We are all potentially subersive

I applaud the criticisms Salient makes of the SIS Amendment Bill, although the headline "Smash Fascist SIS Laws" might detract a little from the credibility of the arguments in a constructive context.

But in the interception of communications area, I suggest that the greatest danger does not arise from the inactment of SIS powers to intercept per se — as the Powels Report recommended, this is an overdue reorganising of an already established practice and it is necessary to provide limitations and checks on that practice which have not hitherto existed. The danger lies in the wide and marginal definitions of the general functions of the SIS, which are contained in the principal NZSIS Act 1969. That Act defines the basic SIS function as gathering information relevant to the security of New Zealand. What is "security"? The Act defines it as the protection of New Zealand from, inter alia, subversion. "Subversion" is defined as the undermining, by unlawful means, the Government. It is unvertain what is meant by "undermining by unlawful means". As Powles points out, it is the construction the SIS places on its countersubversion information function that raises the major problem. In the past the SIS has tended to include in its surveillance not groups and individuals who are subversive, but are potentially subversive. The target of surveillance then becomes political opinion, which is evidenced by discent and protest.

The fear, then, is not simply that the power to intercept exists, but that It might conceivably be used to monitor any group or individual whose political opinions do not coincide with those of the Government. The basis of this possibility is not to be found in the new Bill before Parliament, but in the principal Act which has been on the books for eight years.

— George Crowder.