Spy access to NZ used as bargaining tool

"His most important point is that the right to privacy is a constitutionally protected right and it does not have to be traded away for our way of life."

Unlike other forms of "progress", the disappearing of privacy is very much a choice. Yes, we're on the back foot at the moment when it comes to regulating the way technology is (ab)used, but those of us with a functioning democracy still have ample opportunity to fight back.

Also:

"He calls the government to take a stand for privacy by establishing an agency that will enforce privacy laws and act as a representative of individual privacy."

I presume this is an American perspective. Each EU country for instance is obliged to have such an agency.

Imagine the following: You, mtgx, are put in charge of protecting the mid-Atlantic states from an attack. You have been given complete access to all of the legally obtained intelligence that the nation has about the region and potential conspirators for said attack.

Do you not use it? What are your options? If you don't use it, and the attacks are successful, it will be your fault. You will have to live with the knowledge that your inaction, for whatever higher purpose, cost those lives.

I posit that even good people like you would take all of the steps you have available to do your job. Even if by day you are writing letters to the editors begging the nation to take those powers away from you.

For a reak example, look no farther than what happened in the case of the Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It turns out that we had a lot of intelligence on him; the Russians even alerted us that he was trouble. And yet, we did not feel we had enough evidence to invade his privacy. We didn't stop him (this is why I think that the people doing this are basically trying to do the right thing). And when we found out after the bombing that this could have been stopped? The shit hit the fan: People were declaring the FBI/CIA incompetent, etc.

The main reason to act on this privacy issue is to help the good people who have to do these jobs, not to stop evil people. The rules are now such that good people have to do evil things in order to be good.

We want to keep this in mind so that we solve the right problem.

The primary contract was signed with a US vendor, TE Subcom (actually HQ is in Switzerland for tax reasons), and whether the Chinese vendor could even do the job aside even from landing rights was a big question.

Funding from any source never amounted to enough to get it away. Which is a shame as the business case was - and still is - compelling.

Source: me - a Pacific Fibre founder