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

The Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill passed

The Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill was passed on 9th December 2014.

The Bill makes changes in three Acts: the Passports Amendment Act 2014, Customs and Excise Amendment Act 2014 and the New Zealand Security Intelligence Amendment Act 2014.

It amends three existing laws to give the SIS greater powers of surveillance and to give the Minister of Internal Affairs greater powers to suspend and cancel passports.

The SIS will now be allowed to conduct surveillance on terrorist suspects without a warrant for 24 hours, to conduct video surveillance on private property (in relation to suspected terrorism), and to have access to the Customs data in relation to suspected terrorism.

Terror Bill Urgent!

The Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill is getting rushed through the NZ Parliament with the plan for it to be law before the House adjourns for summer.

The Bill was introduced in Parliament on Tuesday 24^th November, submissions due on Thursday 27 November, oral submissions will be heard on both the 27^th and 28^th November, the Bill is to be reported back by Tuesday, 2nd December – eight days after it was introduced and then it will be law by Thursday 11^th December.

The reason for such urgency and speed is that 'our' way of life and the values that shape 'our' society are under threat. Some people would argue that what passes for democracy is actually what is under threat with the passing of this Bill – for this Bill enhances state surveillance power and expands state control.

With the continuous singing of the mantra 'terror, terror, terror', we seem to live in an increasingly hysterical time where Bills such as this one can be introduced and passed. Just within the last few years there have been numerous surveillance and 'terror' Bills, including: in 2013 both the ‘GCSB and Related Legislation Amendment Bill' and the TICS (Telecommunications Interception Capability and Security) Bill, in 2012 the Search and Surveillance Act, in 2011 the 'SIS Amendment Bill', in 2007 the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill. The list goes on. This country has a reputation for passing laws quickly.

SIS Law Changes: 'Remember, remember – terror, terror, terror' & the Group of 10

Is it deliberate or ironic that John Key's 'security threat' talk was on Guy Fawkes Day, the 5^th of November?

As children in some parts of the world sing 'Remember remember the fifth of November: gunpowder, treason and plot' and light bonfires and explode fire crackers, John Key's mantra has been 'terror, terror, terror - we are in danger'. 'We' need to be kept safe because 'our' way of life and the values that shape 'our' society are under threat.

We need protection and John Key's government will provide it.

This morning at Victoria University, Wellington, John Key talked about the need for quick law changes to strengthen SIS surveillance powers and curtail people's rights to travel. These are changes that cannot wait until next year's scheduled intelligence review.

The five key changes announced are:

• the cancellation of passports for up to three years
• the suspension of passports temporarily for up to 10 working days in urgent cases whilst preparing the paperwork to cancel the passport
• video surveillance by the SIS (NZ Security Intelligence Service) in 'a private setting or which would involve trespass onto private property' ie. in people's homes and on marae
• 48 hour surveillance by the SIS without a warrant
• a cash injection into the SIS so they can increase the number of people working to monitor and investigate 'foreign' terrorist fighters.

The last time SIS powers were expanded was back in July 2011 with the passing of the SIS Amendment Bill. That Bill had been announced in December 2010 despite the Privacy Commissioner's recommendation that there be a review of the security laws. Key said at the time that the legislation had to be changed quickly to keep us safe during the Rugby World Cup.

He also said at the time that we did not need to know what the changes to the legislation would be.

Whose Speargun is it?

In a hard to find post in the technology section of the stuff website, it was reported that the GCSB had confirmed on Friday the existence of ‘Project Speargun’, as Glenn Greenwald had claimed on Monday.

The site quotes an unnamed “GCSB spokesman” saying that Speargun was “a core component of the cyber defence project in its earlier iterations”, i.e. that it was the discarded ‘Option 2’ mentioned in the papers released by John Key few days earlier.

This is supposed to confirm what John Key said - that it was an option that never went past a business case, and that he stopped it because it was too intrusive.

What it does confirm is the veracity of Greenwald’s documents. But it doesn’t let Key or the GCSB off the hook, really.

According to the hastily declassified papers, the Cabinet Committee on State Sector Reform and Expenditure Control in April 2012 “directed the GCSB to develop a Detailed Business Case for implementation of Option 2 [Speargun] in 2013”, noting that “the implementation of Option 2 is preferred.” The committee includes of course John Key, therefore it was also his preferred option in 2012.

The NSA document from early 2013 states:

GCSB's cable access programme SPEARGUN phase 1; awaiting new GCSB Act expected July 2013; first meta data probe mid 2013.

This definitely sounds more like a project plan than the development of a business case.

Then in September 2013, cabinet “rescinded the decision [...] on the development of a detailed business case for Option 2”. Note the wording – it does not say that cabinet looked at the business case and decided not to proceed with it, as John Key claims, but that cabinet no longer required the development of the business case. Without the project being detailed, how did Key come to the conclusion that his previously preferred option was suddenly too intrusive?

One would have thought that a year and a half after being asked to develop a business case for a project that was “a core component of the cyber defence project” (according to the anonymous GCSB spokesperson), the GCSB would have done so. It sounds unlikely that the GCSB would not have made it a high priority to get on with it. Are we supposed to believe that the GCSB doesn’t really care about cyber security?

So we have the NSA document pointing to project ‘Speargun’ being well under way, with a first test having been planned for mid 2013, and a (previously top secret) cabinet paper from several months later, telling the GCSB not to bother with writing the business case for it. Could it be that this was because by that time the project had been taken over by the NSA?

What speaks for this theory is that the first paper from 2012 mentions that ‘Option 2’ “requires significant scoping and consultation in order to identify the full range of risks and dependencies for the government”, i.e. it was quite complex and possibly beyond the capabilities of the GCSB.

Cortex, 'Operation Speargun' and Surveillance in NZ

This week saw the introduction of another surveillance term to the world: 'Operation Speargun'.

It is another of a growing list of surveillance programmes and tools that have come to light over the last year: Prism, Boundless Informant, XkeyScore, Tempora, Shelltrumpet, Honeytrap, Egoistic Giraffe, Evil Olive, Blarney, Stormview, Thin Thread, Muscular, Moonlightpath, Spinnernet, Trial Blazer, Treasure Map...to name a few. Most of the names are as bad as the Five-Eye powerpoint slides revealed by Edward Snowden since leaving his job as a sub-contractor with the NSA.

Glenn Greenwald, the former lawyer turned journalist who has been helping Snowden, came to NZ to release the documents. Within hours of Greenwald's arrival Prime Minister John Key was on the attack, describing Greenwald as 'a loser' and 'Dotcom's little henchman'. Key also played the jingoist nationalist card and several times pointed out that Greenwald was a foreigner and not with New Zealand's interests at heart. He even went so far to say, “We are a good country doing good things. This guy turns up ... he's not a passionate New Zealander.”

John Key has also once agan been repeatedly reassuring us that the GCSB is not involved in mass surveillance in NZ. He is keen for us to believe that the GCSB, in fact all the Five-Eye members, always act legally and never spy on their own citizens – they only spy on 'threats'.

Yet one only has to look at the swathe of material revealed by Snowden to know that the Five-Eyes are a force unto themselves. The five original key agencies that make up the Five-Eyes: the United States NSA, the British GCHQ, the Canadian CSEC, the Australian DSD and the NZ GCSB, have been and are involved in mass surveillance and data collection of people worldwide, including in their own countries.

They are not government run organisations that only focus on 'signals intelligence'. The Five-Eyes are intelligence agencies involved in mass data collection and surveillance. They are also agencies involved in pro-active spying, entrapment schemes and smear tactics.

'The Moment of Truth' – Operation Speargun

On Monday 15^th September Greenwald and Snowden revealed Operation Speargun – a Five-Eye programme to be operated in NZ. A surveillance programme that the GCSB was working on, and had laid the foundations for, prior to the changes to the GCSB Act going through last year.

Operation Speargun was a programme to hack into the Southern Cross cable and install covert cable access equipment capable of monitoring all communications to and from NZ. The programme was ready to go, the first phase had occurred. According to NSA documents, it was only waiting for the new GCSB Act for it to be activated. (For some reason the government had decided to follow the law. Possibly the scandal over the illegal surveillance of the 80 plus New Zealanders that came to light in the Kitteridge Report meant the government wanted to play safe.)

Sept 2014 Report on Communications Surveillance in New Zealand.

The Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) has recently published a report on communications surveillance in New Zealand.

The report concludes that as a result of the GCSB and TICS laws introduced in 2013, surveillance of communications in this country has increased. The "new laws provide much stronger, direct state-sanctioned surveillance (including the use of metadata) by the GCSB, which it can use in domestic law enforcement."

The report is a concise report of the state of communications surveillance and the changes that have occurred since the raid on Dotcom's home in early 2012. The report summarises the GCSB spying that came to light as a result of that raid, the publication of the Kitteridge Report and the resulting acknowledgement by the Prime Minister that the GCSB had been spying on NZ citizens. 

NZIC Report July 2014 - Report on the NZ Intelligence Community

Late last year the NZ State Services Commission reviewed the New Zealand Intelligence Community and their findings have finally been written up in a 'Top Secret' Report.

It reads like a high school report for a student who is struggling:

“There are signs,” says the report, that “the leadership of NZIC has ‘grasped the nettle’ and is starting to prioritise the changes needed and to implement change.” But, the report says, urgency is needed as “...there is a huge amount of change to be undertaken. The changes will be progressive but already associated parties are indicating signs of obvious improvement, and this is welcomed.”

The public version of the report quite clearly states that the NZIC do not have clear priorities, do not work together well and have a naïve faith in wanting to copy the structure of the NSA and that they rely too much on the Five Eyes network. It seems they are basically working as an external department for the NSA.

The review covers all aspects of the intelligence community, that is – the GCSB, the SIS and both the NAB and ICG of the DPMC. (Or to try and put it more simply, the report looks at the Government Communications Security Bureau, the Security Intelligence Service and two agencies that operate out of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet: the National Assessments Bureau and the Intelligence Coordination Group.)

The full report has been presented to the Head of the State Services Commission – it is not meant for public viewing, but the 19 page review gives a sampling of what the report contains.

Foremost in the Report are 10 key objectives for the agencies to achieve over a 'Four Year Plan'. These objectives include the need to:

1. clarfiy their role
2. ensure they work together effectively
3. only gather intelligence that is needed; as stated so succinctly in the report “All information, including intelligence, is useful only if it is used.”
4. upgrade their financial and managerial control systems (the current systems have not been maintained to the levels expected of modern government agencies.)
5. ensure they comply with the law
6. operate within budget
7. work on their public image

The report admits that the four year plan will be difficult for the Intelligence Community and will require “strong governance, ruthless prioritisation and experienced change managers”.

John Key has already taken steps towards achieving the objectives. Just days after the report became public he finally announced the appointment of the first-ever deputy Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. Paul Neazor would be happy if he were still in that role.

The 19 page review can be read here: http://www.ssc.govt.nz/sites/all/files/PIF-Review-NZIC-Jul14.pdf

And an analysis can be found here: http://www.indymedia.org.nz/articles/2921

Information about Paul Neazor and his wishes can be read (and listened to) here. 

Drone Die-In at NZ National Party Conference

Demanding the dismantling of the GCSB and the exiting of NZ from the 'Five Eyes Club', people opposing New Zealand´s involvement in the so-called "drone wars" staged a die-in outside the annual National Party Conference in Wellington during John Key´s closing speech Sunday, 29 June.

Motivated by the Prime Minister´s recent comments that he is "quite comfortable" to provide GCSB assistance to the US to murder "bad people" and his absurd comment that he thought it was legitimate to "prosecute" New Zealand citizens and others with Hellfire missiles, the "dirty wars" was taken to the doors of the National Party.
 
At the conference, a symbolic drone struck down those who were "targeted" as well as bystanders. 

"Just like real drones, this one produces plenty of collateral damage," said Valerie Morse, member of OASIS. "When John Key says he is comfortable with drone strikes, he is really saying he is comfortable with extra-judicial assassinations, because that is what they are."

"New Zealand is complicit in the US´s dirty wars around the globe. Through our involvement in the Five Eyes, information gathered by the GCSB is shared with the NSA."

"The US is waging an undeclared war in countries like Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and probably soon Iraq."

"The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has been given a free reign to kill any target that it believes to be a possible threat to US security, without any accountability or control."

"Since Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama has taken office, more than 2600 people have been killed in more than 400 drone strikes. Is that really something anyone can be comfortable with?"

"New Zealand must leave the Five Eyes club and the GCSB must be dismantled." 

The Never Ending Drone Wars and NZ

The fatal spying warrant

On May 19, 2014, prime minister John Key formally acknowledged that the GCSB has been, and presumably still is, providing information to the US which is used in the so-called drone wars. He said “it is almost certain” that the GSCB’s information was used “in identifying targets” for drone attacks in Afghanistan and possibly in other countries.

However, he was “quite comfortable” with it and said that everything the GCSB did was within the law.

What sounds like another one of Key’s blanket assurances about the lawfulness of a government agency without knowing anything about it, is in fact a serious admission of involvement by the NZ government in a US government assassination programme.

The issue came to the fore because of revelations that a NZ citizen, Abu Suhaib al-Australi, was killed in Yemen in a drone strike in November 2013, and that Key had issued a warrant to the GCSB to spy on him. Although US officials say that al-Australi wasn’t the main target but rather “collateral damage” (along with 4 other people), it’s likely that the GCSB’s information was used in this killing.

All that was needed to convince the prime minister to issue the fatal warrant to the GCSB to spy on al-Australi was that “he had gone [to Yemen] and gone to a terrorist training camp” and was “reported to be an al-Qaida foot soldier” (TV3, 16 April 2014). Other people say, he was teaching English in Yemen.

Normally, the killing of a NZ citizen by another government without any form of trial would be the cause of moderate to serious diplomatic rows, but in this case it is simply accepted. NZ is so far involved in the “Five Eyes” (the spying agreement between the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and NZ) that the government blindly accepts the US’s jurisdiction over NZ citizens in a foreign country.