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It is great to see that there are still "somewhere" in the world high level politicians who take these kind of things seriously. Judging by the coziness of the US administration with the Entertainment industry and its lacking willingness to clean up issues such as the Fast and Furious/AFT gunwalking scandal, I very much doubt that this would have happened in the US.

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It's worth noting that in NZ, the Prime Minister is also the Minister overseeing the GCSB. He has to sign off on all surveillance warrants, too. So at the very least it's a huge and public failure in his department; at the worst, he's complicit in illegal surveillance.

It's yet to be seen what his involvement is, but his whole involvement in this case has reeked of ass-covering and distancing. It'll be interesting to see the outcome of this inquiry.

As Sir Humphrey Appleby says, never hold an inquiry unless you know what its outcome will be.

If you read this article http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&obj... he specifically states "Prime Minister John Key has revealed the GCSB was acting without his sign-off".

Check your facts, please. ATF has its own share of assholes, but from personal experience I'm inclined to attribute its failings to incompetence in upper ranks rather than malice.

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-fu...

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