Years ago (late 70s) we started getting Russian fishing boats coming into port - the SIS opened up an office in town, like all other government departments they listed themselves in the government pages in the phone book. Dunedin is a small town, local lawyers noticed a ‘law firm’ that never did any legal work.
In those pre-cellphone days watches were synchronised and someone sat outside while someone else called the number in the phone book - “ring ring” - then they sat there taking photos of comings and goings …
Bunch of bozos playing at spies completely outclassed by some “hippie protesters”
The United States (the most profligate of all the nations) has more than 11,000 Foreign Service Officers working overseas. Embassies and consulates may have hundreds of staffers-- some with rather specialized expertise.
And some of them may be spies, pretending to be experts.
But such a diplomatic presence is expensive. Apparently the Russian embassy to New Zealand is tiny (14 people?) So NZ, if it feels sufficiently paranoid, can watch each employee very closely-- and be confident that not one of them is the spy. Harder to do when the Russians have 99 ordinary bureaucrats and one agent enjoying official cover.
I mean, you joke, but it’s been barely 30 years since French spies committed a terrorist bombing here to try and influence our position on nuclear testing in the Pacific.
Australia kicked out two Russians so NZ should be kicking out 0.54 Russians, which could be rounded up to 1 but only if that particular Russian spook is in the country at the moment.
We can make silly comments, but NZ probably provides valuable signals intelligence to the alliance… they’re geographically close to Russia when you remember maps are like a pac man level - go off one end end up on the other
I agree, but I don’t understand why you’re telling me that. I suspect you lost track of who said what in the discussion, but don’t feel like writing a re-recap.
Anyhoo, nothing prevents New Zealand from expelling members of the Russian diplomatic mission, some of whom, it can be assumed, are spies, even if it isn’t clear which ones are.
Well, at some level, practically everyone in every country’s embassies is gathering intelligence. Historically that was the whole point of having an embassy. This business of helping broke young backpackers get back home to mum is a recent development.
And that fear of spies from the US is why US federal employees need to use “official passports” (which are red rather than the normal blue) when travelling abroad. I work for a government lab and needed to travel on my official rather than personal passport when presenting at a meeting in Canada recently. The idea is that Canada would know that a US government employee had entered the country and could presumably keep an eye on them if they were suspicious of them. Although it’s a bit silly because a lot of US government scientists aren’t US citizens and they do get to travel on their personal passports.
