I can think of one reason why TPPA might make things worse for the average Kiwi. If New Zealand is required to ‘harmonise' its laws with the US or face consequences, we may not come out on top.

To quote Bruce Schneier, Data and Goliath, p195: 'Unlike in the EU, in the US personal data about you is not your property; it is owned by the collector.”

This I read as an open invitation to fraud. If I am not ultimately responsible for correcting my personal data, if that responsibility lies with faceless corporations, the way lies open for that data to be ‘manufactured' from whole cloth. This isn't an imaginary threat: it is what caused the 2008 financial crisis, when the very financial corporations that had used the financial ‘derivatives' suddenly found they could not trust each other.

Wesley Parish, Tauranga