Nicky Hager accuses New Zealand of selling out its neighbours to the US

[Ab]

New Zealand is "selling out" its close relations with the Pacific nations to be close with the United States, author Nicky Hager has said.

Hager, in conjunction with the New Zealand Herald and the Intercept news site, revealed today how New Zealand's spies are targeting the entire email, phone and social media communications of the country's closest, friendliest and most vulnerable neighbours.

The revelations, based on documents supplied by United States fugitive and whistleblower Edward Snowden, expose a heavy focus on "full-take collection" from the Pacific with nearly two dozen countries around the world targeted by our Government Communications Security Bureau.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=11411730

/popcorn

[Lightspeed]

B-b-but we're so t-t-terrified of the t-t-terrorists.

[pxpx]

After "The Moment of Truth" I'm really not interested in anything Snowden has to say.

I thought he was on to something.. but now I'm not so sure.

I see he's trying to get back to the US without getting buttf*cked, is he slowly beginning to realise that he had nothing of true significance after all?

[Lightspeed]

So because of a silly event, you're willing to accept mass surveillance, and you're willing to trust those who are undertaking it? Or do you think anyone who believes such a thing is occurring is mistaken, of the tinfoil hat variety, that Snowden is lying, mistaken, or somehow misconstruing reality?

[Ab]

I'm not an expert in the field so my opinion is that of a layman. That said, Snowden's data and his claims seem generally plausible to me. I say "generally" because some of his claims, like that there's an NSA surveillance centre in Northland, seem a bit iffy. (Northland's not that big. I'm sure someone would have noticed a spy base lying around.) But in general I'm not surprised by his claims.

I think the problem is that Snowden is stuck in Russia trying not to get disappeared by the CIA, and he's not a journalist - which means that Snowden's data is getting filtered and presented to us by people like Glenn Greenwald and Nicky Hager. And they're making cocks of themselves.

So when I hear "Snowden" and "New Zealand" together I think of Dirty Politics!!1 and teh Moment of Truth!!1 and I don't give as much of a fuck any more.

[pxpx]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

So because of a silly event, you're willing to accept mass surveillance, and you're willing to trust those who are undertaking it? Or do you think anyone who believes such a thing is occurring is mistaken, of the tinfoil hat variety, that Snowden is lying, mistaken, or somehow misconstruing reality?

Wow dude, get your clutchy mitts off mah straws!

I simply said I'm not interested in anything he has to say. Chill.

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by Ab

I'm not an expert in the field so my opinion is that of a layman. That said, Snowden's data and his claims seem generally plausible to me. I say "generally" because some of his claims, like that there's an NSA surveillance centre in Northland, seem a bit iffy. (Northland's not that big. I'm sure someone would have noticed a spy base lying around.) But in general I'm not surprised by his claims.

I think the problem is that Snowden is stuck in Russia trying not to get disappeared by the CIA, and he's not a journalist - which means that Snowden's data is getting filtered and presented to us by people like Glenn Greenwald and Nicky Hager. And they're making cocks of themselves.

So when I hear "Snowden" and "New Zealand" together I think of Dirty Politics!!1 and teh Moment of Truth!!1 and I don't give as much of a fuck any more.

I can just imagine some spook reading this and thinking "the system works".

Originally Posted by pxpx

Wow dude, get your clutchy mitts off mah straws!

I simply said I'm not interested in anything he has to say. Chill.

So when he says "we are all under mass surveillance" you think "I'm not interested"?

[Ab]

Maybe it's because I'm at heart a tinfoil hat wearer myself, but I've always assumed as a matter of course that my electronic communications can be and probably are monitored. So when there's an article claiming that my emails are snooped by the NSA I kind of go "well, yeah, obviously, and...?"

If I wanted to make my emails harder to snoop I could and would.

(edit) but that's kinda beside this particular point, because Hager's latest allegation is that Snowden's data shows NZ is eavesdropping on the communications of other Pacific nations and sharing that data with, fuck, the Five Eyes partners I guess.

[[Malks] Pixie]

The most interesting thing about this entire affair is how the public reacts to the information in relation to the government (and business) PR machines. As Ab said I don't think anyone can dispute that everyone using digital technologies are constantly under surveillance. The issue is that it's become so normalised now, mostly through the way that corporates use data, that people don't bat an eyelid at the idea.

I spent sometime last year researching a lot of stuff surrounding many of the Snowden claims in the NZ context which was fascinating. I try and wear my sceptics hat as often as I can - and in this case I'd be far more sceptical of any government claims than Snowden or any of the journalists who he's worked with.

Pixie

[CCS]

Not at all surprised that Fiji is spied on. And if they're spied on, well, so are the rest of the Islands. So... not surprised.

[Golden Teapot]

Our spy agency engages in spying. This spying encompasses monitoring communications that are accessible from NZ. I can understand why this is a surprise for some people but for my part I'm unsurprised.

There will be another nearly six years of this nonsense; assuming the herald exists for that long.

[Ab]

Originally Posted by Ab

the NSA and its partner agencies - including NZ's GCSB - want to eavesdrop on everyone and everything. If this is a surprise to anyone, hello and welcome to the world you must be new here.

[pxpx]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

So when he says "we are all under mass surveillance" you think "I'm not interested"?

Yes, for basically the same reasons Ab has alluded to.

[CCS]

New Zealand right to spy on Pacific Island neighbours

eg

As the Speight coup went on, with politicians being held custody, few had a clear idea who was friend or foe.

That became clear later, when the spies began listening to phones and collecting metadata across Suva.

Surprising players emerged - some were seen publicly as friends of democracy and order – yet the intelligence showed they were secretly supplying arms to the rebels holding Parliament.

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by Golden Teapot

Our spy agency engages in spying. This spying encompasses monitoring communications that are accessible from NZ. I can understand why this is a surprise for some people but for my part I'm unsurprised.

I'm not surprised. Nor am I surprised about the nature and scope of the spying. I'm not sure what role "surprise" has to play in any of this. Other than an emerging trope used to dismiss something some want to ignore that others don't.

What's different now is it's irrefutable. What is being exposed is how different our leaders' narratives are compared to reality. It's not surprising but now it's demonstrable.

I don't see this as a matter of stopping spying. This is a matter of opposing forces, specifically freedom and control. By standing up against mass surveillance, by insisting on limits and oversight, by refusing to accept the story being told and demanding facts over narrative, we stand up for freedom. Not to overwhelm control, but to provide balance.

Our lives are lived in the balance of many opposing forces. Exactly where these forces are balanced determine the lives we get to live. Maybe it's not for everyone, but I like to do my best to have a say in the kind of life I get to live.

[Delphinus]

Grant Bayldon: Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?

Grant Bayldon is executive director of Amnesty International in New Zealand

There's a little-known paragraph in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that reads, "No one shall be subject to arbitrary interference with his privacy."

It sits within the declaration - which all states must agree to uphold to join the United Nations - surrounded by other much better known and loved rights like: innocent until proven guilty, freedom of speech, and bans on slavery.


The usual answer involves a scale. At one end we have privacy and at the other security: any increase in one inevitably leads to a decrease of the other. Privacy or security - simply make up your mind which you care most about.

But this dialogue misses three very important points.

The first is around the extent to which this privacy for security trade-off really exists. No one is seriously arguing that there isn't a need for targeted surveillance, to do so would be naive. But the frequent historical lesson is that where states move beyond targeted and into mass surveillance, their people are actually not more secure but less secure. Especially where there are no effective controls on what information government agents can scoop up - and few such controls have been in evidence lately.

Second, we need to face the reality that even in democracies, governments are not always entirely benign. It's not that long ago that Prime Minister Robert Muldoon was accused of using SIS surveillance powers against his political enemies. While data storage is cheap and information sticks around, governments change over time and New Zealand's wafer-thin constitutional protections leave us all open to such abuses in future.

Third, there is now a large amount of research on the importance of privacy to personality and creativity. Humans are social creatures, and the threat that anything we say or do could one day be held against us is a recipe for a bland world in which we always have conformity in the back of our minds - few of us are brave enough to risk being voted off the island.

[crocos]

and New Zealand's wafer-thin constitutional protections

/facepalm

What constitution?

[CCS]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=11412551

"It's the whole method of surveillance these days - it's mass collection. To actually individualise that is mission impossible," he said.

He said he supported Mr Key's assurances that the GCSB were not spying on New Zealanders. Sir Bruce said it wasn't happening "willingly" or intentionally".
~
He said the data of New Zealanders collected would be "discarded" and not used.

New Zealanders had never been targeted by the GCSB without reason, he said.

You may argue that if it's not being collected willingly or intentionally then it must be arbitrary. But if it's discarded and not used, then what's the problem?

[crocos]

Originally Posted by CCS

But if it's discarded and not used, then what's the problem?

Simple: They're lying about discarding it because of how the tracking works - they look at historical data and link out from there.

Indeed it's irrelevant if they discarded it - it's not supposed to have been collected in the first place as the collection is an arbitrary privacy violation.

Of course that doesn't mean I believe for so much as a second that this particular leopard will change it's spots.

[CCS]

Originally Posted by crocos

Simple: They're lying about discarding it

You know they're lying how?

Indeed it's irrelevant if they discarded it - it's not supposed to have been collected in the first place as the collection is an arbitrary privacy violation.

They're not supposed to, no. But when they're taking the Pacific Islands data, they say that they can't "individualise" the collection. If it's a choice of collecting no data at all from the PI region, or collecting it all and then chucking out that of NZers... I'll take the latter.

[fixed_truth]

I (layman opinion) think that Labour Party blogger Rob Salmond makes a good point:

If you're cool with government mass surveillance - collecting all information just in case it might be useful - then you should be cool with that in New Zealand, the Pacific, or anywhere else.

If you oppose mass surveillance - if you think you need probable cause before intercepting people's communications - they you should oppose it in New Zealand, the Pacific, or anywhere else.

The issue isn;t the Pacific, the issue is mass surveillance.

http://polity.co.nz/content/pacific-surveillance

[[Malks] Pixie]

Originally Posted by crocos

/facepalm

What constitution?

Don't be a dick - yes we all know that NZ doesn't have formalised constitution but you must be trolling if you're trying to imply that we don't have constitutional protections. I find it hard to believe that anyone over the age of 20 doesn't understand this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncodified_constitution
http://www.cabinetmanual.cabinetoffice.govt.nz/node/68

Pixie

[crocos]

Originally Posted by [Malks] Pixie

you must be trolling if you're trying to imply that we don't have constitutional protections. I find it hard to believe that anyone over the age of 20 doesn't understand this.

FWIW I didn't. I understood that we had a lot of similar rights and protections as would be provided by a constitution, but was under the impression (though this is not something I've ever studied) that there were some quite glaring gaps.

[[Malks] Pixie]

Originally Posted by crocos

...but was under the impression (though this is not something I've ever studied) that there were some quite glaring gaps.

There are - which is exactly what the amnesty international Herald article was highlighting. Hence my frustration at your facepalm.

Sorry, long and shitty week, I didn't mean to snap at you.

Pixie