”Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
First of all; good on Greg Newbold for turning his life around and becoming a productive member of society. This is not about him as a person but I hope that the irony of having an ex-con telling us we have to give up our privacy and freedoms in order to be safe doesn’t escape you.
What is more; why is a guy who is a criminologist and sociologist specialized in New Zealand’s criminals and prison system being used to tell the New Zealand population that being spied upon by our own government and to have all our internet data stored God knows where, is for our own protection?
Not only that, he is interviewed and brought on National TV as a specialist in Terrorism. I put it to you that this guy knows nothing about geopolitics, terrorism, the history of al Qaeda or ISIS and is a muppet played by out dear leaders to soften us up for our inevitable partaking in new Military endeavors for the big Corps and the justification of the unjustifiable; wholesale spying on New Zealand citizens by our own government or worse another state. In my book that is called treason on a massive scale!
If he had been a knowledgeable on all these issues he would have known that spying on citizens inevitably and invariably leads to greater danger for said citizens. Not from terrorists, which are always used as an argument to start spying on citizens but from their governments!
If there had been a valid argument for spying on citizens they would have brought a specialist such as an historian specialized in the great advantages of wholesale spying on to tell us why wholesale spying is a good thing.
When you’re government uses the same arguments as the Third “If you don’t have anything to hide you have nothing to fear” Reich to justify spying you’re up shit creek without a peddle. My advice to Greg Newbold is to start reading some books on the Third Reich, The Stalinist era and perhaps the Allende era in Chili before he comes on TV to tell us we have to give up our freedoms to make us safe. If you give up the right to be safe from your government you give up all security.
Aotearoa: A Wider Perspective 
I guess Greg has to be rather circumspect just what titles he is seen perusing in paid-research grant time.
“Third Reich” is probably fairly safe reading. “Vultures’s Picnic” or “Economic Hit Man” might risk an apoplectic Grants Committee jackal’s censorship snips:
MikeR