An excellent piece by Andrea Vance in the weekend, on Key’s terrorism dog and pony show:
Inflating the terrorism risk
…Key wasn’t “lying” in the strict sense of the word when he revealed to reporters on Wednesday that nine passports were revoked. … So far, the Government has cancelled only two passports and would like to make a reasoned case for greater powers to confiscate more. But Key didn’t say that. Instead, he inflated the risk because that fits with the big, scary Muslim threat that he’s been pedalling of late.
The media happily followed Key’s trail of breadcrumbs to Wednesday’s announcement. Clumsy (unsubstantiated) hints about beheadings, home-grown terrorism, and the lone-wolf attack on Canada’s parliament made for easy, dramatic headlines.
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Ahead of the speech, exclusive access to top spies was granted to newspapers and television crews. Sold as being transparent, it was a PR snow job to tie New Zealand to the conflict raging across Syria and Iraq. The threat level was publicly raised, for added theatre. And just in case the public didn’t quite get it, Key threw up a hint about terror threats to next year’s cricket world cup.
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Domestic action to curb terror tourism and enhance unwarranted surveillance was cynically conflated with New Zealand’s participation in the international effort to stop IS.
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And anyone who dares to contradict him is branded naive, despite his unwillingness to engage in debate on security matters.
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Scaremongering, twisting the facts, and ramming reforms through under urgency, is just a convenient way to bypass much-needed scrutiny of state surveillance.
There’s plenty more, go read it on Stuff…
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