The following opinion piece from me was published in the New Zealand Herald on 10 June 2013.
It has now been established that the United States National Security Agency (NSA)...
“the evidence that the SIS and GCSB are failing to detect criminality reinforces the view that their operations against New Zealanders are more about spying on dissenters than criminals.”
Paul Neazor’s assessment also seems to be at odds with what the GCSB has admitted in the Kim Dotcom case: that it did illegal spy on him, a New Zealand resident, when it assisted with preparations for a Police raid on his property.
It was not clear from the two SIS reports whether the SIS (and perhaps the GCSB) gained their information from spying on my communications, or those of NZ Tamils assisting me with the trip, or whether it was spying on both parties. Maybe the SIS interception warrants targeted the local Tamils helping me, and in the process they happened to intercept communications between us.
However, it is hard to accept that the GCSB unknowingly violated the Government Communications Security Bureau Act 2003 when it simply and explicitly says the GCSB is only allowed to spy on foreigners. Kitteridge says the agency spied on 85 New Zealanders between April 2003 and September 2012.
By Keith Locke
(The following article was published in the May 2012 issue of Peace Researcher, the journal of the Anti-Bases Campaign. To see the other interesting articles in Peace...
Nicky Hager’s Other People’s Wars, shows that New Zealand was more involved in the Iraq war than most people think. The book’s reinforces the points Read More
Nicky Hager’s latest book, Other People’s Wars, should prompt a parliamentary review of our Defence and Intelligence relations with the United States, Green Party Defence Spokesperson Keith Locke said today.