Paul Little: Spies, selfies ... and plonkers

Did the GCSB check out Helen Clark's chances at the UN?

The first rule of spying is: don't get caught. Do so and there's a high risk you'll end up in a windowless underground concrete cell wondering when the goons clock on.

But with cyber-spying you don't have to leave the house. So if caught you'll just end up looking like a hapless doofus - or in the case of the Government Communications Security Bureau, a bunch of doofuses - with the whole country sniggering at your inability to keep your services secret.

At the same time you'll have to endure speculation about whether, if you're so vulnerable to exposure over a job interview, you're going to be much chop at beating the terrorists.

Revelations that the GCSB spied on other candidates when Tim Groser was busting a gut to get the job of director-general of the WTO were an attempt by people with agendas to embarrass him, said Prime Minister John Key.

As Trade Minister, Groser had had several years to do the sort of networking necessary to get the job, but even with his great contacts and the full resources of our gold-standard espionage wallahs behind him, he still lost to Brazil's Roberto Azevedo.

It has not been a good week - again - for the PM, what with Winston Peters cutting a swathe through the north while Key had to stay in Japan and work instead of taking the day off to go to the cricket and get some really good selfies with Grant Elliott.

And the information may indeed have been leaked to embarrass him. But whose fault is it that there was something to be embarrassed by in the first place?

As Key has frequently said when justifying all kinds of apparently harmless mass surveillance, if you're not doing anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about. So why did he look worried?

On the positive side, he has singlehandedly revived the use of the almost obsolete put-down "plonker", which was how he described not-journalist Nicky Hager and others whose work uncovers that which he would rather remained hidden.

We'll probably never know just how annoyed the spied-upon nations are. South Korea's candidate, Taeho Bark, went all Billy Goats Gruff on it, saying he wasn't fussed but "the Indonesian candidate would be very upset". Ouch.

More significantly, at home, the revelations gave the lie to every assurance Key has made about our spying being above board.

It's one thing to be snooping on evil empires-cum-trade-partners such as India and China. It's quite another thing to be spying on your mates. And it's yet another thing to be spying for a mate. There is no sanction in legislation for using espionage to get jobs for the boys.

The last hard-fought, high-profile, international-stage position to be secured by a New Zealander was the job of administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, which went to former minister for the GCSB Helen Clark.

Just so we're absolutely clear on these matters and who gets up to what, in the interests of fairness, it would be good to know whether the GCSB did any sniffing around for Clark in the run-up to her job interview.

You can be sure if they did the PM will make sure we know. We will then know whether this is business as usual or yet another innovation Key's Government has made and would have preferred us not to know about.

Anyone who was sceptical of last week's claims that social media, Twitter in particular, have encouraged violent, bullying verbal abuse should amble over to Twitter and look at the attacks on assault victim and Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon, whose "fault" it is that violent, bullying verbal abuser Jeremy Clarkson has been sacked.