The Lives of Others
is a sobering movie showing how the 'old' East Berlin surveillance state dehumanised and oppressed its
population until it hurt so much that East Berliners rebelled and struck down the Wall of their prison state, in order they could reclaim their private lives from the minds of others.
But
in the longer run, the battle between collectivism (state trumps individual) and a free individualism (individual trumps state) has
been lost, as collectivism has given via the emoting booth, every power of
snooping and enforcement to the western tax state, short of shooting and torture, that formerly were the realm of KGB
and the Stasi. Right down to IRD can raid without warrant, and when you're called 'so nicely' for interrogation, you have no legal recourse attending, or right to remain silent. A tweet exchange reminded me of this on the day that was the 25th
anniversary of the fall of that Wall:
Commentators writing fall of the #BerlinWall was end of ideological struggle between communism & capitalism. Hell no. Communist ethic won.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 9, 2014
@MarkHubbard33 different forms of collectvism to be sure but I prefer the western one.
— Damien Grant (@damienmgrant) November 9, 2014
@damienmgrant That's y I said ethic. Our property/income still assumed as the state's. & from that, we can have no private life from state.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 9, 2014
The
section 17 Damien refers to is section 17 of the Tax Administration Act, 1994. Read it for yourself:
17 Information to be furnished on request of
Commissioner
·
(1) Every person (including
any officer employed in or in connection with any department of the government
or by any public authority, and any other public officer) shall, when required
by the Commissioner, furnish in writing any information and produce for
inspection any documents which the Commissioner considers necessary or relevant
for any purpose relating to the administration or enforcement of any of the
Inland Revenue Acts or for any purpose relating to the administration or
enforcement of any matter arising from or connected with any other function
lawfully conferred on the Commissioner.
·
(1B) For the purpose of subsection (1), information or a document
is treated as being in the knowledge, possession or control of a New Zealand
resident if—
o
(a) the New Zealand resident
controls, directly or indirectly, a non-resident; and
o
(b) the information or
document is in the knowledge, possession or control of the non-resident.
o
(1C) For the purpose of subsection (1B) and sections 143(2)
and 143A(2)—
o
(a) in determining whether a
non-resident is controlled by a New Zealand resident, the New Zealand resident
is treated as holding anything held by a person who is resident in New Zealand,
or is a controlled foreign company, and is associated with the New Zealand
resident; and
o
(b) a law of a foreign
country that relates to the secrecy of information must be ignored.
o
(1D) If information in writing is required, or documents must be
produced, the Commissioner may require that the information be furnished, or
the documents be produced, to a particular office of the department.
(2) [Repealed]
(3) The Commissioner may, if the Commissioner considers it
reasonable to do so, remove and retain any documents produced for inspection
under this section for so long as is necessary for a full and complete
inspection of those documents.
(4) Any person producing any documents which are retained by the
Commissioner under subsection (3) shall, at all reasonable times and subject to
such reasonable conditions as may be determined by the Commissioner, be
entitled to inspect the retained documents and to obtain copies of them at the
person's own expense.
(5) The Commissioner may require that any written information or
particulars furnished under this section shall be verified by statutory
declaration or otherwise.
(6) The Commissioner may, without fee or reward, make extracts from
or copies of any documents produced for inspection in accordance with this
section.
As
I have been saying in my last several posts on the global tax surveillance
state set up under FATCA and GATCA, which allow the global swapping of
information on all of us - and not as anonymous metadata, but with our names on it - give me your financial transactions for the last four
years, and I’ll describe your life down to the intimate details, likely including
what’s happening in the bedroom.
We can have no private life from the state, because the state is so big it comprises half the activity of our western economies, thus it must be fed our
property and our incomes, and our property and incomes are attached to our private lives in such complex, thorough ways, there is no separating them.
The
Berlin Wall fell this day twenty five years ago, but we are all still being shuffled back
to East Berlin. Indeed with the old wall down I can already see the foundations of its new ramparts.
Also Read:
And
the tax state going global now:
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