Tag: SIS

It’s good that the PM finally backed down on his position that he couldn’t say anything about whether Mossad spies had been operating in New Read More

David Keegan, the deputy US Ambassador in 2007, wrote in a cable that Helen Clark “has been willing to address [intelligence] targets of marginal benefit Read More

I’ve long been trying to find out what New Zealand has signed up to under the UKUSA electronic spying agreement. It has been a somewhat Kafkaesque exercise because the government wouldn’t directly admit the existence of the agreement, or whether New Zealand had signed up.

While I welcome the news that SIS files on sitting MPs have been closed the bar has still been set too low for putting opposition MPs under surveillance. According to Paul Neazor, Inspector General of Intelligence and Security, the test should be whether the Member ‘is suspected of undertaking activities detrimental to security.’

There is stiff competition among government departments as to who can produce the most vacuous documents. But no-one can beat the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau, both of whom tabled their annual reports yesterday.