All posts by Thomas Beagle

Co-founder and spokesperson for Tech Liberty

FAQ : Trans Pacific Partnership

New Zealand is one of the four original members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement. Other countries (Australia, the USA, Peru and Vietnam) are now interested in joining the agreement. It is referred to as both TPP and TPPA.

This FAQ answers some of the frequently asked questions about the TPP. It was last updated on 16th May 2011.

Contents:

Continue reading FAQ : Trans Pacific Partnership

Surveillance: current law

The Search and Surveillance Bill is an attempt to rewrite New Zealand’s laws around search and surveillance.

One thing that has become clear in the debate around the bill is that many people are not fully aware of the existing powers that government agencies have to pry into our personal affairs. It’s not uncommon for someone to decry a ‘new’ power in the Search and Surveillance Bill, only to be told that it is already in existing law.

This article lists, to the best of our knowledge, the current ways that the government can use to watch us. We will expand/correct it as additional knowledge comes to light.


This article has not yet been updated to reflect the changes made when the Search & Surveillance Act became law.


Continue reading Surveillance: current law

A Week of ACTA

It’s going to be a week of ACTA in Wellington, New Zealand.

  • On Saturday (April 10th) we have PublicACTA organised by InternetNZ. It’s a chance for people who oppose ACTA to get together and discuss how to stop it. Guest speakers include Canadian law professor Michael Geist and Australian academic Kim Weatherall.
  • Then, the following week (April 12-16th) there’s the latest round of the official ACTA negotiations.

Why we oppose ACTA

  • We oppose the attempt to take away people’s rights (due process, freedom of speech, right to own and use property) in an attempt to protect the business models of the big media and pharmaceutical industries.
  • We oppose the secrecy around the ACTA negotiations. Democratic societies should debate their laws in public.
  • We oppose the way that the ACTA treaty is an attempt to legislate by treaty, avoiding the normal democratic process in each of the participating countries.

Tech Liberty articles about ACTA

Submission about Digital Enforcement Provisions in ACTA

The Ministry of Economic Development asked for submissions about the Digital Enforcement Provisions in the ACTA treaty.

While we object to New Zealand’s participation in the treaty, we still thought it was worthwhile to respond. The full text follows (headings correspond to those in the request for submissions), but the 8 recommendations we made are:

  1. The ACTA treaty should note that ISPs are not liable for the actions of their users.
  2. That ACTA includes a “notice and counter-notice” regime where complainants can pay ISPs to deliver a notice to the account holder for an IP address at a particular time, and the ISP can pass responses back to the complainant.
  3. That ACTA specifies that complainants should be able to obtain the identity of a user from the ISP only after a court order has been obtained.
  4. That ACTA makes no attempt to encourage mutually supportive relationships between ISPs and rights holders.
  5. That ACTA should recognise that anti-TPM measures have a useful and lawful purpose.
  6. That ACTA should insist that participating countries allow consumer rights-holders the right to create, buy and use anti-TPM software and devices if these are used for lawful purposes.
  7. That ACTA should forbid the use of TPMs that limit the reasonable and customary rights of people to enjoy the use of the rights that they have purchased or otherwise legally obtained, unless the supplier also undertakes to provide unprotected versions when required.
  8. That ACTA should not include enforcement measures concerning the removal or modification of copyright management information.

Continue reading Submission about Digital Enforcement Provisions in ACTA

ACTA – The NZ Official Information Requests

We’ve written about the unhealthy secrecy around the ACTA treaty negotiations. As New Zealanders we believe we have a right to know what our government is doing on our behalf.

We wrote to the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to ask them some questions about ACTA under the Official Information Act. We just got our answers back (scanned PDFs of the MED letter – 3MB, MFAT letter – 3MB, and cabinet paper – 6MB) and we have to admit that we weren’t very surprised to see more excuses not to release official information than we saw information.
Continue reading ACTA – The NZ Official Information Requests

Department of Internal Affairs failing on open government

Last week we announced that the New Zealand internet filter had “gone live” and was now being used to filter the connections for users of two ISPs (Watchdog and Maxnet), with more expected to follow.

The obvious question has to be, why was Tech Liberty announcing something that the Department of Internal Affairs had done? Where was their announcement that the filter had gone live on the 1st of February? Don’t civil servants have a duty to communicate to the people that they serve?
Continue reading Department of Internal Affairs failing on open government

Guest article: Security risks of centralised filtering

We’d like to welcome our first guest author, Gerard Creamer. He’s written an article that explains some of the security risks inherent in implementing a centralised filtering system. It’s a little more technical than most of the articles we publish; we hope you find it interesting.

Continue reading Guest article: Security risks of centralised filtering