Edward Snowden revelations on NZ's contribution to the NSA

This is just the beginning of a whole series of revelations from the Edward Snowden revelations of New Zealand's role in spying and гsurveillance - so far, centering on its role in spying on our friends and neighbours in the Pacific.

This will be explosive in terms of our relations with our neighbours and should be devastating locally. However, I had a quick look at a poll one by the NZ Herald, which is publishing the documents - 44 % said they were incensed; 50% said they were 'fine with it'.

Fresh from watching "Citizenfour", hearing the details of the TPPA, and reading today on Customs request for extra powers to demand passwords and encryption codes, I would say we are well down the road to becoming a tyranny.

All that needs is for the switch to be turned.

Here is Nicky Hager this morning

Snowden revelations / The price of the Five Eyes club: Mass spying on friendly nations

Leaked Snowden files show most of GCSB's targets are not security threats to New Zealand, as Government suggests

Nicky Hager, Ryan Gallagher

A map from a 2009 report from the GCSB's signal intelligence division

NZ Herald,

5 March, 2015

New Zealand's electronic surveillance agency, the GCSB, has dramatically expanded its spying operations during the years of John Key's National Government and is automatically funnelling vast amounts of intelligence to the US National Security Agency, top-secret documents reveal.

Since 2009, the Government Communications Security Bureau intelligence base at Waihopai has moved to "full-take collection", indiscriminately intercepting Asia-Pacific communications and providing them en masse to the NSA through the controversial NSA intelligence system XKeyscore, which is used to monitor emails and internet browsing habits.

Last year, Mr Key refused to say whether the GCSB uses Xkeyscore.

The documents, provided by US whistleblower whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that most of the targets are not security threats to New Zealand, as has been suggested by the Government. 

Instead, the GCSB directs its spying against a surprising array of New Zealand's friends, trading partners and close Pacific neighbours. These countries' communications are supplied directly to the NSA and other Five Eyes agencies with little New Zealand oversight or decision-making, as a contribution to US worldwide гsurveillance.

The New Zealand revelations mirror what the Snowden documents showed in Europe, where the US and Britain were found to be spying on supposedly close and friendly neighbouring nations in the European Union.

The Herald has collaborated with US news site The Intercept to report on the New Zealand-oriented Snowden papers (read the Intercept article here). They reveal the secret activity called signals intelligence - the interception of private phone calls, emails and internet chats - globally.

Pacific targets

The documents identify nearly two dozen countries that are intensively spied on by the GCSB. On the target list are most of New Zealand's Pacific neighbours, including small and vulnerable nations such as Tuvalu, Nauru, Kiribati and Samoa.

Other South Pacific GCSB targets are Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and French Polynesia. The spy agency intercepts the flows of communications between these countries and then breaks them down into individual emails, phone calls, social media messages and other types of communications. All this intelligence is immediately made available to the NSA, which is based in Maryland, near Washington, DC.

The South Pacific targeting was confirmed by a New Zealand intelligence source, who said the GCSB monitoring included Pacific government ministers and senior officials, government agencies, international organisations and non-government organisations.

Mr Key, who is also the Minister of National Security and Intelligence, has argued that the GCSB is needed to protect New Zealand from terrorism threats such as those emanating from Islamic State (Isis).

Since 2009, the GCSB intelligence base at Waihopai has moved to "full-take collection".

But the Snowden papers show that counter-terrorism is at most a minor part of the GCSB's operations. Most projects are assisting the US and allies to gather political and economic intelligence country-by-country around the world.

Monitoring the Pacific nations is part of New Zealand's role as a member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. Mr Key said in January that sending troops to Iraq this year was, for his Government, "the price of the club". He named the club as the US, Britain, Canada and Australia, the other Five Eyes members.

The same Anzus-era language is used to justify GCSB intelligence operations. An NSA report on the GCSB, found in the Snowden papers, said the GCSB provided "valuable access not otherwise available to satisfy US intelligence requirement".

In effect, the New Zealand spy agency gathers information on the country's nearest neighbours to help secure its place in the US-led alliance.

'Full-take'

South Pacific spying has been greatly expanded in the past six years. A July 2009 GCSB document (scroll to end of article to see it) describes plans to move the Waihopai intelligence base to "full-take collection" - possibly the most important expansion since the station opened in 1989. Previously, according to 1990s GCSB staff, Waihopai intercepted millions of emails and phone calls from the Asia-Pacific region but retained and gave its allies only ones from specified targets. "Full-take collection" means the base now collects and retains everything it intercepts: both the content of all the messages and the "metadata" showing who is calling or emailing whom, at what times and (for mobile calls) location information showing from which cell tower the phone calls were made.

The 2009 report said the Waihopai engineers had been working to overcome problems in storage capacity and planned to have "full-take collection on Mission carriers running by October." Mission carriers refers to the large regional communications satellites that the Waihopai base is tasked with eavesdropping on.

In 2009, according to the report, two NSA trainers visited GCSB to help the Waihopai station upgrade its "Xkeyscore suite" in "anticipation of full-take collection and second-party sharing". Xkeyscore is the controversial US intelligence system that gathers and stores the billions of intercepted communications and "metadata" from all around the world, making them easily searchable by intelligence staff.

A 2008 NSA PowerPoint, obtained by Snowden and released publicly in 2013, included a slide headed "Where is Xkeyscore?" The accompanying map had red dots marking Xkeyscore sites around the world, including one on New Zealand's South Island. This was Waihopai.

Metadata is highly valued by the Five Eyes intelligence agencies as it allows a picture to be built of a person's activities and their network of friends and associates. It avoids the time-consuming effort of reading, listening to and/or translating each individual communication. The "second-party sharing" meant sharing the intelligence with the Five Eyes agencies.

These developments allow the Waihopai station, codenamed Ironsand, to collect, retain and share metadata and content for every communication it intercepts during its 24/7, year-by-year monitoring of Asia-Pacific communications satгellites.

US-run system

The German newspaper Der Spiegel, which studied Snowden documents about Xkeyscore, wrote that "from the more than 500 million data communications to which the NSA has access every month, around 182 million of them are collected with the spying tool Xkeyscore". It noted that "the program also enables 'full-take' of all unfiltered data over a period of several days - meaning not just metadata but also the content of online communications."

All the Waihopai full-take intelligence was automatically shared with the "club": initially with the NSA and, the 2009 report said, "it is hoped that sharing with [the Australian and British sister agencies] DSD and GCHQ will be achieved soon after we can offer full-take collection data".

John Key and Barack Obama talk following the closing session of the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague last year. Photo / Getty Images

A British intelligence document a few years later (about 2011) said "GCSB have given us access to their XKS [Xkeyscore] deployments at Ironsand, a GCSB comsat [communications satellite] site which is rich in data for the South Pacific region". It said, "Specifically, we can access both strong selected data and full-take feed from this site." Strong selected data means communications contained targeted email addresses and key words. Full-take feed means everything intercepted from the region.

The GCSB intelligence collecting occurs completely within a US-run system. The documents show that, far from New Zealand retaining control over the intelligence it intercepts from its neighbours, the GCSB transfers it all directly into the US network. The intelligence is probably stored in computers at Waihopai, but Xkeyscore sites are part of an NSA-run distributed network of computer systems, the same as at any NSA-run listening posts.

The documents show that when GCSB staff want to access communications intercepted at Waihopai, they have to log into NSA computer databases. Minutes of a June 2009 meeting at the NSA headquarters, where a GCSB officer was present, show how integrated the GCSB is into the NSA systems. The GCSB officer, manager of an intelligence analysis unit, told the meeting that 20 per cent of GCSB's analytic workforce did not have accounts or access to key NSA databases. "This is a particularly significant issue for GCSB," she said, "as they provide NSA with NZL [New Zealand] data which they have traditionally accessed via NSA tool/databases." That meant some GCSB analysts were "unable to query or access NZL data".

Spying on Samoa

An example of the routine South Pacific spying is GCSB monitoring of Samoa. The US-led Five Eyes alliance has allocated spying on Samoa to New Zealand, as part of what the July 2009 document calls the GCSB's "South West Pacific Area of Responsibility". The report, authored by the acting head of the GCSB's computer network exploitation unit, discusses changes to Pacific Island mobile phone systems that were creating problems for GCSB monitoring of "target telecommunications networks within GCSB's Area of Responsibility".

The report - headed Top Secret, Communications Intelligence, release to USA, AUS, CAN, GBR, NZL - expressed concern about a new undersea cable link connecting Samoa to the outside world. Previously Samoa channelled all its overseas communications via the Pacific Intelsat satellite, which was monitored at the GCSB's Waihopai facility. The undersea cable was taking over most Samoan international communications and so removing them from Waihopai's spying.

The GCSB report said: "Unfortunately, SIGINT [signals intelligence] has already lost access to Samoan bearers due to the [recently installed] American Samoa-Hawaii cable. In all likelihood all but some backup carriers will be off the air by the end of the year."

The GCSB had got help from the New Zealand Defence Force to monitor a commercial cable-laying ship, the Ile De Re, that was installing the new undersea cable. Defence staff in the Joint Electronic Warfare Support Facility used Defence Force resources to track the ship day by day in March 2009 to provide information to GCSB on the progress of the Samoan cable.

When the Prime Minister of Samoa, Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoi,visited New Zealand in October 2012, Mr Key said: "Samoa is the only country in the world with which New Zealand has a formal Treaty of Friendship." The treaty had "been at the heart of our relationship ever since". But the Five Eyes obligations trumped this and Samoa continues to be monitored as part of the GCSB's area of responsibility.

It is the same with all the other South Pacific countries. The same 2009 GCSB report on "target telecommunications networks" discussed mobile phone networks in Nauru and Kiribati. By 2015 Samoa, Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga have undersea cable communications but all the other Pacific Island nations still use satellites that are monitored by GCSB.

Fiji phone taps

Australia and New Zealand collaborate closely on South Pacific spying operations. A GCSB report on "continued effort against the South Pacific region" at the June 2009 NSA meeting said: "GCSB's access development activities [researching new communications to spy on] will be focused on the South Pacific region and entail close partnering and engagement with DSD, NZSIS and ASIS."

DSD is the Australian Five Eyes agency (since renamed ASD, the Australian Signals Directorate) and ASIS is the Australian equivalent of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). NZSIS is New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service, a domestic intelligence agency which has in recent years been expanding into some overseas operations. The same minutes discussed "pushing the priority up on GCSB [undersea] cable access effort and capabilities".

The July 2009 report said GCSB staff had provided all their information on Fijian communications to the Australian DSD's Military Support Unit that year. This was "to provide a Target Systems Analysis on the Command, Control and Communications of the Fiji Government ... Up until now, GCSB's major targets in the [Fiji] Government and [Fiji military] have kept a preference for Vodafone services", it said, but they were increasingly shifting to Digicel cellphones. This strongly suggests there was a listening post in the New Zealand or Australian high commission in Suva targeting local mobile calls.

A presentation slide on NSA surveillance shows New Zealand involvement. Photo / Screengrab

In the same way that the Five Eyes alliance allocates the southwest Pacific to GCSB, the Australian ASD is allocated surveillance of Indonesia and Southeast Asia. The report discussed a GCSB officer seconded to Canberra to work in the Australian agency's Network Infrastructure Analysis section. His job was to assist spying operations by studying Indonesian cellphone firm Telkomsel.

Overall, the leaked documents suggest an astonishing lack of independence in New Zealand intelligence operations. The Government claims - most recently in its successful bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council - that it runs an independent foreign policy. The GCSB and allied documents suggest the opposite.

Some of the Pacific spying - and other operations further afield - provide intelligence of use to the New Zealand Government. But GCSB operations are primarily contributions to the NSA and other allies: the price of the club.

2009 report from the GCSB's signal intelligence division discussing interception and training on NSA's XKeyscore system (app users tap here to view)

Who's who

GCSB: The Government Communications Security Bureau. This is New Zealand's electronic surveillance agency, which is tasked with collecting foreign intelligence. It is New Zealand's contribution to the Five Eyes network.

Five Eyes: The Five Eyes are made up of the intelligence agencies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Its roots go back to a post-WWII pact between the US and UK, which included three Commonwealth nations. The US is the lead partner - the others, "secondary" partners.

NSA: The United States' National Security Agency. This is the US electronic surveillance agency and the lead partner in the Five Eyes network.

XKeyscore: An NSA computer program which is able to search through the majority of communications around the globe which have been harvested largely by Five Eyes partners.

Ironsand: Codename for the Waihopai GCSB base, at the top of the South Island in New Zealand. It is a signal intelligence base.

Edward Snowden: The former NSA contractor who walked out in 2012 with a massive number of files, citing concerns about the extent and style of US-led surveillance. He is currently living in exile in Russia.

The Intercept: An online news site, largely led by journalist and lawyer Glenn Greenwald. It was Greenwald who Snowden approached with his trove of data.

Nicky Hager is a New Zealand-based investigative journalist and an internationally recognised expert on surveillance since the publication of his ground-breaking book Secret Power in 1996. Ryan Gallagher (@rj_gallagher) is an award-winning Scottish journalist whose work at The Intercept is focused on government surveillance, technology and civil liberties

Snowden GCSB revelations: Leaked documents show New Zealand spies on its Pacific friends and sends data to US

EXCLUSIVE: GCSB collects phone calls, emails and internet data from NZ's closest and most vulnerable neighbours, secret papers reveal

NZ Herald,

5 March, 2015

New Zealand's spies are targeting the entire email, phone and social media communications of the country's closest, friendliest and most vulnerable neighbours, according to documents supplied by United States fugitive and whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Snowden's files reveal a heavy focus on "full-take collection" from the Pacific with nearly two dozen countries around the world targeted by our Government Communications Security Bureau.

Information from across the Pacific is collected by New Zealand's GCSB but sent onto the United States' National Security Agency to plug holes in its global spying network, the documents show.

From there, the documents show information collected by New Zealand is merged with data captured from across the world. It is then able to be accessed by the NSA's XKeyscore computer program through an online shopping-style interface, which allows searching of the world's communications.

The details come today in a co-operative reporting effort between the New Zealand Herald, investigative journalist Nicky Hager and the Intercept news site, which holds Snowden's trove of documents (read the Intercept's story here).

This morning, Hager told Radio New Zealand that the documents revealed even more countries which New Zealand was spying on, and more information would come.

"The Five Eyes countries led by the US are literally trying to spy on every country in the world... and what we're going to be hearing about in the next few days is New Zealand in all kinds of very surprising ways playing a role in that."

He said New Zealand was "selling out" its close relations with the Pacific nations to be close with the United States.

"The reason we spy on those little Pacific countries... is not because New Zealand cares... it's just something to take to the table to belong to the [Five Eyes] club."

"N



New Zealand indiscriminately intercepts Asia-Pacific communications and provide them en masse to the NSA through the controversial NSA intelligence system Xkeyscore. Photo / Screengrab

The revelations were dismissed yesterday by Prime Minister John Key, who raised the spectre of terrorism while saying he could "guarantee" the allegations in today's Herald would be wrong.

Hager told 3News that Mr Key's pre-emptive response to the findings in the documents was "sad".

"In every other country, the governments haven't liked the fact that this news has come out, but they have engaged with it, they have debated it, they have talked about it.

"I feel a bit sad for New Zealand that all we have is [the Prime Minister] saying, 'Don't take any notice, it's wrong, don't look at it, we don't have to talk about it'. We can do better than that."

He said the documents didn't show anything illegal in the spying, because international spying was outside jurisdiction.

"These are moral issues," he said.

New Zealand won the support of the entire Pacific in its campaign for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, campaigning with the slogan "New Zealand stands up for small states". These revelations will see comparisons between New Zealand's claimed benevolent leadership role across the region and its actions for the Five Eyes intelligence network.

Similar revelations of spying on friendly nations abroad have caused diplomatic rifts, as it has emerged the US intelligence apparatus is heavily focused on surveillance for economic and political purposes rather than fighting terrorism.

It also raises questions about the GCSB's handling of communications from the many New Zealanders who work and live in the Pacific - and the many Pacific people who also hold New Zealand citizenship. It is illegal for the GCSB to collect the communications of New Zealanders.

This morning Labour leader Andrew Little told Radio New Zealand he was shocked to hear about the mass spying in the Pacific.

"While I accept the need for security agencies... I'm stunned at the breadth of information being collected."

Mr Little said it isn't a surprise that the GCSB would be monitoring the Pacific nations, he said he couldn't understand the intelligence interest in "hoovering up" all communications.

"This goes way beyond the brief," he said.

SNOWDEN AND NZ: FROM THE VAULT
• John Key 'comfortable' that NSA is not spying on NZ
• Intercept: NZ launched mass surveillance project while publicly denying it
• Edward Snowden: New Zealand's Prime Minister isn't telling the truth

While the GCSB has always had a role carrying out surveillance on the Pacific, the Snowden documents show it grew massively from 2009.

In July 2009, a GCSB document said there were plans to shift the intelligence base at Waihopai to "full-take collection" (see document at end of article). The phrase is one seen in previous Snowden releases and means everything is collected - the content of messages, internet traffic and the data of communications - including telephone metadata, showing who called who.

Later in 2009, the documents showed the GCSB's Waihopai base expected "full-take collection on Mission carriers running by October". The "Mission carriers" are the satellite dishes at the base.

WATCH: Snowden reveals NSA has Auckland facility

Video

By 2012, a British intelligence document stated the expansion in spying had gone ahead. It read: "GCSB have given us access to their XKS [XKeyscore] deployments at Ironsand [Waihopai], a GCSB comsat [communications satellite] site which is rich in data for the South Pacific region. Specifically, we can access both strong selected data and full-take feed from this site."

Mr Key said it was "bizarre" to reveal details about intelligence at a time when New Zealand faced a terror threat. "We've got the situation where we've Isil reaching out to cause harm to New Zealanders."

He said he would not reveal details of intelligence but said it was done for "really, really good reasons".

When quizzed mid-afternoon he said he had no idea what would be revealed. But, pointing to Hager's election bombshell Dirty Politics, he said: "Nicky Hager was wrong last time. His information is old. I guarantee you it will be wrong this time."

In response to specific questions, the Prime Minister's office dismissed Snowden's "stolen" information, saying the documents could be fakes.

"The Snowden documents were taken some time ago and many are old, out of date, and we can't discount that some of what is being put forward may even be fabricated," a spokeswoman said.

Challenged on claims of fabrication, John Key's office couldn't point to any basis for the claim.

A spokeswoman for the GCSB refused comment on "speculation" about "matters that may or may not be operational". "Everything we do is explicitly authorised and subject to independent oversight."

2009 report from the GCSB's signal intelligence division discussing interception and training on NSA's XKeyscore system (app users tap here to view)

To watch New Zealand's TV3 idiotic coverage of this GO HERE

NEW ZEALAND SPIES ON NEIGHBORS IN SECRET ‘FIVE EYES’ GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE

Ryan Gallagher

the Intercept,

5 March, 2015

New Zealand’s electronic eavesdropping agency is spying on its neighbors and sharing communications it intercepts in bulk with the National Security Agency through a controversial Internet mass surveillance system, according to newly revealed secret documents.

Government Communications Security Bureau, New Zealand’s equivalent of the NSA, has been sweeping up the data from across the Asia-Pacific region, targeting island nations such as Tuvalu, Nauru, Kiribati, Samoa, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tonga and France’s overseas territories New Caledonia and French Polynesia. Each of these small nations and territories maintains friendly relations with New Zealand.

The surveillance, reported Wednesday by the New Zealand Herald in collaboration with The Intercept, is being carried out by GCSB from an intelligence base in New Zealand’s Waihopai Valley (pictured above). Intercepted data collected at the Waihopai site is being shared through an NSA surveillance system called XKEYSCORE, which is used to analyze vast amounts of emails, internet browsing sessions and online chats that are intercepted from some 150 different locations worldwide.

The documents on the spying, obtained by The Intercept from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, shine a light on New Zealand’s role in the so-called Five Eyes, a surveillance alliance that includes electronic eavesdropping agencies from New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

GCSB is perhaps the smallest player in the alliance in terms of its funding and number of staff, but the agency is seen as an important player because of New Zealand’s location in the world.

GCSB has been designated a geographic “area of responsibility” to monitor communications in the Southwest Pacific as part of Five Eyes efforts to maintain global surveillance coverage, according to the documents. One NSA memo notes that New Zealand provides “valuable access not otherwise available to satisfy US intelligence requirement.” This includes gathering intelligence about trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region and about governments in neighboring islands, the documents show. A New Zealand intelligence source confirmed these details, telling the New Zealand Heraldthat GCSB was monitoring government ministers and senior officials, government agencies, international organizations and non-government organizations in the South Pacific nations.

Last year, The Intercept reported that the New Zealand agency was planning a secret project to tap into Internet data flowing across undersea cables. The Waihopai base focuses on gathering data and communications from another source — vacuuming them up as they are being transmitted through the air between satellites. The spying station, designated the codename IRONSAND by the NSA, has previously been linked to a Five Eyes satellite surveillance network known as ECHELON.

In recent years, there has been a dramatic secret shift in the surveillance policy at the Waihopai base.

Former GCSB officials told the New Zealand Herald that, during the 1990s, Waihopai intercepted a large number of phone calls and emails from the Asia-Pacific region, but only retained and gave its allies communications collected from certain specified targets. This has now changed. In 2009, Snowden documents show, GCSB upgraded its capabilities in order to collect “full-take” data at the base and then share it directly onto XKEYSCORE. Full-take is a term used by surveillance agencies to refer to large-scale collection of both content of communications and the metadata — details showing who is contacting whom and when. Instead of targeted collection against a specific set of individuals, full-take surveillance sweeps up all communications indiscriminately.

Once the New Zealand agency makes the data accessible through the XKEYSCORE system, it can then be analyzed by spies across the Five Eyes. One secret British memo, dated from 2011, noted: “GCSB have given us access to their XKS [XKEYSCORE] deployments at IRONSAND, a GCSB comsat [communications satellite] site which is rich in data for the South Pacific region.” The memo added: “Specifically, we can access both strong selected data and full-take feed from this site.”

Following the earlier disclosures about GCSB’s surveillance last year, Snowden wrote in an op-ed for The Intercept that New Zealand citizens’ communications intercepted by the Waihopai base were among those being shared with the Five Eyes agencies. “At the NSA I routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in my work with a mass surveillance tool we share with GCSB, called ‘XKEYSCORE,’” Snowden wrote. New Zealand’s prime minister John Key later conceded that Snowden’s allegation “may well be right,” but he refused to comment on whether the country’s spies used XKEYSCORE.

On Wednesday, GCSB declined to comment about the latest revelations. A spokesman for the agency said in a statement to The Intercept and the New Zealand Herald: “The GCSB exists to protect New Zealand and New Zealanders. We have a foreign intelligence mandate. We don’t comment on speculation about matters that may or may not be operational. Everything we do is explicitly authorized and subject to independent oversight.”

The NSA had not responded to a request for comment at time of publication.

In the coming days, more revelations about surveillance in New Zealand from the Snowden documents will be reported as part of collaboration between The Intercept, the New Zealand Herald, the Herald on Sunday and the Sunday-Star Times.

Photo: A satellite surveillance dome at GCSB’s Waihopai Valley site; Tim Cuff/New Zealand Herald/AP