There are serious concerns that these new powers could be misused. Associate Justice Minister Paul Swain says they will help to catch more criminals. That may be true. You could put surveillance cameras on every street corner, and you would catch even more criminals. Mr Swain argues that we are just expanding present police and security agency powers to tap phones and open letters.
Computer technology is such that millions of e-mail messages can be searched or screened easily.
Not only law-breakers or suspects will be affected. In fact, serious criminals can avoid being monitored. They can easily use codewords, encryption, untrackable Hotmail addresses or anonymiser services. The police know this. The FBI's controversial Carnivore system does just this.