On Saturday April 24th 2010, Phil and I went along to the Wellington protest against the Search and Surveillance Bill, which proposes:

Sweeping powers to spy, bug conversations and hack into private computers could be given to a web of state agencies as diverse as Inland Revenue and the Meat Board.

The Human Rights Commission yesterday warned Parliament of the “chilling” implications … under the law, council dog control officers would be able to enter homes to install a surveillance device and the Commerce Commission would be able to detain people … Inland Revenue would get the powers to assist its tax investigations, while the Meat Board would get them to enforce breaches of export rules.

Shocking stuff.  We went along representing the Libertarianz (quietly however, as we didn’t organise the protest).

Most of the people at the protest were ‘lefties’, broadly speaking.  Never mind, we will join with whoever when they get things right!  It was a good turnout too, 40-50 people during the speeches and 100+ during the march.

The protest organisers had some great signs and very effective surveillance-camera-helmets.  Great visual impact.  This one even had a working LED in it!

There were plenty of media and heaps of still and video cameras around; somewhat ironic for an anti-surveillance protest! 

The speakers could have been better organised – a firm time limit and either a better megaphone, quieter location or more projection from the speakers would have been much better.  The speaker above was the best speaker, he was from the Civil Liberties Union I think.

One speaker went ON and ON for ages and all his examples happened to involve ‘trade unionists’.  Wake up dude, its not the 1960s!  :-p

After the speeches we marched down the street to the National Party headquarters (even though, as the organisers admitted, Labour first introduced this bill, so both parties are the bad guys on this one), stopping traffic (probably completely illegally) for several minutes.  Felt good to be marching with so many people (100+ people at this point).  Good stuff.

We stopped outside the National Party headquarters, which was a bit pointless really.

Phil thinks we should have gone to the Police station, and I agree, there are many large and obvious surveillance cameras outside that building; it would have been a great visual and an even better metaphorical protest against the ‘police state’ that this bill may bring us closer to.

Of course, it might have led to various protesters being ‘firmly removed’ but, again – a great visual …

Posted by Luke H on Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 at 12:13 am.