Are we being softened up to accept more surveillance?

Author: Tessa.

Many, by now will be asking “what the bloody hell is going on with crime in this country?”

From perpetual ram raids to marauding dirt bikers, stabbings, shootings and most recently, Bay of Plenty town – Opotiki has basically gone into a ‘crime lockdown’ because the country’s largest gang is causing mayhem in the streets.

While many of us will mutter belligerently under our breath “lock them all up and throw away the key”, others will fly into a face-melting virtue signal about how this is the fault of colonising ‘cis’ white men.

Whatever you think is the reason, it should be obvious by now that traditional crime-busting seems to be getting wound down to make way for a new way of doing things. The police force is out-numbered by gang members in some regions we’re told, while “experts” say putting criminals in jail is ineffective, and besides, the jails are too full and too expensive.

So what will this new way look like? How will the next NZ government rein in crime to placate a population so heavily divided by a culture war and at odds about what fair punishment is?

The fever pitch level of mainstream reporting on crime at present has me feeling that some kind of sweeping solution from those in authority is imminent.  The Labour/Green coalition government, working in lockstep with a now institutionally woke academia and emasculating our Police is resulting in a vacuum where law and order used to be. The population is gagging for a solution to crime. Is it the perfect scenario for an incoming political party to show off their ability to fill that vacuum with an ‘innovative solution’?

Enter Christopher Luxon, leader of the “Labour-lite” National Party, a conservative-with-a-dollop-of-woke, centre-right successful businessman who until now appeared to struggle to stand for anything and instead tried to please all of the people all of the time, which is an impossible task any leader worth their salt will tell you. At least up until the rubber started hitting the road as the election draws nearer which seems to have prodded him into adopting quite the tough-on-crime stance.

But, he has also given us a glimpse of his technocratic tendencies to justify his policy-making. His intention to controversially lift the ban on GMO and gene-editing of farm animals in NZ – not with a human-centric objective but rather to fulfil our 2050 zero CO2 emissions target – would be one example. And let’s not forget his support of the current government to inject an experimental pharmaceutical into every arm in the country, because ‘Science’.

He has already triggered much of  the current government’s supporters with his crime policy proposals. So once his party has scraped into power why wouldn’t they soften the party’s stance so as not to provoke too much derision from a sizeable chunk of the left-leaning population, by turning to ‘transformative solutions’ to ensure public safety is paramount? A solution such as – oh I don’t know – a biometric public surveillance network?

In the recent fracas in Opotiki the predominant police tactic was to stand by taking photos of the crimes happening in front of them. Similarly AI facial recognition cameras have already being trialled in supermarkets around New Zealand to deter shoplifters. Body cams on supermarket workers have recently been deployed, and has anyone else noticed the multitude of cameras dotting the sides of our motorways these days? It’s not too great a leap for any PM to take this surveillance to another level to warrant “public safety”.

Privacy out in public would become a thing of the past. But the progressive wokie-dokies will practically orgasm at the chance to sacrifice theirs, at the behest of non-totalitarian alternatives, to ‘make NZ safer for everyone’. Similarly, the tough-on-crime crowd will accept this kind of overreach because if you’re not doing anything wrong – you’ve nothing to fear right? And they would have just voted in ‘their guy’ so it would feel traitorous to go against the tribe leader. Scope creep will be lost on these people. Anyone who’s not on board with digital surveillance of the team of 5 million will clearly be a selfish lunatic, so they’ll be gaslit and bullied into line by the compliant majority. Sound familiar?

Nick Corbishley explains in his book ‘Scanned’:

In the European Union a tug of war has broken out between privacy advocates and security forces over proposed legislation for the use of remote biometric identification, such as facial recognition, in public. Proponents of the technology, including law enforcement agencies, argue that it is needed to catch criminals. 

“To catch criminals”. Hmm. So in NZ where teachers are being fired from their job for not using a students preferred pronouns, and people who protest government mandates have been referred to by government advisory organisations as ‘violent far-right extremists’, can we trust that AI surveillance tech won’t ‘ping’ people according to rather enhanced definitions of what a criminal is? Perhaps this is how the imminent Media and Online Regulations will be transcribed into the real world?

Corbishley also says Statewatch reported that in December [2021] the Council of the EU not only intends to extend the purposes for which biometric systems can be used under the EU’s proposed Artificial Intelligence Act, but is also seeking to allow private actors to operate mass biometric surveillance systems on behalf of police forces.

You may be thinking this all wouldn’t happen here in NZ, but it has already started in the form of traffic cameras that detect human behaviours and Waka Kotāhi outsourcing these surveillance cameras to be administrated by large overseas companies. And don’t forget the World Economic Forum recently partnered with our government to run a pilot program in NZ for AI Regulation. It all seems to be heading in one direction.

So, this Resistance Kiwi will continue to pay special attention to our politicians using wafty, WEF-fie terms like, transformative technologies, sustainable solutions and trust frameworks. I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for ‘big brother’ creeping into the public environment.

Call me paranoid, but I would rather live in skeptical awareness than blissful ignorance. And I’d rather not be treated like a pedo hanging around a school, while I’m simply buying toothpaste in a supermarket, by having my face sent off to a “risk register” thanks very much, because FLM! (Free Lives Matter!)

Vive la Résistance!

Edited 30 June 2023