I thought New Zealand was sane?
In all fairness, that’s something of a stretched headline. All it says is that the New Zealand military had telephone metadata on Stephenson, and says it’s the type of metadata NSA collects. Can the New Zealand military not collect metadata from telecommunications companies if it’s conducting its own investigation, as spurious or as terrible as the it’s conducting against Stephenson?
It gives me a big warm fuzzy to know that my shitty government is helping other governments be shitty. I am as pissed as pissed can be about the NSA spying, but I am also kind of pissed off at the rest of the world for not being annoyed by their own internal domestic spying. As this so clearly demonstrates, this is a multi-headed of a problem. The vaguely sane democracies of the world need to rip their heads out of their collective asses, and stop making the Stasi jealous.
Whatever small and pathetic threats this sort of spying stops, it isn’t worth the horrible and unfathomable government abuses it can bring. The entire world needs to grow a pair and put “terrorism” in its proper place, which for the vast majority of democracies, somewhere near “death by bathtub”.
@pjcamp, dunno. I have come to suspect their government is sort of… lacking… (morals, perhaps) after seeing the fooforall with the Dotcom case. Whatever merits Dotcom may (or may not) have as a person, whatever legal merits the charges may (or may not) have, the NZ government was completely lawless and OTT during the episode, and the court rightly excoriated them.
@verisp, the report makes it fairly clear that they had the data in situ in Afghanistan, where they have a man attached to an American SIGINT base. The reporter admits it’s an inference, but it’s a fairly logical one. It becomes even more logical when you remember that the USA, the UK, Canada, Oz and NZ pool their signals intelligence through the Five Eyes programme.
Personally, I hope that Snowden and Greenwald have more goods on the Five Eyes. It won’t do anyone any good if the NSA cleans up its act in the USA, but calls on CSEC or GCHQ to do its dirty work (and vice versa). It has been entirely too quiet here in Ottawa, and I know the Tories have been looking for a chance to pass their own warrantless wiretapping laws…
No it’s [currently] illegal in NZ for the Military to spy on it’s own populace.
Unfortunately New Zealand is far from sane when it comes to matters of surveillance. We are a contributing member to the 5 eyes network operating a network of spy bases which intercept satellite communications and funnel them to the US to be analysed. We also have a close military and diplomatic relationship with the US which has grown much stronger under the current National coalition government.
Just this weekend there have been national protests in New Zealand against legislation which would dramatically expand the power of the Government Communications and Security Bureau. This legislation was introduced after it was found that this agency was acting illegally in assisting with domestic surveillance.
After the 2001 terror attacks in the United States our intelligence services got vast funding increases. This has been used to create specialist units dedicated to combating “National Extremism”, in practice though they have run a sustained campaign to try and conflate activism with terrorism. This has included national “terror raids” against indigenous activists and paying an informer for 10 years to infiltrate mainstream protest groups http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/features/760466/The-activist-who-turned-police-informer.
Just today we found out that a political reporter had 3 months worth of phone records handed over to a government inquiry into an embarrassing leak about the GCSB http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8981153/Phone-records-given-to-inquiry
Unfortunately our politicians seem desperate to emulate the Unite States when it comes to security matters.
Well, in that case, that’s probably the best piece of evidence to indicate
the NZ military got its information from the United States.
Guess who else classifies journalists as threat or enemy of the state: China. Perhaps the US and NZ could ask them for other ideas how to suppress any political opposition.
Well, ever since I was beaten up, framed with crack and had my camera stolen by a journalist I’ve… Oh wait, it wasn’t a journalist. My bad.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
