I'm fairly certain John Key can't wait for Saturday and get this week over with.
I know I am.
In fact, sod it, I think I'll vote today. I've got two ticks, party vote and electorate vote, and I want to make my votes while I'm still in my right mind and not about to scream at the hijacked nonsense that is this year's election campaigns.
As a journalist, I should not be disparaging of journalists like Glenn Greenwald or whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, who are engaged in that most basic of journalist's duties: Be watchdog on behalf of the public. It is Greenwald's contention that the Government has engaged in a programme of mass surveillance and spied on our Pacific neighbours. It is Snowden's claim there's a NSA spy base in Auckland. If nothing else, their claims did at least relegate Kim Dotcom's "big reveal" to the status of last cab on the rank.
I didn't know what mass surveillance using metadata really meant, but I've discovered the use of metadata is a pretty standard practice for businesses trying to market to consumers.
If I go into an online shopping website like Amazon, looking for leather jackets, I might search, on and off, for several days, looking at types and comparing prices. The data I'm seeing is the jackets. The metadata, being collected by Amazon, is my "trends", my patterns of searching, the price I never go above, whether I appear to favour brown or black.
Amazon will then make an assessment of my predilections and send me emails with buying suggestions, based on the metadata trends collated.
We create metadata all the time, just by using a smartphone or using the internet.
Where this becomes powerful - and invasive - is when an intelligence service analyses your trends to determine if you are porn addict (or worse), a troublemaker or even a terrorist. It's far easier and quicker to analyse trends - the mass surveillance metadata - than it is to analyse actual data. You just need some powerful computer harvesting programmes.
The temptation to do it must be enormous. John Key's enemies claim mass surveillance is happening. John Key says it's never happened.
People like Snowden come along every so often and are good for world order and checks and balances. I just wish there wasn't the taint of Kim Dotcom - and money - riding along with it.