'Stop the Spies' protest: Privacy Commissioner will take tougher line for round two

A public speech by acting GCSB head Una Jagose was called off yesterday amid a noisy protest.

Privacy Commissioner, whose agency was hosting the event, said the protesters were there to disrupt and prevent the messages from coming out, and he wasn’t prepared to subject his guest and the audience to the “spectacle of people being dragged out” by security.

But for the rescheduled event, he's of a mind to take a tougher line.

“I did say yesterday I wasn’t going to give people the opportunity to be dragged out. I’ll change my position on that,” the Commissioner told NBR this morning.

If people want to disrupt the rescheduled speech “I will ask them to leave and require them to leave if they don’t,” he said. He was still mulling security options.

Friday’s protest was “Very counter-productive,” Mr Edwards told NBR. “They held up a banner saying it was a GCSB propaganda exercise. Why didn't they listen to the speech, then decide?”

He added that Ms Jagose had promised a Q&A session after her speech, and he reiterated this point to the protestors.

The protestors would only shout questions at him, and “were not willing to listen to the answers,” Mr Edwards says.

Had it gone ahead, the free event at the National Library would have given New Zealanders unprecedented access to a listen to then question a spy agency head (Privacy Commissioner did host Ms Jagose's predecessor, but as part of a paid conference).

On social media last night, Mr Edwards called a press statement by the protestors laughable. “They claim to have ‘exposed GCSB propaganda’. They did the opposite. They prevented the GCSB being more open,” he said.

For her part, protester, protestor Valerie Morse told NBR, "We did stand up in front of the room as the GCSB director began to speak. We were quite happy to simply exercise our democratic right to peaceful protest, and did not intend to disrupt the speech at all. We were exercising our right to freedom of speech, while also not interfering with the rights of others to receive the information - the audience. We have every right to do so in a free and democratic country - and indeed should be encouraged to do so.

"It was entirely the choice of the Privacy Commissioner to cancel the event - and it is curious that someone tasked with upholding the right to privacy should be so utterly ignorant of the right to freedom of speech and protest."

A date has yet to be set for the second attempt at the event.

Ironically, although he appeared to have few fans among the protestors yesterday, the Privacy Commissioner has in fact an effective advocate for moderating the powers of spy agencies and search and surveillance legislation, helping to usher in a more robust oversight regime, and pushing for more transparency over police and SIS requests for personal data.