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New
Zealand media bury fresh Snowden revelations
By
John Braddock
19
March, 2014
New
revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden, further exposing the New
Zealand government’s involvement in the global spying activities of
the US National Security Agency (NSA) have been buried by the
country’s political and media establishment.
Testifying
to the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee on March 7,
the former NSA contractor reiterated charges that the “rights of
billions of innocents” are being unlawfully breached through mass
surveillance carried out by the NSA and other spy agencies, including
Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
Snowden
said New Zealand, Germany, Denmark and Sweden had been pressured by
the NSA to change their laws to facilitate its operations. Each
government received instructions from the NSA, sometimes under the
guise of the US Department of Defense and other bodies, on how to
degrade the legal protections against bugging communications systems
and erode basic democratic rights.
It
is nearly two weeks since Snowden’s charges were made. Only two
brief reports have surfaced in New Zealand’s media, one on Radio
NZ’s “Checkpoint” program, the second in the New
Zealand Herald, both
on March 11.
Prime
Minister John Key flatly refused to comment on the allegations. His
office issued a dismissive press release saying that Key, who is also
the minister in charge of security services, expected there would be
more allegations from Snowden in coming months and he couldn’t
“respond to them all.” The opposition Labour party said nothing,
nor did the Maori nationalist Mana Party.
This
response to Snowden’s incriminating charges underscores the fact
that there is no commitment to core democratic rights anywhere in New
Zealand’s ruling elite.
Snowden
said lawyers from NSA’s Foreign Affairs Division (FAD) continually
search internationally for loopholes in targeted countries’ laws
and constitutional protections. Any weaknesses found are manipulated
“to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations.”
The
rights of ordinary people are being stripped away, Snowden declared.
“Systems of intrusive mass surveillance are being constructed in
secret within otherwise liberal states, often without the full
awareness of the public.” The systematic use of “vague laws”
was an intentional strategy to circumvent public opposition.
According
to Snowden, once a FAD “legal guidance” operation successfully
subverts or helps repeal legal restrictions against mass
surveillance, the NSA encourages partner states to perform “access
operations.” Through such operations, agencies gain access to the
bulk communications of all major telecommunications providers in
their jurisdictions, normally beginning with those that handle the
greatest volume of communications.
Sometimes
the NSA provides consultation, technology or the physical hardware
for partners to “ingest” massive amounts of data in a manner that
allows processing, soon providing access to “everything.”
Memorandum
agreements between NSA and its foreign partners typically enable the
NSA to monitor its partner’s citizens without informing the
partner, and provide the partner with the excuse of “plausible
deniability.”
With
a patchwork of such international agreements, data can be collected
from any individual because everyone becomes a “foreigner” in
some jurisdiction. Each government can assert—as Key does—that
its agency does “not break the law” by carrying out
indiscriminate spying on its own nationals. Material uploaded to NSA
databases can then be accessed by any authorised intelligence agency,
making a mockery of supposed national protections.
The
UK’s main telecoms—Verizon, British Telecommunications, Vodafone,
Global Crossing, Level 3, Viatel and Interoute—all cooperate with
the GCHQ, even “beyond what is legally required.” It is then easy
for the British intelligence services to make those communications
available to the NSA, even without explicitly sharing them.
The
NZ intelligence agencies came under scrutiny in 2012 when it emerged
that the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) illegally
spied on Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom on behalf of the US Justice
Department. Key’s National government then pushed through
legislation, over the objections of a majority of the population,
giving the GCSB, officially an “external” security agency, vastly
expanded powers to conduct domestic spying and intercept information
sent and received in New Zealand.
A
spokesman for the cyber-rights group Tech Liberty, Thomas Beagle,
told the New
Zealand Herald last
week that the new laws appeared surprisingly quickly. “It was like
someone had it sitting in a drawer ready to go,” he commented. “Who
is really writing these laws?” The question is entirely legitimate.
The Dominion
Post revealed
in January 2013 that NSA director, General Keith Alexander, visited
New Zealand as often as four times a year. The regular visits were so
top secret that Key refused to identify Alexander, even after his US
army jet was observed parked at Wellington airport.
The
only politician interviewed on Snowden’s allegations was Green
Party co-leader Russell Norman, who spoke to Radio NZ’s
“Checkpoint.” Norman sits alongside Labour leader David Cunliffe
on the five-member parliamentary Security and Intelligence Committee
that nominally oversees the activities of the security agencies. The
presence of both “opposition” leaders on this committee, which is
chaired by the prime minister and has a government majority, itself
shows the complicity of Labour and the Greens in the secret state
apparatus.
Norman
made it plain that the committee exercises no powers over the
country’s spies, and makes no attempt to do so. He claimed that the
committee was constrained by its “limited powers” as a special
statutory committee, not a regular standing committee of parliament.
Norman also insisted that he was prevented by law from divulging any
of the committee’s proceedings. In any case, he added, the
committee could not demand any information from the intelligence
services.
Naturally,
Norman declared the committee powerless to independently investigate
any of Snowden’s claims. In other words, like the rest of the
committee and the political establishment, the Greens are
participating in the cover up of Snowden’s damning revelations.
The
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