Security Intelligence Community say 'must finish what we have started'

This week brought us not just one but three reports from the ‘intelligence community’.

First there was the annual report of the Inspector General for Security and Intelligence (IG), Cheryl Gwen. It is pretty damning, and echoes many of the criticisms raised in the State Services 2014 review of the intelligence community, especially regarding the SIS.

The IG's annual report was covered on stuff, but there is a better analysis on No Right Turn. The report is littered with findings like this:

In the course of these inquiries, I identified systemic shortcomings in the procedures followed by the NZSIS. […] The process of preparing and finalising those reports has been more protracted than I would have wished because of the time required for my office and for NZSIS to work through the systemic issues that I had identified.

And it culminates in this conclusion:

As noted above, the Service lacked a compliance framework and policy, audit framework and dedicated staffing throughout this reporting period.[...] For those reasons, I cannot conclude that NZSIS had sound compliance procedures and systems in place.

Note that the innocent sounding word ‘compliance’ means nothing less than the organisation operating within the law. 

As if to counter the impression of an out of control organisation a reader would get from this report, a quasi-internal review by the SIS which had concluded in July was declassified a few days after the release of the IG’s report. It comes to the almost opposite conclusion:

The reviewer did not find any evidence of (nor was given any reason to believe there was) significant non-compliance within NZSIS.

So everything is OK then? Maybe Cheryl Gwen is a bit too critical. Or maybe Rebecca Kitteridge is a lot less concerned about these things now that she is actually responsible for the SIS than she was in 2013 when she reviewed the GCSB. Her report back then read very similar to Gwen‘s report about the SIS does now. Sometimes the best way to shut critics up is to put them in charge.

The GCSB’s Moment of Truth

There has been much talk recently about the GCSB’s ‘charm offensive’ and how it is becoming more transparent, and how that is good for democracy. However, what is pitched as transparency and openness is in reality just spin doctoring.

On 11 September, the Privacy Commissioner John Edwards organised a ‘Privacy Forum’ at which GCSB director Una Jagose was going to “describe what GCSB does to deal with cyber threats, including outlining the CORTEX programme.”

At the start of the meeting, two activists of the Stop The Spies coalition (of which OASIS is a part) unfolded a banner reading “This is a Five-Eyes Propaganda Exercise”. That was enough for Jagose and Edwards to cancel the entire event.

It has since become clear just how stage managed the event, and its repeat on 29 September, were.

A response to an Official Information Act request for Una Jagose’s speech and associated correspondence revealed that “the communications are between the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. This is because communications function for the GCSB is managed by the National Security Communications team base in DPMC.” This means that every word we hear or read from the GCSB comes from the same people who write John Key’s speeches.

Stop the Spies exposes GCSB

On Friday 11^th September members of the Stop the Spies coalition held a banner at a GCSB propaganda exercise. Una Jagose, the Acting-Director of the GCSB, was set to give a talk at a forum hosted by the Privacy Commissioner when two members of Stop the Spies stood with a banner before the stage. Una refused to speak with the banner present and as a result, the meeting was closed down.

The next step is to close the GCSB down.

Over the last few years we have learnt of a range of activities that the GCSB has been involved in, including:

• spying on Pacific countries and everyone residing, passing through or holidaying in that area
• spying on Vietnam, China, India, Pakistan, South American nations and a range of other countries
• spying on Bangladesh and sharing that data with the Bangladeshi government and secret security services
• spying 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.
• Supplying intelligence for drone strikes, and
• spying on 88 New Zealanders.
  

The GCSB is part of the Five-Eyes (also known as FVYS), an alliance established by the UKUSA Agreement at the end of WW2. The USA is the leader and the other core members are Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The five countries operate between them a global mass surveillance, data collection and social manipulation programme. They've got the whole world covered; the sun never sets on the Five-Eyes.

But since the raid on Dotcom's home and the release of information by Edward Snowden, more information has become public about the GCSB and the role of the Five-Eyes. There was so much uncovering of nefarious deeds that members of the NZ intelligence community here, including the GCSB, were instructed last year to work on their public image. The talk by Una would have been part of that exercise.

However, Una refused to talk with a simple banner stating the truth being held in the same room. A banner that labelled her talk as a Five-Eye propaganda exercise, a banner that stated the GCSB is the real security threat. Instead the meeting was closed down.

Now we must close down the GCSB.

Widespread Lack of Trust in Security Intelligence Review

There is widespread distrust of NZ´s spy agencies, according to a report published 14th August by The Stop the Spies Coalition. The coalition, which includes the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties, the Anti-Bases Campaign, OASIS, the Dunedin Free University and the What IF? Campaign, conducted its own People´s Review of the Intelligence Services in a series of public meetings and discussions in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. The report was issued on the closing day of submissions for the official review.

"The People´s Review has solicited a wide range of views from ordinary people in New Zealand about the operations of the intelligence services. The questions raised went far beyond the very narrow frame of reference of the official review, currently being carried out by Michael Cullen and Patsy Reddy," said Thomas Beagle, a spokesperson for Stop the Spies Coalition.

Topics of the submissions included issues of privacy, oversight, the effect of surveillance on society, the lawfulness of the agencies´ activities, NZ´s membership in the 5 Eyes network and whether having the GCSB and the SIS was even desirable and what the alternatives could be.

"Rather than answering the paternalistic and leading questions in the official review submission form, people discussed questions like whose interests the agencies serve, whether we really need them, and whether New Zealand should be in the Five Eyes," said Beagle.

SIS Minister suffers from “Key Memory Syndrome”

The Minister in Charge of the SIS, Chris Finlayson, appears to be suffering from a form of memory loss – showing similar symptoms to his boss, John Key.

In questions at parliament today, 12 August 2015, Finlayson said “The particular deficiency that I would identify is that the Act (NZSIS) was last comprehensively reviewed in 1969 and is expressed in 1969 language.”

It beggars belief that he never heard of or has forgotten about either the 2009 Murdoch Report into 'optimising the structure of the NZ security intelligence community' or the 1976 Powles Report, an infamous white-wash in the '70s to cover-up the Sutch saga.

He should also be reminded of the total of seven amendments to the SIS Act that have been passed into law since 1969 – the most recent one while Finlayson was Minister in Charge of the SIS:

• New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Amendment Act 2014 (2014 No 73)
• New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Amendment Act 2011 (2011 No 28)
• New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Amendment Act 2003 (2003 No 108)
• New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Amendment Act 1999 (No 2) (1999 No 91)
• New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Amendment Act 1999 (1999 No 14)
• New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Amendment Act 1996 (1996 No 48)
• New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Amendment Act 1977 (1977 No 50)

He should at least remember the 2014 amendment, because it was in the context of that Bill that he called that the Select Committee process “chit chat”.

Spies in PR frenzy

The current Listener (dated 15 August 2015) runs a cover story “Secrets & Spies – The revolution inside our intelligence agencies” by Rod Vaughan, who claims to have been granted “special access” to those agencies. This example of embedded journalism has attracted a scathing commentary by Chris Trotter, to which – on one level – there is not much to add.

Except that Trotter somehow misses the point. He – like Vaughan – falls into the trap set by spy masters. The talk about the alleged ‘revolution’ within the agencies, defined by their directors having attended anti-tour protests at the age of 15 (Kitteridge) or being lesbians (Jagose), is simply a distraction for the flattered journalist. The real messages are buried in the middle of all the nonsense of how the agencies have changed.

Kitteridge is given a half page of unquestioned quotes about how big a threat the Islamic State is for NZ, culminating in the dubious claim that the SIS is neither capable nor allowed to monitor people’s internet browsing behaviour. She is also given space to perpetuate the mantra that “my staff barely have time to read their own emails, let alone so many emails of other people” - the naïve and dangerous myth that ‘full collection’ means that someone actually reads all the stuff that people write. This is followed by Una Jagose lamenting at length the legal restrictions the GCSB is under. The implied message in both cases is that the agencies need more resources and fewer legal restrictions.

Getting these messages printed just before the deadline for public submissions to the ‘Intelligence Review’ was the real reason why Vaughan was granted ‘special access’ to Pipitea House. And these messages just happen to match a lot of the questions in the official submission form.

Also by sheer coincidence, Vaughan was not the only journalist who happened to run a piece on the spy agencies this week. The Dominion Post’s political editor Tracy Watkins came up with the same idea. Her article “Spy boss Rebecca Kitteridge goes on a recruiting drive” (complete with a highly relevant picture of James Bond with sports car) follows the same pattern. After some light-hearted banter about Kitteridge subjecting herself to a job interview at the SIS, Watkins obligingly writes what Kitterridge already spoke into Vaughan’s dictaphone: the Islamic State is coming and we need more resources.

Vaughan may also be disappointed that he wasn’t the first journalist to be given ‘special access’. Back in March 2013, when the GCSB’s illegal spying on 88 people was all over the news, TV3’s Jessica Mutch claimed to be the first reporter to have been inside the GCSB headquarters. Her report back to Q+A host Susan Wood sounded like a small child reporting to its parents from a school trip. She was so much in awe at the swipe card system and the tinted windows that she completely forgot to ask about the spying.

Defining Surveillance

The obfuscation of what and what 'surveillance' is not continues.

In their investigation into whether Detective Inspector Grant Wormald perjured himself during one of Dotcom's court appearances in August 2012, the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) decided that the senior police officer did not perjure himself. The problem was, he just may not have realised what surveillance is.

They found that Wormald was aware the GCSB was assisting in the investigation. Wormald knew that that involved the "interception of the private communications of Mr Dotcom and at least one of his associates" but that was not surveillance in Wormald's mind.

If Wormald perjured himself - it wasn't his fault. According to the IPCA, "'surveillance' was a generic legal definition that did not exist at the time of the Police operation in January 2012." It only became clearer what surveillance was after the enactment of the 2012 Search and Surveillance Act. (NB. Wormald was questioned in August 2012 about the surveillance of Dotcom, nearly four months after the Search and Surveillance Act was enacted in April 2012.)

John Key's definition of surveillance is also hard to pin down.

Back in September 2014, John Key knew that mass collection was mass surveillance. Key told reporters "...we're not collecting wholesale information… We don't have the capability for mass surveillance."


Then in March this year on RadioNZ, Key said, "I don’t even know what you mean by mass collection. I have no clue. It is not a term I have ever used. It is not something that sits in something I see."

At the same time he refused to respond to comments made by ex-director of the GCSB Bruce Ferguson. When revelations from Snowden showed the degree of spying going on in the Pacific by the GCSB, Ferguson admitted on National Radio that what the GCSB did is: "...sort of like whitebaiting and trying to catch one whitebait, you can't do it and within the net you'll get all sorts of other things - it's a mass collection."

More recently John Key appears to acknowledge that the GCSB has the capability to collect large amounts of data. However, it is not surveillance and it is not mass collection.

There seems to be a constant obfuscation of surveillance.

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.

Public Meeting: Digital power & Social control

The State and corporations have ever increasing data about us, while we know less and less about what they are doing.

Come and join the discussion about collection of personal data, how we can resist this shifting form of social control and understand what’s going on.

Tuesday, 12 May, 6pm 
St John's Church Hall  
(corner of Dixon and Willis Streets, Te Aro, Wellington)

Speakers:

• Thomas Beagle, Tech Liberty
  
• Sandra Grey, Senior Lecturer, VUW
  
• OASIS on What we know about Five Eyes

and the launch of the What If? Campaign
What If? is a new grassroots education and action campaign working to stop data collection and sharing by the NZ State and private corporations for the purposes of social control and exploitation, and working for community control of information resources for the benefit of all.

what_if_campaign@riseup.net