreign intelligence service that wasn't gathering some foreign intelligence, I'd ask him 'what the hell are we paying the money for?" The ye old argument of a defensive force. Why should we spend all this money on a army that just sit at home and wait for others to attack? This is of course different from when you have a defined target which threatens the country in a specific way. At that point, a defensive forc…
Surely the point of the intelligence services is to find out who is threatening a country in a certain way?
intelligence services should operate the same way as the police do. The police job is to find out who commit crimes, but that doesn't mean they should invade peoples home at random in order to find out who the criminals are. Their start position is one where they suspect a specific crime is committed by specific people, and then go after those people using methods approved by society.
Re: New Zealand spying on Pacific islands, Snowden leaks say
#30Somehow, national security is contingent on knowing EVERYTHING the public says and does. Total war has gone digital.
I never thought I'd see the day where a sarcastic slippery slope argument about the Patriot Act made in 2004 would manifest into our reality.