The deadline for the Intelligence Review Looms

Lisa Fong will be the person in the hot seat when the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament receive the promised Intelligence Review.

On Monday, 15 February, two weeks before the deadline for the Intelligence Review is to be tabled, Una Jagose took up her new role as the Attorney General and Lisa Fong, former GCSB chief-legal advisor, is now the acting director.

According to the GCSB, Lisa has been employed there since 2012 – the date may be arguably incorrect though (or an example of incorrect data gathering on the part of the GCSB). The official government release announcing Lisa Fong's appointment as acting director states that she started work at the GCSB in April 2013.

However, if the 2012 date is correct, that puts Lisa working at the GCSB when they were found to have spied illegally on 88 New Zealanders. She may have been giving advice then to Hugh Wolfensohn, the Deputy Director of Mission Enablement (DDME) and part-time legal advisor, who resigned in March 2013 just weeks before the Kitteridge report became public.

Regardless of whether she started in 2012 or 213 though, Lisa would have been working there as the legal advisor when operation 'WTO Project' was active and the GCSB was 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.

Whilst Lisa has been working there the GCSB has also been spying on Pacific countries and everyone residing, passing through or holidaying in that area.

Lisa was working there when it was written in tbe 2014 NZIC report that, among other things, the intelligence community had to ensure they comply with the law.

When the far from independent Intelligence Review is finally released, it will probably herald law changes to make legal a lot of the unlawful activities that have become public since the Dotcom raid and the Snowden leaks of 2012 and 2013.

To make law changes is the role of the Intelligence Review, this was clearly stated in the top-secret briefing to John Key in 2014.The briefing stated that the "review should provide a sound basis on which to develop new legislation."

Any new legislation will only strengthen the already only so-called 'arguably legal' acts of the GCSB and ensure that NZ stays firmly entrenched in the Five-Eyes. 

The next few weeks may prove busy for Lisa Fong.

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.