Get Smart - the People's Review of the Intelligence Agencies

The Intelligence Review is a review of New Zealand's intelligence services being conducted by Michael Cullen (ex-politician) and Patsy Reddy (lawyer and board member). It is nothing but a rubberstamp for mass surveillance and the Five-Eyes.

To help compensate for the lack of public consultation, the NZ Council for Civil Liberties is hosting public meetings in Wellington (July 29th) and Auckland (August 6th). They are inviting people to go along to have their say about what should happen to the GCSB, the SIS, and New Zealand’s participation in the Five Eyes spy network.

A Quick Look at Some Spying 'gone wrong'

At the annual NZIIP conference on Wednesday 15^th July, the Privacy Commissioner said “... we've really only in the last 40 years had public scrutiny of things where things go really wrong, so the average view that people in the public have is of the examples such as Ahmed Zaoui, Aziz Choudry, such as Kim Dotcom, where the agencies have been seen to have been in breach of the law.”

It was good to hear that John Edwards acknowledged those three cases as examples of 'where things really go wrong' in New Zealand's security intelligence. But he needs to do his homework and read some history. The three cases listed may have 'gone really wrong' but there are others. 

New Zealand has a long history of things going wrong and laws been breached. Even the very beginnings of official state intelligence was mired in controversy.

The first official intelligence agency was the Security Intelligence Bureau, it kicked off in 1941 with the arrival of Major Folkes, a British MI-5 agent who only three years earlier had been working in real estate. Folkes was duped by a con-man named Sidney Ross. On release from Waikeria prison, Ross travelled directly to Wellington and spun tales of plotters and saboteurs in Rotorua planning to overthrow the government and kill the prime minister. For three months he was believed before finally been uncovered; he was never charged in relation to the deception and Folkes was fired and sent back to Britain. The tale only came to light when Ross appeared in court at a later date on an unrelated charge of safe-breaking. Ross told the judge the story and it became public.

Peter Fraser, PM at the time, when questioned in the House about the débâcle came out with the classic line “It is not advisable in the public interest to discuss publicly the question of the means adopted to ensure public security.” A statement very similar to that trotted out by modern PMs.

After Folkes left Wellington, the SIB was effectively taken over by the police but was reconstructed in the late 1940s after visits again by the MI-5 and then finally in 1956 the SIS was established. In 1969 the first NZSIS Act was passed.

But even when the SIS became legal there continued to be 'things that really go wrong'. The first director, Brigadier Gilbert, had to pay damages to an Auckland barrister for identifying him as a communist in a 1962 speech entitled 'Communist Cancer in our Society'. The barrister was not a communist but an anti-nuclear activist and member of CND.

Stop the Spies - Spies Annual Conference

The country's top private and government spooks are holding their annual conference on Wednesday 15th July, and the newly launched Stop the Spies campaign will be there to protest the expansion of surveillance.

5:30pm, Wednesday 15 July 2015
Outside the Rydges Hotel, 75 Featherston St, Wellington

The theme for this year's NZ Institute of Intelligence Professionals (NZIIP) meeting is 'Protecting the Balance: Trust, Confidence, Privacy and Intelligence'.

It is a theme highlighting the current re-branding of surveillance that is been pushed by the government and private intelligence. This need to re-brand is a result of the increasing information about NZ's active role in the Five-Eyes and the global network of surveillance. Revelations have shown that NZ is actively involved in both spying around the world and the manipulation of communities and people for political ends.

The NZIIP may appear to be an independent non-government organisation but it is a core link between both the private and government spy agencies. One of its key founders in 2008 was Warren Tucker, then director of SIS. In the years since, NZIIP conferences have been attended by prime ministers, the SIS, GCSB, NAB, and Defence Intelligence, as well as intelligence professionals from a range of other Agencies and representatives from private industries such as Wynyard and Palantir.

People will be gathering outside the conference at 5.30pm - the intelligence professionals will be meeting for dinner inside and the guest speaker is the Minister for Intelligence Chris Finlayson. Stop the Spies plan to use the opportunity to highlight the links between the many intelligence agencies and the NZ government.

5:30pm, Wednesday 15 July 2015
Outside the Rydges Hotel,
75 Featherston St, Wellington

Further information about Stop The Spies can be found here:
http://stopthespies.nz/
https://twitter.com/StoptheSpiesNZ

Intelligence review - a rubberstamp

Headed by Michael Cullen and Patsy Reddy the mandatory review of all security agencies and security legislation was finally announced on Wednesday 13 May.

The review will be a rubberstamp for the government's mass surveillance, the Five-Eyes and the US's endless 'war on terrorism.'

Through recent revelations by Edward Snowden and Nicky Hager it has now been proven that the GCSB is without doubt part of the US's National Security Agency apparatus and New Zealand is an active member of the Five-Eyes. The first few months of 2015 have seen more information coming to light about this country and its role in the Five-Eyes (also known as UKUSA) and the use of the GCSB by the government to ensure political power and control is maintained by them.
Snowden has released documents showing that:

• the GCSB spies on Pacific countries and everyone residing, passing through or holidaying in that area (leaked 8 March), 
• the GCSB spies on Vietnam, China, India, Pakistan, South American nations and a range of other countries (leaked 11 March),
• the GCSB spied on Tim Groser's rivals for the position of director-general of the WTO. The GCSB operation involved covert surveillance of candidates from Brazil, Costa Rica, Ghana, Jordan, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico and South Korea.
• the GCSB spies on Bangladesh and shares that data with the Bangladeshi government (leaked 16 April), 
• the GCSB had plans to hack a data link between the Auckland Chinese consulate and the Chinese Visa Office, five minutes down the street (leaked 17 April), and there will be more to come.

John Key has admitted that it is likely that information gathered and supplied by the GCSB to the NSA has played a role in enabling the US military to carry out drone strikes that have killed hundreds of civilians, including children.

The SIS also has a disturbing history. Release of archives in the first decade of this century showed that the SIS spies on political dissidents, children and vulnerable refugee communities. Last year, the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security investigated and upheld allegations that Key's office had used information from the Security Intelligence Service spy agency to gain a political advantage in the 2011 general election.

Both the SIS and the GCSB are a dangerous threat to the security of ordinary people. We don't need a review to tell us what we already know. OASIS calls for the disestablishment of both.