At the moment in NZ we have complacency amongst the population. Most kiwis oppose it, but accept it as they have bought into the "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" ideology. The only conceivable reason to believe this and spread this nonsense is confirmation bias. They believe it and spread it because it confirms the political bias they have.
Those who come up with the "if you have nothing to hide" bullshit are enablers through excuse. The human right to privacy has precedent in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
But this is much bigger than our right to privacy. It is the slow erosion of our basic human rights until we get to the point where we have no rights left. People need to stop making excuses for this erosion and stop being enablers of these changers through their misguided politically biased discourse. We need to put politics aside and discuss these issues in an apolitical (absence of political bias) manner.
"Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" is a myth that is built on false assumptions.
There are too many questions to be answered. What about continuity of oversight:
The data collected will outlive the people who voted for it, the people who drafted the bill, the people in charge of the GCSB at the time of inception and the corporates who support it. Even if we could assume that right now, the govt. and corps. have our absolute wellbeing at heart and their minds are devoid of corrupt thoughts of misuse, there is little guarantee that these values will be shared by their successors in the years to come.
What about data control? Those who share the "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" mentality think their information is being stored in some secure government department under lock and key. Well, your data is being shared amongst the international spy partners. This information will also be available to other organisations such as the police. Once this data has left the GCSB data centres they no longer have control of it. So your information could be constanty changing hands and could eventually become public and available to the private sector. Sooner or later your personal data will leak.
In a perfect world we would think that our spy agencies will only have our best interests at heart, will not abuse their power and privileges. We would think the data systems will be 100% accurate and reliable, that information is used in accordance with the original consent purpose. That all procedural processes will be followed and that ethics will always be at the forefront when deciding when to use this data.
Any person can look back and see that this perfect state can never be achieved.
I repeat, we need to put politics aside and discuss these issues in an apolitical (absence of political bias) manner.
We need to have those from all corners of this country reviewing the legislative changes and the existing legislation and work out the best way our national security can be preserved with the least intrusion into out private lives.