On December 3, 2006, Mrs Richards saw a pizza billboard bearing a large photo of former US president George W. Bush with the words, ''Hell. Too good for some evil b******s''.
''I like that,'' thought Mrs Richards, a US citizen who had moved to Christchurch with her New Zealand husband and children in 2003.
The home-schooling mum with a master's degree in international law and politics emailed a photo of the billboard to about 10 friends using her New Zealand-based email address.
None of the emails arrived at their intended destination, except for one sent to a friend in South Africa.
All of the other emails sent to US addresses bounced back with a message saying they could not be delivered and a message code she did not recognise.
Several phone calls later she was told by a US telecommunication company representative in Canada that the code meant she had sent controversial material and her email address had been blacklisted.
Since then she has been unable to send emails to the US using that email address.
''I feel angry,'' Mrs Richards said.
''The US supposedly stands for freedom of speech.
''It's basically ... a thinly veiled police state.''
Mrs Richards feels safer in New Zealand but is not happy about the proposed amendments to the GCSB legislation.
''I don't think ... the spy agency for international spying should be used to spy on New Zealanders,'' she said.
