The Herald reports:
Asked if this was war, Ardern said it would be the “closest thing to war my generation will have seen”.
It isn’t close to war, it is war.
And the born in 1980 generation has seen a lot of wars, sadly. They include:
The full judgment is here. Some key aspects are:
Stuff reports:
Left-leaning Auckland mayoral candidate Efeso Collins says a push for fare-free public transport will be the first thing he wants to achieve if elected in October.
Collins, a two-term Manukau Ward Labour councillor, says Aucklanders spend up to 30 per cent of their household income on transport, and it is one of the biggest issues the city has to deal with.
“If we are going to address our climate emissions this is the first and best way to do it,” he told Stuff.
Fare-free public transport will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one kilogram as transport is within the emissions trading scheme. It will just force Auckland residents to pay a lot more in rates so companies that produce greenhouse gas emissions can pay less for them.
The idea is not new to an Auckland mayoral campaign. Jim Anderton in 1977 had it as a policy when he came second to sitting Auckland City Council mayor Sir Dove-Myer Robinson.
In the last full financial year before Covid-19 hit patronage hard, fare revenue was worth more than $150 million a year, and an earlier Auckland Transport assessment was that extra demand would cost $60m to meet.
The $60 million is a conservative estimate. Free travel on Waiheke ferries alone will probably chew up $15 million or so (off peak travel for seniors costs $2 million so travel for anyone at anytime would easily exceed $10 million). Every day thousands will flock to Waiheke if it is free.
But let’s go with the conservative figure of $60 million of extra demand and $150 of current fares. That means $210 million of extra income needed through rates which is an extra $420 per household.
The average residential rates are $3,599 in Auckland so the cost of this initial promise by Collins would see rates increase by 12%. They’re already planning a rates increase of at least 6% so basically what Collins is promising is to hike up rates by 20%.
The Herald reports:
A High Court challenge questioning the legality of Covid-19 vaccination mandates for Police and Defence Force employees has been upheld, with the court determining that a government mandate requiring frontline employees to be jabbed is an unjustified incursion of the Bill of Rights.
In a decision released today, Justice Francis Cooke determined that ordering frontline police officers and Defence staff to be vaccinated or face losing their job was not a “reasonably justified” breach of the Bill of Rights.
The lawyer for the police and Defence staff at the centre of the claim is now calling for the suspended workers to return to their jobs immediately, saying many have given decades of service to their community and are still committed to their jobs.
This is a huge blow to the Government to be found to have breached the human rights of our soldiers and police officers.
A guest post by William Hall:
As the situation unfolds between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, many Kiwis may not think it to be top of mind, as COVID and Protests take centre stage for the media we are of course concerned about what is happening within our borders, rather than Eastern Europe. But it is something we should be seriously concerned about, due to us and Russia’s mutual friend, China.
For Russia, the tactics they are using today are nothing new, the Kremlin’s little green men have entered the territory of other post-soviet states many times before and have not left. We have seen this from Vladimir Putin in Chechnya (1999), In the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia (2008) and more recent history the Crimean peninsular, from Ukraine and now in Donetsk and Luhansk in the East.
Putin spent over an hour on Russian Television looking to rewrite history, telling people that the people who inhabit what is historically known as Novorossiya (New Russia) should and must be returned to the motherland. Putin has by sending peacekeeping forces into a region of the former Soviet Union that he believes should rightfully be a part of the Russian Federation has started a war.
Now for New Zealand other than following the United Kingdom and the United States on implementing sanctions. That’s about as far as the current government can go in condemning the actions of Vladimir Putin. But New Zealand should be looking towards China to see how they are reacting to the current crisis in Ukrainian and to learn how better to react.
China has been investigating opening a marine reserve in the South Pacific nation of Kiribati that would be able to double as a naval base. Vanuatu has had to deny Chinese plans surrounding the opening of Naval bases in the island nation. All while the Western world spent the majority of 2021 concerned around Chinese military operations around Taiwan. All of this sounds very similar to the build-up of Russian troops over the past few months around Ukraine. In Belarus, Transnistria and along Russia’s border with Ukraine troops and forward bases were opened and moved into position, to project a sense of power and fear across the globe. China’s work in the Pacific and the South China Sea about building military insulations is an exact mirror to what we have seen from Russia.
On the 22nd of February, Boris Johnson said that “This is plainly in breach of international law. It is a flagrant violation of the sovereignty and integrity of Ukraine.” The strongest measure that the West is willing to use to deal with this crisis is sanctioning Russian exports, banking and Oligarchs. Even Biden’s biggest threat of removing Russia from Swift was hardly a major deterrent. Only on the 18th of February, did the Russian Finance Ministry submit legislative proposals on Cryptocurrency. Further moving away from Western institutions.
Along with hurting Russia financially, the West has also tried to arm the Ukrainian armed forces with weapons, such as antitank and antiaircraft missiles. However, for the German government, a nation that had half of its population living under Russian control for 45 years. They decided to send a handful of helmets to the Ukrainian people, 5,000 in total. As the fresh-faced German Chancellor Olaf Scholz navigates his way around running the heart of European democracy and a worsening energy crisis at home, all while the new Nord Stream 2 lays dormant under the Black Sea.
The West’s continued appeasement of Putin’s Russia has emboldened him to continue to take bites out of Russia and the Soviet Union’s former colonies. Showing the widening instabilities between the European Union, United Kingdom and the United States in the post-COVID age. Weak leadership in the US, Germany and UK have greatly contributed to Russia’s hand.
So if America and Britain won’t militarily protect Europes second-largest nation then why wouldn’t Putin take what he wants. The precedent continues to be set, as it was with Crimea, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. So for a China that economically giants over Russia and is soon to be the globe’s largest economy, understanding their weaknesses is strategically important.
However, there are differences, for Russia the territories it has so far taken are different to China’s relationship with Taiwan. Russia’s interest is with regions that are ethnically Russian and on the whole, wish to rejoin Russia under Putin, whether as a part of the Federation or as an independent de facto state.
For Taiwan, although the population wishes to rejoin China, they do not want to join a nation under communist rule. In Taiwan’s favour, it has the Taiwan Relations Act that requires the US to enable Taiwan to defend itself from any outside aggression. This would mean any conflict China would like to declare on Taiwan would be one fort with the latest US military hardware, Unlikely the Ukrainian armed forces which are mostly using outdated soviet equipment.
New Zealand needs to view what is happening right now in Ukraine as a possibility for what could happen in the Asia Pacific. Just as Europe relies heavily on Russia, New Zealand relies heavily on China. Could our government choose between our economy and another nation several hours away by plane’s economy? How do we sanction our largest trading partner?
It was only back in 2018 when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her then-deputy Winston Peters announced continuing the suspension of negotiations around the FTA with the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan customs union over the poising in the British city of Salisbury. The western alliances have spent 20 years appeasing Russia, waiting for wide enough gaps in breaking international law to enable civil services to negotiate with the largest country in the world. A nation that has repeatedly broken international law and yet our short memories enable us to forget the suffering that has already occurred.
Let’s start with the weak, sadly being our own Government. Here is the response from the PM:
Introduce targeted travel bans against Russian Government officials and other individuals associated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in line with a number of our partners;
We already have closed borders. So what the means is that the Russian Minister of Defence will be treated the same as a triple vaccinated Kiwi in London trying to get home to see a dying relative, and be told Nyet.
Prohibit the export of goods to Russian military and security forces
We have none. A ban on export of goods to Russia would have teeth, but this is just a ban on exports to the Russian military. I don’t think we sell a lot of 50 year old planes to them.
Suspend bilateral foreign ministry engagement until further notice
Oh no, we won’t respond to their e-mails!
What we should be doing is imposing sanctions as basically every other liberal democratic country is doing – Australia, Canada, Japan, UK, US and all 27 EU members. But the official policy of our Government is that it can only impose sanctions on Russia, if Russia agrees to them! Yep they have twice voted down a bill from Gerry Brownlee that would allow us to impose sanctions outside the UN Security Council framework.
Now we have the woke:
The need to turn everything, even a war, into an intersectional issue is tone deaf. And the statement that we must actively mediate for peace is just ridiculous. You think New Zealand can convince Putin?
But I’ve found someone who looks like they would fit perfectly into the Green caucus with their takes:
And then finally we have this now widely mocked tweet from NATO itself last year.
I reckon that Putin decided to invade Ukraine the day he saw that tweet from NATO.
We also have John Kerry (US Climate Change Ambassador who said:
“…Massive emissions consequences to the war, but equally importantly you’re going to lose people’s focus. You’re going to lose, certainly, big country attention because they will be diverted, and I think it could have a damaging impact,” Kerry said after stating that he was concerned about the people of Ukraine, as well as Russia’s willingness to “change boundaries of international law by force.”
“So, you know, hopefully I think President Putin would realize that in the northern part of his country, they used to live on – 66% percent of a nation that was over frozen land. Now it’s thawing and his infrastructure is at risk and the people of Russia are at risk,” he added. “And so I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate.”
So Kerry thinks Putin shouldn’t invade Ukraine as it will produce too many greenhouse gas emissions that will melt the ice in Russia’s north. Yes I am sure that will persuade him.
Labour promised 13,000 metres of light rail would be complete by 2021. Michael Wood shows off how many metres they have delivered.
A reader writes in:
We seem to have daily headlines about PCR testing delays. Today I walked into a Rako centre in Aucklands CBD and paid for a test. It’s in my interest to work knowing I’m not infecting others or to get back to work quickly if I become a contact and am not infectious. I should have a result late tonight from Rako, within a few hours. Last week’s test result came in 6 hours.
Here’s the crazy part:
1. Rako doesn’t pool samples so no need for re-testing.
2. Their process is simpler so speedier.
3. They can scale up to more than 10,000/day
4. They offered their technology to the govt for other labs over a year ago.
5. They are picking up Covid before some NP tests due to virus compartmentalisation.
6. They continue to provide sub 24 hr tests.
Business needs to be aware you can access these tests for staff to get people back to work quickly.
I’m classified as a critical worker so theoretically get access to RAT’s once I get symptoms or become a close contact.
As a health practitioner I’m in the highest risk category set by the MoH because I work in close proximity to a maskless individual generating aerosol. I know RATs are less reliable than saliva PCR so I chose to pay to do surveillance to keep my patients, family and staff protected in the absence of readily available RATs. Worried well? Maybe, but I’m paying so it’s my call.
My concern is that business will be crippled by delays in testing for close contacts. Staff are sitting at home waiting for results when they could get a same-day outcome and be back to work. It’s the topic of constant frustration amongst business mates who are not critical workers.
I can’t understand why Rako is not supported, promoted or subsidised by the govt. Can you shed any light on the issue and raise the question on your platform please.
I have no financial interest in Rako and pay for my own tests as a self employed health professional. I’m just intensely frustrated at the mindless media headlines when there is an alternative which could be subsidised. Please shed some light on this ridiculous situation.
A great letter and the sad answer is that Rako offended the Government so punishing Rako was seen as more important than better health outcomes for New Zealanders.
This chart shows the ratio of the number of new covid-19 cases each day in the community as opposed to the border. At the beginning of the month it was 1.6 to 1 so you could understand caution at that stage.
By the 7th of February the ratio 7 community cases for every border case. So the border represented 13% of the total cases.
By the 14th of February the ratio was 39 community cases for every border case. The border is 2.5% of the total cases.
Fast forward another week and on the 21st the ratio was 197 community cases for every border case. The border is 0.5% of the total cases.
And today there were 8 (not 80, not 800 but 8) border cases and 6,137 community cases. The ratio is 767 to 1 with the border making up 0.13% of total cases.
Despite this the border remains basically closed to triple vaxxed New Zealand citizens who have tested negative for Covid-19 and want to return home.
It’s insane. There is no public health benefit from doing so. It is merely punitive now.
The Herald reports:
Ardern cautioned that the traffic light system was likely to remain in place for the winter to combat not just Covid, but the return of the flu, following two winters where the flu has been kept largely at bay thanks to Covid measures.
If you give a Government great powers, they become loath to surrender them. This was always the danger. I don’t think the Government wants us to get back to normal. They want to keep the state of fear going.
My prediction is we will get to 2023 and the Government will not have ended the use of its special emergency powers. The only way to get our lives back will be to vote them out.
Every few months Ipsos does a poll and report on what issues are most important to New Zealanders and which party they think is best to manage that issue. Here’s their current top five issues:
So inflation and petrol prices have shot up from a year ago.
Poverty/inequality was 2nd place a year ago at 28% but now is out of the top five at 20%.
So National would much rather want an election about cost of living than poverty. The election is 18 months away, so this may change but inflation does look to be here to stay for a while.
So on the top five issues what is the gap between Labour and National and what was it a year ago?
Labour is now behind National on four of the five top issues. A year ago they were miles ahead on 19 of the 20 top issues and now they are behind on four of the top five.
This is hugely significant. You win elections if you are seen as better than your opponents on the issues that matter most to the public.
A guest post by Owen Jennings:
There are number of vital truisms that every politician should have drilled into their brain from day one. Many are simple facts. Some are in the category of plain but profound. Get them wrong and the nation suffers.
Take the “law of unintended consequence”. Some politicians become quickly obsessed with a hobby horse notion. It is often driven by ideology and ideology comes with blinkers. The consequence of the idea and then the policy is clear in their mind. For example, “we want to slow down landlords buying additional houses because it is driving up house prices”. Simmering below the surface, unseen, is a burning hatred of people accruing assets and making profits. That just increases the blinker effect. Tax them, regulate them, penalise these capitalists. That should have a major impact, slowing down buyers of second third and more houses competing and bidding up the market.
Impose the rules/taxes and then wonder why your office is getting flooded by people desperate to rent a house. Unintended consequences.
Another sister axiom to take aboard is “incentives matter”. If you pay people to be idle don’t be surprised if they stay idle and encourage their friends to join them. Pay subsidies to foresters and sit back and watch good, high producing sheep and beef, even dairy land go into trees.
There is a more subtle example. Employ and pay people well to care for those on welfare. Tell them you want to see them help the unemployed and the sick back into work. Logical and sensible? Not when you realise that if they were successful and, with the help of some miracle, got all those on benefits in their patch back in work, there would be no job for them. It is called “perverse incentives”.
We have thousands of people on the public’s payroll and heaps in the private sector working for the good of the welfare of the needy. Individually they may well be genuine and mostly are. Challenge them with the notion of perverse incentives, explaining they are subtly encouraging welfarism and they would be shocked and hurt. But reality tells you that collectively the system is reliant on individual goodwill and not well constructed for positive outcomes. Why would you work assiduously to do yourself out of a job?
Why not turn the incentive around? Imagine paying someone who has the required credentials a substantial bonus for every beneficiary they get back into work.
The idea could go further. There are a number of families that are dysfunctional. No one works, drugs and crime are involved, living conditions are miserable, no fathers around – just sires, kids rarely at school and the problems are third generational. There are families like this costing the taxpayers over a lifetime well millions, literally.
What if we said, “let’s calculate the net present value of those millions and we invest that into a capable mentor who was highly incentivised to help that family get back to “normal?” Would it work? Rodney Hide and I know it would because we tried it when we were in Parliament. We paid a person a pretty significant sum to turn around three very dysfunctional families and in less than a year she achieved it.
It began with a plan. A list of goals that our mentor worked out with each of the three families. Underneath all the degradation, chaos and dysfunction were human beings, often guilty, shamed and wanting to better themselves but there was no way out. Just take the state’s money and keep smoking, drinking, stealing, eating KFC. Have another baby – its more cash coming in. Any of the guys calling will oblige on the kitchen table, on the floor. You get hit less if you are readily willing.
Now someone has turned up saying, “I can fix your face where you were hit with that bottle”. “I can get the kids some new clothes and get them to school”. “I have the cash to get you into a better flat”. “I will drive the ‘uncles’ out”. “I will help you get onto a better diet, stop smoking, get a job”.
“You have to want to do this and be willing to cooperate. I will drive you hard to reach the goals you and I and the kids are setting down today. But there is a better future for you if you work with me and stick to the rules. Get it wrong and I will kick arse. And hard. Get it right and we move to the next goal in the plan”.
Each goal achieved earns the mentor a substantial bonus. Right incentives. It wont work every time, of course. Human nature is too fickle and independent for that to be true. But it sure beats handing out more and more welfare benefits and expecting people to change and their carers to commit to elimination of dysfunction. If having kids gets you a bigger cheque and better accommodation, you have more kids. Wrong incentive.
Where are the mentors? If there was $100 K, $200K for a part time job steering a family into a better life there would be a heap of applicants. Retirees would love it. The taxpayers and the community would benefit but most of all people living in a hell on earth could be given a future and the critically important generational cycle broken.
It would be a better use of the millions doled out to community groups and individuals who got generous dollops of cash for getting their mates vaccinated.
It is a bottom up driven plan as opposed to top down, Wellington solutions. It deals with people not problems. It is kindness in action, not in rhetoric. It is human. The lefty liberals would hate it. The unions would go ballistic. The soppy media would go nuts. It would take balls to deliver it.
Bill English would like it. His Catholic upbringing gave him the conscience to want to help the needy.
Most of all it gets the incentives right.
A Herald story reports:
Kahu, who also lives with asthma, is among the estimated one in five secondary school students who are addicted to vaping.
The figure has emerged from research by the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation, which surveyed more than 19,000 students in Years 9 to 13. Like Kahu, many have never smoked tobacco.
That stat is contradicted by the Ministry of Health’s annual survey.
It instead shows the number of 15-17 year olds vaping daily to be 5.8% in 2020/21, compared to daily smoking among that cohort crashing to just 1.1%. Back in 2013/14, 7.9% of 15-17 year olds smoked daily. Professor Beaglehole from ASH has pointed out that 1% of 14 year olds now smoke daily, down from 15% 20 years ago and that as vaping has gone up, smoking has gone down. So the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation claims that vaping is somehow a gateway for smoking when in fact its rise has seen in the biggest fall in Maori smoking and smoking rates ever.
Now the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation want to ban vape sales within a kilometre of schools. Let’s think about how big an area that is. A circle with a 1 km radius has an area of 3.14 square kilometres which is 314 hectares. So the ARF want to ban vape sales over an area of 314 hectares around every single school.
What would this insane idea mean? It would mean the entire Hamilton CBD would not be allowed to have a shop that sells vapes, as it is within 1 km of Hamilton High School. Clifton Terrace School would knock out the entire Wellington CBD.
Basically it would ban vapes being sold in every single urban area in New Zealand. Such stupidity.
A guest post by Shannon Lindsay:
Representatives for overseas New Zealanders, including Charlotte Bellis’ lawyer, dispute Grant Robertson’s claims that MIQ staff are helpful and communicative.
The Deputy Prime Minister said during Tuesday’s [1 February 2022] post-cabinet press conference that MIQ staff, regarding emergency applications, “always try to make contact with people and try to make arrangements that work.” He added: “They continually communicate with people who apply.”
Grounded Kiwis spokesperson Alexandra Birt listened to Robertson’s comments and “couldn’t believe my ears”.
“I have helped countless people who have been declined emergency allocations, all of whom received a generic template decline email, no specific reasons for their decline, and definitely no offer of additional support,” she said.
“In some cases, even after multiple follow-ups from the emergency applicant, the decline came through after the date that the person was meant to travel — of course meaning they had missed their flights.
“These are emergency applicants. Vulnerable, desperate, and in highly emotional situations — and yet the system couldn’t be more devoid of empathy if it tried.”
Tudor Clee, the pro bono lawyer who has represented pregnant Kiwi journalist Charlotte Bellis and others in similar situations, also rejects Robertson’s claims.
“Having read the communications between MIQ and over 30 families making pregnancy applications, I unequivocally reject his assertion,” he said.
“MIQ staff have no medical qualification and are, by definition, making obstetric decisions. In a majority of cases they ask for information already supplied or information that is nonsensical or medically irrelevant.
“In 87 per cent of pregnancy cases it has been followed by a rejection that often fails to explain why the supporting documentation was inadequate, leaving the parents-to-be distraught and in limbo.
“The communications are just disgraceful,” he said.
Ten ex-patriate New Zealanders I contacted via the Grounded Kiwis Facebook group confirmed they had received little assistance from MIQ with their emergency applications.
An English teacher stuck in Japan, who has multiple medical reasons to return to New Zealand and did not wish to be named, has had his applications for an emergency MIQ spot turned down several times.
“MIQ has been a nightmare to deal with, I’ve basically been doing it full time for the past month of back and forth and trying to get in contact with a real person by phone to discuss my situation,” he said.
“All replies from every avenue has just been generic copy and paste ‘tough shit’ sort of vibe. A bureaucratic, dehumanised wall to bash your head on.
“Also, I don’t see what grounds they have or qualifications to interpret my own medical needs.”
Malcolm Mitchell, a Kiwi IT consultant based in Melbourne, applied for an MIQ emergency spot to attend his father’s Invercargill funeral on 10 January this year.
“I received generic emails and then I was told, ‘We are unlikely to approve applications under the exceptional circumstances category to attend a funeral or tangihanga where there may be multiple people gathered. This would create an unacceptable risk of potential COVID-19 transmission’,” he said. I can confirm that MIQ did email Mitchell that response.
“Yet exemptions were granted for a DJ to play at a music festival and many other entertainers and sports people.”
An MIQ spokesperson said: “MIQ is sympathetic to the difficult circumstances many New Zealanders are experiencing due to the global pandemic. We understand it is a stressful time for travellers applying for Emergency Allocations of MIQ vouchers.
“MIQ undertakes much of its communication with applicants via email, as this is the most effective and timely way for us to communicate given the high number of applicants, international time zones, and the amount of information that often needs to be communicated. We use email as our primary method of communication to ensure a fair and consistent process, which is particularly important when such crucial decisions are being made.
“We have a dedicated team who work just on emergency allocation requests. They work hard to ensure everyone is treated fairly. They work seven days a week to ensure that applications are turned around as quickly as possible, and the distressing situations facing some of the people who apply are not ignored. We encourage people to carefully read the criteria and make sure all the relevant supporting information is included upfront in their initial application. This will ensure faster processing and less need for us to seek additional information, which slows the process down. “We are currently experiencing very high volumes of Emergency Allocation requests due to widespread travel delays around the world and the delay to Step 1 of Reconnecting New Zealand. If people have submitted an application, we appreciate their patience and will be in contact with them as soon as we can.”
A reader has alerted me to this document called Ethical Values for a Pandemic, published in 2007 by the National Ethics Advisory Committee. They refer to the Siracusa Principles of international law about which human rights may be restricted in the interests of public health. Two key principles:
Now consider that we have 10 cases a day of Covid-19 at the border and over 2,000 in the community yet the Government still prevents New Zealand citizens from accessing their fundamental human right of returning home.
It is clear that the Government has ignored the advice of its own Ethics Advisory Committee.
The Immunisation Coalition in Australia has an excellent data tool which gives you relative chances of catching Covid-19, dying from it and also the chance of getting myocarditis from the vaccine. It would be great to have such a tool in New Zealand.
You enter your age (54 for me), your vaccinated status (triple) and the level of community transmission (high) and it gives you simple clear data. Mine is:
So if you are 54 years old and unvaccinated you have a 1 in 200,000 chance of getting Covid-19 and dying from it in the next two months. If you take the vaccine your chance of getting myocarditis and dying from it is around 1 in 66 million.
If someone is 20 years old and triple vaccinated, the stats are:
So if you are 20 years old and unvaccinated you have a 1 in 1.2 million chance of getting Covid-19 and dying from it. If you take the vaccine your chance of getting myocarditis and dying from it is around 1 in 4.4 million.
Craig Greenberg is standing to be Mayor of Louisville. He is a Democrat and an attorney and businessman.
On Valentine’s Day a man entered Greenberg’s campaign office and fired at him. He was not injured but his sweater was grazed. The man arrested for the attempted assassination is 21 year old Quintez Brown. Brown is a community activist and active in BLM. He was also a potential candidate for the Council.
Black Lives Matter paid the $100,000 bond and Brown is out free, despite trying to assassinate a politician 60 hours earlier.
This is crazy, and both Democrats and Republicans are decrying that someone can try and assassinate someone and be out on bail two days later.
A good article at The Dispatch that explains what has come out about the Clinton’s campaign involvement in the Russiagate allegations.
Durham’s most explosive assertion—and this was new to the latest filing—was detailing that internet data, which Sussmann had taken again in updated form to the government in February 2017: domain name system (DNS) data connected with, among other entities, “Trump Tower, Donald Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and the Executive Office of the President of the United States.”
Internet traffic from the White House, exploited by a private actor with ties to the Clinton campaign? It’s not hard to see why conservative media would pick up the ball and run with this, and so they did: Fox News’ report said the Clinton campaign had “paid a technology company to ‘infiltrate’ servers belonging to Trump Tower, and later the White House,” while the Daily Mail asserted that the firm had been paid “to hack into [Trump’s] White House and Trump Tower servers.”
This is a big deal. It isn’t necessarily illegal or hacking, but it is highly unethical. I say this as a former director of the company that managed the .nz servers for New Zealand.
Why was this data collection likely legal? Because Neustar had contractual access to it. The Virginia-based company is one of the world’s largest providers of DNS services, with annual revenue north of $1 billion, and it had a contract to perform such services for the White House.
What, precisely, did the data entail? Describing it as “internet traffic,” as Durham did, is accurate but perhaps slightly misleading to us non-techies—it isn’t synonymous with, say, users’ web history. DNS servers are like internet phone books, translating web addresses that are intelligible to human beings (say, “thedispatch.com”) into IP addresses, the strings of digits that tell a computer where to find the server where that website lives. When one server needs to find another, it consults the DNS server to find out where to look, which the server then logs as a DNS lookup. DNS lookup logs thus don’t tell you what one server is communicating with another—merely that two servers are in communication.
What companies like Neustar offer clients is, in essence, a phone book that stops you from dialing scammers—if a particular server is known to have been used for phishing schemes, for instance, it may swoop in and prevent your computer from establishing a connection with that server. This is why DNS lookups are logged in the first place—if your organization’s being targeted, it’s good to know when and from where.
But Durham alleges that Joffe put this data to use in a way that was anything but routine: “Tech Executive-1 tasked these researchers to mine Internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia.” In the end, this research bore fruit in the form of a theory of Trump’s ties to Russia—which made its way into the press in the last days of the 2016 campaign—that a “Trump server” was secretly communicating with Russia-based Alfa Bank. (The theory fell apart in days; the “Trump server” in question turned out to have belonged to marketing company Cendyn, which sent marketing emails for Trump hotels.)
In the original indictment of Sussmann, Durham provided an email from Joffe suggesting a motive for his actions: “I was tentatively offered the top [cybersecurity] job by the Democrats when it looked like they’d win. I definitely would not take the job under Trump.”
So a top executive at a company paid to managed DNS data used that privileged position to try and find data that would support the allegation that Trump was compromised by Russia. And he did so, after having been offered a top cybersecurity job by the Clinton team.
Again not illegal, but stinks badly.
Joffe, a tech executive with non-trivial ties to the Clinton campaign—they shared a lawyer in Sussmann, and Joffe believed he had been offered a tentative position in a Clinton administration—used his position atop a company with extensive government and private-sector contracts to go digging for information on Clinton’s opponent, an effort in which Sussmann was involved and for which (Durham asserts) Sussmann billed his time to the Clinton campaign.
I think Trump is a sociopathic menace to society. But what Joffe did was wrong, regardless of your view on Trump.
NewstalkZB reports:
The Waikato Chamber of Commerce is concerned the Hamilton to Auckland train service is financially and environmentally worse than driving.
A report for the chamber shows per trip driving costs $48 compared to $294 on Te Huia which includes the $12 fare and a $282 subsidy.
Based on the assumption of one person per vehicle, carbon emissions are 20kg per person driving and 31.5kg per person on the train.
It’s time for the Government to can this massive waste of taxpayer money which is achieving nothing.
You could fly the couple of dozen people who use it to Auckland via helicopter every day, and it would cost less than what Te Huia is costing.