Posted on 30-3-2002

State Insecurity
by Alan Marston

Some people are born with an allergy to conformity, some are bred, either
way, the outsider spends much of their life trying to cope with insiders
spending their time competing to be best in box. Not that that is wrong, or
right, it just is. It's my contention that the gushing `lets think outside
the frame' talk is a form of compensation used by those who can't do it.
Fear of the outsider is most obvious in `state security'. Enter the
Labour-Alliance Government with its and any government's dilemma. How to
appeal to the majority who want the (more apparent than real) security
inside the frame with the fruits of innovation and art produced by outsiders.

Insiders fear outsiders, yet need them if any movement and life is going to
happen. Outsiders fear insiders, yet need them if the machinery of society
is going to keep working. Balance is the sustainable goal. Need-fear
relationships run through everything governments do, and businesses and
sports clubs and marriages, and now it's running through PlaNet in the form
of the Crimes Amendment Bill No 6. The Cabinet papers released under the
Official Information Act show the Government's thinking, they want to
respond to what has already happened in Australia, UK, Europe, USA, what
their peers have done. They want to legislate to make it compulsory for
telecommunications and internet service providers to enable local state
security agency personal to intercept any electronic communications. The
security agents can't do themselves, so they want private service companies
to do it for them. The Government wants to fit into the western state
security box. That's pretty natural, and inevitable. However, as an
outsider, PlaNet will be badly affected, because we do things differently
and difference is exactly what the legislation is against.

The context of my comments are: Hold the tension, live with a some of your
fears such that the machinery of government keeps going but doesn't
roll-over and crush the small communities of outsiders who are the
intellectual hedge-fund for a livable future. Defend and sustain difference
against the death-bringing of global sameness and machine-like
`efficiency'. Produce balanced legislation.

Imbalance #1

PlaNet's management is small and flat, and on that basis we're able and
willing to respond quickly to pathological and/or criminal behaviour by
removing it from our system after confirming diagnosis. We call that the
organic way. The corporate way is to judge according to commercial
implications. Profitable = healthy and unprofitable = unhealthy. The
thinkin is if services can be continued to be sold to people for a profit
then only state legislation and threat of fines will work to stop the
service being provided.

The Government is thinking like a corporate by forcing ISP's to pay for the
technical changes needed to allow state security to intercept email and
data, and, threatening fines of up to $500,000 for companies that don't.
That will squeeze the small, local, organic network operations, both
existing and new. The organic way is to disconnect services being used for
crime, not to monitor them at great expense. No sane person monitors
cancer, once seen it is removed as soon as possible. Only medical commerce
is interested in treating cancer, everybody else wants it prevented.

To maintain balance the government needs to ammend its legislation to allow
electronic service providers to demonstrate that they have stopped the use
of their networks for illegal purposes by identified individuals. This is
an inexpensive, realistic, already working activity that prevents crime
rather than prosecutes it.

Imbalance #2

PlaNet respects the privacy of communication as its defining principle,
anything that is not private is not communication, its advertising. PlaNet
values communication above advertising because relationship is at the heart
of social and personal health, not sales figures. Accountants cannot see
privacy, its invisible to their software and hence its invisible to the
people in the corporate board-room. It should not be invisible to those who
proclaim social leadership in parliament.

The Government, by recommending that the whole spectrum of security and law
enforcement agencies and their personal are able to require ISPs make their
equipment "interception capable" will be doing that intellectual back-flip
so beloved of PR firms, `enforced cooperation' in the recommended "duty of
assist" provision. The qualification in the Cabinet papers, that
interceptions be "activated" only with the agreement of an ISP officer is
double-speak because it would be over-ridden by the "duty to assist"
provision.

Balance is needed between privacy and social self-defense. The current
cabinet recommendations lean too far toward enforce and no far enough
toward cooperation. For a model of how things can work, look at the way the
Internal Affairs department is successfully conducting operations against
child-porn on the Internet.

Imbalance #3

Being in the Internet business for nine years, longer than Telecom, Telstra
etc, PlaNet knows that the most valuable resource for business is
confidence and the next most valualbe resource is private communication,
not advertising. The humble email is where the money is, as long as the
users feel confident it is safe from prying eyes. The government doesn't
seem to know that once people in business think (justifiably) that the new
interception laws will be used by government agencies both national and
international, in the service often of huge and powerful corporates, then
those people will stop using email routed via NZ service provider's
networks and will turn to multi-national unregulated services. PlaNet and
the very few other NZ owned ISPs will be hurt, the large foreign owned
Telco's won't.

Balance is needed between defense and offence. The most punishing diseases
are those where the immune system turn on it's own body, such is the threat
from this crimes ammendment and the moderating influence of cut-off not
interception and snooping needs to be applied.