Worzel's World - Wanna know a secret?

How can three men keep a secret? One man must kill the other two. How can a woman keep a secret? Noone knows, it‘s never been done.

It was minister Judith Collins who announced the news that a bill granting police and other government agencies almost unlimited power to intrude covertly or otherwise into the lives and homes of New Zealanders had been passed. I have marked the date of this legislation June 30, 2012, as the date New Zealand became a police state. 

Addressing the media she used the old cliché ‘If you don’t have anything to hide then there is nothing to worry about.’

Ms Collins, like most others in the Western world, has a Facebook page. Visit it and you will find that it is privacy secured. What then is Ms Collins hiding? 

Ever received a phone call from a government agency? Their phone numbers are blocked. What are they hiding? 

The ethics of state agencies acting covertly and withholding even the most basic of contact information from the public are questionable at best. Now though, state agencies have the power in law and increasingly the technical means to probe into many aspects of the lives of any and all individuals. 

Sadly we live in an age where information has a monetary value. Take on a hire purchase agreement or sign up for a subscription and your details can and will be sold on to many and various organisations. You will start receiving flyers offering insurance policies and subscriptions to Time magazine. You will automatically win some outlandishly large cash prize from Readers Digest. 

This has happened to me. Somewhere, somehow, someone has collected a tit bit of information and decided that I would be a good target for such stuff. I am not. They would have saved a considerable amount in postage had they conducted their research a little better. Their information – like the information held about each of us in government agency databases – is incomplete. And as they say, a little information is a dangerous thing.

  The commercial world protects private information in order to sell it on. There is no money to be made in information that is freely available. The Ministry of Social Development, Ministry of Justice, and Inland Revenue Department unintentionally released individuals’ confidential information, proving yet again that they cannot competently deal with information they already possess. 

For myself, Ms Collins’ assertion holds true. My phone number is not blocked, nor are the numbers of my friends and associates. If I were ever to be the subject of covert surveillance I would pity whoever had to view the video footage. Watching me write this column would be anything but compelling viewing. 

I have nothing to hide and spend much time trying to make others see what is unhidden. I care not how much or how little people know of me, Although I care a fair bit about whether it is understood – and I like my privacy.

I have quite enjoyed having conversations recorded by just about everybody these days, 'for training purposes', and have referenced a couple in subsequent acrimonious correspondence. I am unsure if the training has worked. 

Knowledge is actually a burden. Once a person knows something, anything, it follows one way or another that they assume responsibility for using that information wisely. Ignorance frees one from any such responsibility and explains to some extent why so many choose it. 

That Big Brother is watching us is no secret. The secret they do not want you to know (because they do not know it themselves) is that Big Brother (or is it the Nanny State?) is so incompetent that it cannot understand what it sees. He may be big and he is often a bully, he may believe and tell us that he knows best, he may even seem like a nice guy. 

It is the worst kept secret of modern times that even when Big Brother is well intentioned (which by and large he is not) it is not so scary that he is watching, as it is that he is a retard. By way of his ineptitude he cannot be trusted. 

prof_worzel@hotmail.com