GOVERNMENT BRINGS IN GCSB BILL
And A Glossy Propaganda Booklet
About Why Our Spies Are Good For Us
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Murray Horton
In May 2001 the Government finally
introduced its long foreshadowed Bill to give legal existence to the Government
Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), our old friends who run the Waihopai
spybase, and who have had no legislative basis at all since they sprang out of
thin air, fully formed, in 1977. Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) has consistently
attacked this bastard agency (the Security Intelligence Service – SIS – has had
its own Act since 1969, one which underwent several amendments in the late
1990s to cover up the damage caused by the Aziz Choudry bungled break-in case).
But much more respectable bodies than we, such as the Privacy Commissioner,
have also expressed grave disquiet about the situation. Bruce Slane, the
Commissioner, recommended that the Government not proceed with the Swain Bill
on electronic spying (see elsewhere in
this issue. Ed.) until the GCSB had been given legal status. It was the
ABC’s Bob Leonard who has, for years, pointed out to anyone who would listen
that the GCSB is literally an outlaw, and the Government conceded as much,
tying itself in knots by legalisms such as passing special laws to exempt the
GCSB from the Crimes Act (which prohibits interception of other people’s
communications, except by authorised agencies – which the GCSB wasn’t, because
it didn’t legally exist).
Let’s be very clear about one thing –
ABC wants the GCSB abolished, and its Waihopai and Tangimoana spybases closed
down. But we are quite happy to celebrate small victories along the way to that
noble goal. Hence we made the impending GCSB Bill the centrepiece of our
Waihopai protest actions in January 2001, both in Blenheim and out at the base.
We had a special Waihopai cake made and served up to the public to reinforce
the point (see Waihopai report elsewhere
in this issue. Ed.). There is something very satisfying about eating a
spybase. And we believe that we have played quite a role in forcing the
Government to introduce this Bill to legitimise its bastard agency. Critics of
the GCSB’s lawless status are explicitly acknowledged in the Bill itself, and
the accompanying propaganda, as being amongst the reasons for the Bill’s
introduction.
We are fully aware that the Bill is
aimed at cementing into existence (for perpetuity?) the GCSB, which becomes a
fully fledged Government department (how’s that for retro chic? For the past
decade and a half, Governments have been destroying, not creating, departments).
It was created by the stroke of an Executive pen; theoretically it could have
been abolished by similar means. Now any such abolition will require an Act of
Parliament. We continue our campaign to have it put to sleep (just like any
other old dog) and congratulate the Greens on their continued call for the
GCSB’s abolition. They were the only party to vote against this Bill, at its
first reading. At least one Parliamentary party has got the guts to state the
obvious – we don’t need or want this bastard agency, legitimised or not. The
Greens urged people to make submissions to the Intelligence and Security
Committee (which is most definitely not a Select Committee), whilst continuing
to call for the abolition of that body as well.
The Bill is most interesting in what it doesn’t say. The GCSB is henceforth required to get interception warrants, as the SIS has had to do for years. But only if the interception is going to be done by physically attaching the interception device to something. This neatly provides the escape clause, as neither the Waihopai nor Tangimoana spybases are physically attached to anything. Their spying is done from a distance, by intercepting electromagnetic radiation, and this accounts for the vast majority of the GCSB’s work. The warrants are meaningless, as far as Waihopai goes. But the introduction of warrants and “computer access authorisations” is to permit the GCSB to hack into computers, as a prerequisite to its expanded electronic spying role laid out in the Swain Bill.
The Bill assures that the GCSB only
spies on foreign communications – but that completely avoids the fact that “one
leg” of many communications being spied upon will inevitably consist of New
Zealand individuals or organisations. So it will be spying on New Zealanders,
and always has been. Not that foreigners can breathe easy – in his speech on
the Bill (8/5/01), Green Co-Leader, Rod Donald, stated that the GCSB would be
spying on the diplomatic signals traffic between Berlin and the German Embassy
in Wellington whilst the German President was in town that same day. The Greens
wrote to Ambassadors urging their governments to make submissions against the
Bill, as they will be amongst those being spied upon.
No New Zealand government has ever
acknowledged the existence of the UKUSA Agreement, which divides up the world
for purposes of electronic and signals intelligence gathering, between the
relevant spy agencies of the five major Anglo-Saxon WWII Allies – the US, UK,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This Bill is no different, in that it
doesn’t name the UKUSA Agreement. But it does say that: “The operation of the
GCSB is directed solely by the New Zealand government. It is, however, a member
of a longstanding collaborative international partnership for the exchange of
foreign intelligence and the sharing of communications security technology” and
spells out the constituent spy agencies, which we already know. Don’t take too
much notice of that stuff about it being under the sole control of New Zealand.
When Nicky Hager and John Campbell (then of TV3’s 20/20 current affairs programme) sneaked into Waihopai and filmed
into the main computer room, in 1996, it was virtually devoid of human life. It
was and is on autopilot, simply downloading the stuff from the international
civilian communications satellites upon which it spies, and flicking on the raw
data automatically to Big Brother, at the US National Security Agency
(incidentally Nicky has been back inside the base a couple of times since, with
TV film crews, namely TV2’s Mikey Havoc and Newsboy, but the spies have learned
the hard way to do a better job of pulling their curtains at night). There are
other minor points – the above mentioned legal exemption from the Crimes Act is
repealed, as it is no longer necessary. And the GCSB will henceforth be
formally subject to the Official Information Act – I can really see them
releasing a whole lot of stuff (want a cushy job? Become the GCSB’s freedom of
information officer).
“Securing Our Nation’s Safety: How New
Zealand Manages Its Security And Intelligence Agencies” is the 44 page glossy
Government booklet released at the same time as the GCSB Bill. Interestingly it
is dated December 2000, but it was not released until May 2001. Obviously it is
part of a propaganda offensive to ease the passage of the Bill and give our
creepy, bumbling spies a warm, fuzzy image. It follows in the wake of the
similar glossy booklet on the SIS, released in the late 1990s. This one covers
all NZ civilian and military Intelligence agencies, briefly describes their
structure and functions, and explains the bureaucratic links that bind them
together.
We don’t intend to go into great detail
about it. It is a handout, and we encourage everyone to get one and read it for
themselves. It is available at all public
libraries; it can be ordered from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet,
Box 55, Wellington; or it can be read and downloaded on line at www.dpmc.govt.nz
You can also be cheeky, like ABC’s Warren Thomson who, when the SIS booklet was
released, strolled into the Christchurch SIS office and asked for a copy. They
gave it to him too.
TVNZ did a very brief item on it,
buried away on its Late Edition and Breakfast news. Green Co-Leader, Rod
Donald, and myself (on behalf of ABC) got a few seconds worth of soundbites
between us. The reporter asked me if it told me anything I didn’t already know.
The answer was “not really, but it does show a photo of GCSB Director, Warren Tucker,
for the first time”. But we need to comment on a couple of things. Both the
booklet and the GCSB Bill wax lyrical about the “oversight” of Intelligence
agencies. Peace Researcher has
written extensively about this for years, proving it conclusively to be a sham.
The whole lot – the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Inspector General
of Intelligence and Security, and the newly created Commissioner for Security
Warrants – isn’t worth a bucket of the old proverbial. They are there to rubber
stamp what the agencies do; they are dependent on those very agencies to let
them know what’s going on; they are there as a public relations sop, to soothe
very valid public concerns about those agencies. The report actually says that
the fact that there are very few complaints to the Inspector General about the
agencies, specifically the GCSB, proves that everybody is happy, there’s
nothing to complain about. ABC’s Bob Leonard has tackled the Inspector General
on this – how do you complain about a 100% covert agency such as the GCSB, when
you don’t know what it does, in order to complain about it? We’re still waiting
for an answer.
The booklet’s most breathtaking
nonsense is spouted by former Prime Minister, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who is given
a whole chapter. In recent years, Palmer has been wheeled out to testify that
the various SIS Amendment Bills are vitally important to the nation’s security
and that as a former PM he has inside information about exactly how they are
vital, but, of course, he couldn’t possibly divulge it (why? Would he have to
then kill us all? Or would we die laughing?). But the most
intelligence-insulting stuff in the whole booklet is Palmer’s bald assertion
that Aziz Choudry’s successful legal action against the SIS, resulting from its
bungled break-in at his Christchurch home, proves that the system of oversight
works (Palmer even gets the year of the break-in wrong. It was 1996, not 1997).
He says that it proved that Intelligence agencies are subject to the law.
What it actually proved was that the
oversight is a nonsense – Aziz went through the proper channels and the
Inspector General concluded that “nothing unlawful” had occurred. On the
contrary, the courts ruled that the SIS had no legal right to break into Aziz’s
house, and had never had any legal
right to break into anyone’s house or building. The Shipley National government
fought the case tooth and nail, refusing to release masses of SIS material
vital to Aziz’s prosecution of the case, and, when the courts ruled that the
SIS had no power of entry, changed the law to retrospectively legalise all such
break-ins (whilst settling Aziz’s case out of court). The Choudry case proved
the exact opposite of what Palmer claims it did – that the SIS operated outside
any law for decades, protected by secrecy, and unless you are lucky enough to
stumble upon one of its operations in progress and have the tenacity and
courage to pursue it through the courts to prove your point, you haven’t got a
show of holding them accountable.
Instead of Palmer, why didn’t the
Government solicit a chapter from another former Prime Minister, David Lange (a
Labour colleague of both Palmer and present incumbent, Helen Clark)? He offered
a radically different perspective on NZ’s Intelligence agencies in his Foreword to Nicky Hager’s seminal 1996
book “Secret Power: New Zealand’s Role In The International Spy Network”. Lange
wrote: “An astonishing number of people have told him things that I, as Prime
Minister in charge of the Intelligence agencies, was never told…It is an
outrage that I and other ministers were told so little”. We know which ex-Prime
Minister is more accurate.
Ironically the Government introduced
the GCSB Bill into Parliament on the very same day that it announced the
abolition of the Air Force’s combat wing, the scrapping of the third frigate,
and the biggest shake up of the NZ military for decades. In the Listener cover story on that, Clark
defends her Government against charges of being bludgers upon our allies:
“Moreover, right through the ANZUS row and since, she adds, New Zealand has
continued to operate a major security alliance relationship [at Waihopai and
elsewhere] with the Americans. Despite opposition from the Left of the Labour
Party? ‘Indeed’” (12/5/01; “War & Peace”, Gordon Campbell).
This reinforces our conclusion that
Waihopai and the whole subservient role of NZ’s spy agencies to the interests
of others is the calculated trade off with our Big Brothers, Australia and the
US, for them tolerating our nuclear free policy, quitting ANZUS, and downsizing
our military to one more suited to our own purposes. It is faulty reasoning –
NZ’s whole Intelligence infrastructure is as much a dated product of the Cold
War as the Skyhawks that the Government is dumping. In the overt military
field, we are quitting the pretence that we maintain armed forces ready and
willing to fight America and Australia’s wars, in the air, on the sea and on
land. But in the covert intelligence field, we still loyally serve the same old
colonial masters that we have done for the past half century. It is time for
some major downsizing in our Intelligence agencies. Apart from anything else,
think of the money to be saved. The Government refused to grant Community
Services cards to 48,000 low paid workers because it would cost $14 million.
Well, the GCSB has an annual budget of $20 million. If the obsolete Skyhawks
can be scrapped to save money, so can a redundant spy agency. The eradication
of poverty and other social ills will bring this country much more security
than any number of satellite dishes spying on our neighbours on behalf of the
US.
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