The Looking Glass has been on a long hiatus but I’m still here. TLG is reviving the weekly news digest started back in 2022. This is my take of the week’s biggest national and global stories.
‘I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,’ said Alice a little timidly: ‘but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.’ – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll.
It’s coming: concrete steps towards Digital ID in New Zealand taken
The Department for Internal Affairs has issued a Request for Proposal to find a supplier for a digital credential issuance platform for the Government Digital Wallet. The platform will support the issuance of Digital IDs, including New Zealand Transport Agency’s planned mobile driver licence.
“This is an exciting opportunity to deliver and operate a nation-changing technology platform that will be the cornerstone in New Zealand’s adoption of Digital Credentials,” says the document, issued on Tuesday.
The platform must support public key infrastructure (PKI), meet global standards like W3C Verifiable Credentials, and be delivered as a managed service – not custom-built. Mattr’s NZ Verify app will handle credential verification. The rollout is part of the broader Government App program, set to launch by late 2025, alongside wider digital identity reforms. Last week it was reported that companies Dave Clark NZ and Mattr have been selected by the DIA to develop the technology behind a new Government App for digital public services.
Dave Clark NZ leads design and development, while Mattr provides the digital wallet that enables secure storage of credentials and user-controlled data sharing. The app is being sold as a way to streamline access to public services, digital payments, and agency communication.
A basic version is due by the end of the year. While officials have praised the move, others are raising concerns over Mattr’s role, citing its Covid-era work on the track and trace app.
These announcements follows the launch of the government’s Digital Identity Services Trust Framework. Proposals are due by August 27.
Read more here and here.
FSANZ removes consumer choice and changes what GMO foods are called
FSANZ proposal P1055 passed last week with the support of Associate Agriculture and Food Safety Minister Andrew Hoggard.
In simple terms, Hoggard greenlighted new definitions of GMOs in food. Now they’ll be called New breeding Techniques (NBTs). What this means for consumers, is that when new rules around gene editing kick in, food produced using NBTs, including gene editing – that do not introduce novel DNA – will not need to be labelled as GMO. Foods with novel DNA, novel proteins, or altered traits will still require labelling.
New Zealand and Australia agreed to align their regulations on gene editing and NBTs, following a unanimous decision. Ministers said the reform reflected international standards and avoided regulatory mismatches that could raise food prices. NBT foods are currently not sold in New Zealand.
Claire Bleakley of GE Free New Zealand said it was a betrayal of consumers and potentially a criminal decision, that could introduce toxic foods into the food supply placing the public at risk of “off-target effects”, with particular concern for those with severe food allergies who would have no way of avoiding allergenic foods. Hoggard said people who wanted to avoid GMOs could simply “buy organic”, which sells for a premium and is out of reach for the average household.
The decision comes just days after the Health select committee announced it was delaying the release of its report on the Gene Technology Bill, pushing the date back to August 17. It was originally due to be released in June. Opponents of the Bill see this as a sign concerns are being heard, and of disagreement among select committee members. Bleakley predicted a minority report would be released by the committee against the Bill.
Read more here and here.
FBI establishes attaché in Wellington
The FBI has established a permanent law enforcement office in Wellington after Director Kash Patel visited New Zealand and met with key ministers, police and intelligence leaders.
The US Embassy confirmed the launch of a dedicated attaché office to strengthen cooperation with Five Eyes partners. Patel met with Ministers Judith Collins, Mark Mitchell, and Winston Peters, as well as Police Commissioner Richard Chambers and the heads of NZSIS and GCSB.
“It will have responsibility for partnerships in New Zealand, Antarctica, Samoa, Niue, Cook Islands, and Tonga,” a US Embassy statement said.
Officials reportedly discussed transnational crime, cyber threats, and counterterrorism. The office will oversee partnerships across New Zealand and the Pacific.
“Opening our first attaché in Wellington marks a historic step for the FBI as we strengthen our relationship with New Zealand and confront the growing threats emanating from the Indo-Pacific — particularly from hostile actors like the CCP”, and FBI spokesman told the Daily Mail.
Ministerial statements praised the move as enhancing national security and international collaboration.
However, others were critical of the move due to the potential to jeopardise NZ – China trade. Te Pati Maori have started a petition against the move. Martyn Bradbury of the Daily Blog suggested that the the FBI base would likely be used as a CIA extension to also keep tabs on New Zealand politics.
The Looking Glass sees it as a move to secure New Zealand as a proxy as tensions between the US and China grow.
In the same week, the US announced it was raising tariffs on New Zealand exports to 15%.
Read more here, here and here.
NZDSOS publish rebuttal to Dr Graham Le Gros
Drs. Alison Goodwin and Matt Shelton of NZDSOS have put together a robust rebuttal to the statements made by Dr Graham Le Gros, when he appeared recently before the Phase Two Covid Royal Commission of Inquiry.
Le Gros made the staggering assertion that covid vaccine injuries were “very rare”, and testified that lipid nanoparticles were an established technology.
Shelton and Goodwin raised the point that the lipid nanoparticles used in Covid vaccines were novel, and presented evidence to support their claim. They pointed out that the mRNA used in Covid shots was not natural human mRNA; it has been modified in several ways to increase its stability and prolong its activity compared to standard mRNA. They asked, how long does this modified mRNA persist, and when does it stop producing the spike protein?
Read their full evidence brief to the commission here.
UK Online Safety Act comes in to force, ushering in new era of censorship
The UK’s Online Safety Act came into effect on July 25, triggering a major regulatory shift as Ofcom began enforcing new rules to shield minors from harmful online content, including pornography, self-harm, and eating disorders. Adult sites operating without robust age checks now face fines of up to £18 million or 10% of global revenue.
Ofcom released a user guide outlining acceptable verification methods, such as facial age estimation, digital ID wallets, and mobile network checks.
The Act ushered in sweeping age verification mandates just as a massive data breach highlighted the dangers of such policies. Tea, a women-focused dating review app that rose to fame on promises of safety and empowerment, left tens of thousands of user selfies, government-issued IDs, and private messages exposed in an open Firebase server.
Tea had required users to verify their identity with real-world documents and facial scans to access features. But its poorly secured infrastructure turned the app into a privacy disaster. The breach drew attention after users on 4chan discovered the open database, which included GPS data, driver’s licenses, and Department of Defense IDs.
The breach has intensified debate around the Online Safety Act, with privacy advocates warning that mandatory identity verification centralises sensitive data in systems prone to failure—placing users, not platforms, at risk.
Critics have strongly argued that age verification is the Trojan Horse for ending freedom and privacy online, with the UK at the forefront of this global policy. Australia’s plans for this are well advanced and recently, New Zealand announced its intention to introduce age verification for social media sites to protect young people from harmful content.
Some are even calling it the Online Censorship Act, with global implications as Ofcom is attempting to enforce it across borders. UK Column’s excellent censorship timeline is a useful resource to see the development and progress of this legislation over more than a decade.
Others see its role as more fundamental than event that.
“The Online Safety Act – [and] the myriad near identical pieces of legislation popping up all over the world – is not really about censorship, it’s about data harvesting and normalising the idea [governments] can insert themselves between you and access to the world,” Off-Guardian said on X.
Read more here, here, here and here.
International calls for Palestinian state – diplomatic theatre?
Western nations, including New Zealand, have issued a joint statement expressing readiness to recognise Palestinian statehood this week.
On Tuesday, a high-level conference was held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, bringing together Arab nations including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey -co-led by France and Saudi Arabia – to revive efforts toward a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The event culminated in what the media dubbed ‘The New York Declaration,’ a document endorsed by 17 countries, the European Union, and the 22-member Arab League. Absent were the United States and Israel. The declaration called on Israel to halt violence, settlement expansion, and annexation plans, urging implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 904 and accountability for settler violence.
However the statement drew criticism for reinforcing colonial dynamics in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While the declaration urged Israel to halt violence and settlement expansion, it controversially called for the disarmament of Palestinian resistance forces and endorsed a “demilitarised” Palestinian state.
Absent from the document were explicit references to Israeli war crimes, the Gaza genocide, or the legal right to armed resistance under UN Resolution 37/43. Though 17 countries and the EU supported the declaration, critics said it offered Palestinians unjust concessions while shielding Israel from consequences.
Arguments include that it ignored Israel’s entrenched occupation and ongoing settlement expansion, which render a viable state impossible and downplayed the scale of civilian suffering in Gaza, and condemned Palestinian resistance as terrorism.
Debate continues about whether the statement is diplomatic theatre or a growing commitment to justice or international law obligations.
Israel’s shrinking international support took another hit last week when a former IDF solider admitted to the Knesset Committee what many have suspected from the outset: that Israel allowed the October 7 Hamas attack to take place.
“We received orders from the Golani Brigade commanders on October 7 to cancel all patrols along the Gaza border from 5:20 AM until 9:00 AM.”
Read more here, here, here and here.
The Big Beautiful Techbro club (that you ain’t in) gains access to private health data: US Health Tracker announced
The Trump Administration this week announced the launch of a “next-generation digital health ecosystem,” framed as a patient-centered healthcare revolution.
In reality, the Digital Health Tech Ecosystem marked a historic centralisation of Americans’ private medical data, granting extensive access to tech giants including Amazon, Apple, Google, OpenAI, and Oracle.
Privacy experts and civil liberties advocates voiced concern over the lack of oversight and potential for surveillance creep in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) health data initiative.
At the centre of the unease is the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with critics saying its involvement undermines CMS’s independence and introduces the risk of undue corporate influence over which companies gain access to sensitive health data.
Without a central regulatory body enforcing privacy protections, once patient data leaves the CMS networks and enters private platforms, there are few guarantees that it won’t be monetised, repurposed, or shared with third parties.
The blurred lines between healthcare access and government surveillance are a major concern, after a recent disclosure that CMS shared anonymised data with immigration enforcement agencies.
Watchdogs warned that expanding interoperability without enforceable limits could enable future administrations to weaponise health data for policing, profiling, or social control.
Health commentator Toby Young called it a “backdoor vaccine passport system”.
Read more here, here and here.
UN report calls for sex change for kids ban and outlines threats posed to women by transgenderism
A draft report from the UN special rapporteur on violence against women warned that transgender ideology posed a threat to women’s rights and safety. Compiled by Reem Alsalem of the OHCHR, the report described a “concerted international push” to erase the legal category of women and labeled gender dysphoria as “socially contagious.” Alsalem condemned the replacement of sex-specific language and the impact of medical transition on children.
She praised the UK’s legal definition of “woman” based on biological sex and urged UN member states to ban gender-affirming treatments for minors. The report marked a striking departure from recent UN positions.
Read more here and here.
That’s all for this week folks. Stay curious.