NZ’s Role In The Corporate Intelligence Machine

- Warren Thomson

Speech, accompanied by Powerpoint, to CAFCA’s 40th anniversary event, Christchurch, 2/5/15.

Good morning to all you argumentative old Lefty buggers who have supported CAFCA for so long.  I‘ll endeavour to sum up what has been happening in surveillance in the last couple of years, and how it impacts on NZ. A lot of the material will not be new to you, but we need to put it together so we see the overall picture and understand how our hard gained rights are being slowly and steadily taken away from us. Key maintains we belong to a “club” which obliges us to act in certain ways, and Hammond the UK Foreign Secretary told us we have to join in foreign wars because we belong to a “family”. We’re a very small part of this family, but Five Eyes, and the activities of the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), has a huge impact on this country.

“Sniff, Know, Collect, Process, Exploit It All”

One NSA document told New Zealand’s security services and those of other Five Eyes nations to "sniff it all, know it all, collect it all, process it all and exploit it all”  and that’s what the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) is supposed to aim at. You will all be familiar with Edward Snowden’s revelations and the fact that the NSA and its partners have been able to establish their right to a back-door into every major Internet programme as part of the “collect it all” programme. So any of your communications on Google, Facebook, Twitter and so on, go straight into the data grab. And in 2014 the NSA opened an enormous new facility in Utah to store this data. I get somewhat confused by the astronomical numbers now being used to describe the NSA’s data storage capabilities, but a while ago one of the Google founders said all humankind’s knowledge could be recorded on about five exabytes, about the storage size of the new NSA facility.

The British GCHQ is said by some to gather even more data than the NSA. It has been rerouting communications cables through its facilities for more than ten years. The Canadian Communications Security Establishment (CSE) has a new storage facility, and our mini-bully neighbour, the sledgers and underarmers across the Tasman, also has a new data storage facility near Canberra. We should also remember the Australian Parliament has a measure on its books to hold ALL communications data for two years - a concept unimaginable ten years ago.

Amongst this vast expansion of surveillance, it is important to consider the mindset of these agencies?  Remember the NSA mantra of “know it all, collect it all, exploit it all”, etc… This is encapsulated in a logo on a rocket launched by the US National Reconnaissance Organisation a couple of years ago, which stated: “Nothing Is Beyond Our Reach”. And heed the words of William Binney*- an often unrecognised whistle blower, who left the NSA in 2003 because of its burgeoning surveillance and recently said the Agency had a “totalitarian mentality” that was the “greatest threat” to US society since the American Civil War *Binney appears – in a supporting role to Edward Snowden - in the Oscar-winning documentary “Citizenfour”, reviewed by Jeremy Agar in Peace Researcher 49, June 2015, http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr/49/pr49-007.html. Ed.

CAFCA members, who appreciate the role of corporations today, vaguely realise that some of the spying is about business and finance. But we don’t understand its significance. We greatly underestimate the conjunction of corporates and spooks, and its importance.  Take, for example, John Perkins*, who was a significant player in Wall Street finance.  But he worked for the NSA. “I was initially recruited from business school ….By the NSA but ultimately I worked for private corporations” *John Perkins wrote “Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man”, which was reviewed by Jeremy Agar in Watchdog 112, August 2006, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/12/08.htmEd.

Unlike the GCSB, the American spy system is largely run by private corporations. Edward Snowden worked for several private companies in his various spook roles. One of the significant factors here is that not only do tens of thousands of NSA employees have access to financial and personal data, but also tens of thousands of people working for private corporations have access to the data.  In privacy terms, recently the British GCHQ was forced to acknowledge cases of misuse of data by employees, at least one of who was sacked for unauthorised searches. A survey recently in NZ revealed that many Government employees had witnessed unauthorised access to data. In personal terms – how much private information is vulnerable?

In terms of corporate competition, how much easier is it to come out on top when you have access to opposition data, as Canberra did when competing with East Timor over control of oil and gas resources? The Australian government has recently been ordered by the International Court of Justice to stop spying on East Timor. And in business terms how can NZ companies hope to compete with corporations that have unimaginable access to data? In negotiating the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), can Key and company compete with the American data gathering machine? 

Incidentally, in this country and others, companies are being forced into more and more collusion with the Five Eyes people because they are the ones given responsibility to fight cybercrime. This gives the spooks endless opportunity to play the good guy card and entrench themselves as part of the corporate Establishment. So, what about the GCSB’s part in all of this?  We swap personnel with all the other Five Eyes agencies and become heavily involved in American corporate imperialism as well as being complicit in rendition, torture, drone attacks etc. While Waihopai is an integral part of these operations, don’t forget that a lot of spying takes places through embassies or other places.

ABC, Waihopai, XKeyscore

Let’s look a little at the background to the anti bases campaign, since this gathering is a celebration of 40 years activism. The Anti Bases Campaign was set up in 1987 when CAFCA and peace movement activists got together to oppose four American-connected facilities in this country. One of the key founders was Bob Leonard*, who most of you would have known. Bob had picked up Owen Wilkes’* work trying to inform people about US activities at Harewood (Christchurch Airport), and Citizens for Demilitarisation of Harewood morphed into the Anti Bases Campaign. Bob Leonard often appeared at Waihopai in his “Uncle Sam” persona. He was a vital part of ABC activities and his work in making submissions on the welter of law changes about NZ spying will be badly missed. *Murray Horton’s obituaries of Bob Leonard and Owen Wilkes are in Watchdogs 134, January 2014, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/34/13.html and 109, August 2005, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/09/09.htm, respectively. Ed.

ABC has been involved in protests at Waihopai since its inception. We have had campsites established on the grounds, competitions to hit the domes with “bullshit”, nude protests (no “cover-ups”), demos where we cut the fences and got into the base. But most of you will know of the most effective protest which took place in 2008. Adi Leason, Sam Land and Peter Murnane were the courageous three who dared to stand up for their beliefs and really take on the base by bringing down one of the protective radomes which cover the antennas so we can’t see what they are pointed at. They were acquitted by a jury of the criminal charges and in a civil suit the GCSB threw in the towel – presumably because they feared they might face more intense questioning about their activities. On a more humorous note we should note the struggle of some activists to keep up with modern tech. Two of the party had gone into the base and the plan was for the third to drive in a truck so they could climb on it and over the wire. This didn’t happen, and when the third member of the group was asked later why he didn’t bring the truck when they sent him the text, he famously replied: ‘What’s a text’?

A question. Which Government department had a 150% increase in its funding over the last ten years? Yep – you guessed it. And in 2014 the Government threw in an extra $20 million for both the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) and the GCSB. The budget for 2015/16 is almost $90 million. One of the biggest issues with the GCSB is a programme called XKeyscore. What is XKeyscore? Well, it is not how many runs the PM made in his last game of cricket. This is one of the most important Five Eyes programmes and it is designed to let operators access email and social media. In one of his many episodes of lying or forgetting, Key tried to say that this system hasn’t been used in NZ, but it has probably been used by GCSB from as early as 2009.  Former GCSB Director Bruce Ferguson told the media that GCSB officers were trained in the programme, and Snowden documents show it is used.

Prism, Mass Surveillance

Another massive Five Eyes programme, named Prism, involves the spies ordering the big Internet service providers to give them back-door entry to the applications. Both Prism and XKeyscore involve accessing all the data flowing through the Internet and sifting out what most interests them. In a media interview the PM said if the GCSB was involved in mass collection of data he would resign. But he hasn’t. He has just carried on pulling ponytails and evading questions he doesn’t like to answer. He and the spooks claim there is no mass collection because only some of the material is analysed. But mass surveillance there most definitely is. The following is a transcript from Radio NZ, March 9, 2015:

GUYON ESPINER: “So is there mass collection of personal data of New Zealand citizens in the Pacific, or not?

JOHN KEY: I’m just not going to comment on where we have particular targets except to say that where we go and collect information, there’s always a very good reason for that. And it’s not always…sometimes it’s obviously, you know, a threat of terrorism or whatever it might be.

GUYON ESPINER: OK. We can go…we can talk about the reasons a little bit later, but is (ex GCSB Director) Bruce Ferguson right or wrong when he says …”The whole method of surveillance these days, it’s sort of a mass collection?”

JOHN KEY: I suppose the point to make here is…

GUYON ESPINER: No, no. The question is very simple, Prime Minister. We have the head of the agency at the time saying there WAS mass collection of personal data. I’m just asking you: Is he right or is he wrong?

JOHN KEY: I don’t even know what he means by that, so there’s no point in asking that question, because I can’t tell you what’s in Bruce Ferguson’s head and what he means by that. What I can tell you is what I know, and what I know is that there are a variety of reasons why we collect information. We have a variety of techniques of doing that. The law is very clear about what it allows us to do when it comes to New Zealanders, and all the advice I’ve had is we are 100% compliant with the law”.

Don’t Believe Anything Politicians Say About What GCSB Does

Almost every PM and Deputy PM denied spying on New Zealanders. They all lied. On top of this, the current GCSB Acting Director, Una Jagose, has tried to tell us that the GCSB is doing less spying when the latest GCSB Report shows a large increase in the number of warrants active. Key’s recent defence has been “I am assured that….” But how much does he know? It was revealing that the copy of the Kitteridge Report that Key received had all the notes at the back of the Report redacted. The PM was not entitled to see all the information. Key probably doesn’t have a high enough security classification to find out what the GCSB does.

Even the former Director didn’t know what information Waihopai collected. And Tony Blair admitted he didn’t know what the British spooks did. As MI6 at that time was implicated in serious rendition and torture charges, we can understand why he didn’t want to know. What about a GCSB success story? A success story we can be proud of? In an April 2013 top secret "information paper", the NSA highlighted intelligence gathering in Bangladesh as one of the GCSB's "success stories". It stated counter-terrorism work by the GCSB "provided unique intelligence leads that have enabled successful CT (counter-terrorism) operations by the Bangladesh State Intelligence Service, US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and India over the past year". Human Rights Watch said in its 2015 World Report, released January 29, 2015: “The Bangladesh government failed to prosecute security forces for serious abuses including (hundreds of) killings, disappearances, and arbitrary arrests …”

Recently, of course, we have had the revelations of GCSB spying on the Pacific. The Solomon Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Tonga, Vanuatu, Nauru and Samoa are among those that New Zealand has spied on, and the spying included individuals committed to human rights. Why do we spy on these countries?  If we find out something, what are we going to do? Send in the Special Air Service (SAS)? Cut their foreign aid? Stop them trading with China? Does NZ want to have a role deciding what Pacific Island nations, or anyone else, can do and can’t do?

And this brings us back to the underhand business and financial stuff that is central to GCSB operations. The Nats wanted Tim Groser into the top position at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and used spies to try and get him there. To do so, the GCSB was intercepting the communications of representatives from Brazil, Costa Rica, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Korea. And even with the spooks’ help he never made it. Have we used the GCSB to try and get Helen Clark as UN Secretary General? Maybe not. She’s not one of the boys. And as for the TPPA? Who do you think is going to the negotiating table with all the aces?

I’d like to end by raising some of the more disturbing implications of recently revealed spook activity. Fairfax journalist Andrea Vance was heavied by the Prime Minister’s Department over a leaked copy of the Kitteridge Report. So was Peter Dunne. Is this legitimate investigation of a crime, or is it creeping fascism in terms of threats to the press? Andrea Vance has been notable as a writer of news stories casting the GCSB in a bad light. NZ journalist Jon Stephenson was spied on by American spooks who didn’t like his reporting of events in Afghanistan. There is a growing list of points – the ones we know about – which point to a dangerous trend to misuse of data and Government agencies for political purposes. Here are a few examples:

  1. Key’s chief of staff uses information from GCSB to embarrass Labour’s Phil Goff.
  2. Using GCSB to try to get Groser into WTO.
  3. The illegal Kim Dotcom raid is set up with GCSB close involvement.
  4. Short cut selection of Ian Fletcher as GCSB Director and the phone call Key “forgot” about.
  5. Judith Collins passes information, which was wrong, to Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater, slandering a public servant.
  6. Persecution of Andrea Vance over sources for the Kitteridge Report leak.
  7. US spying on Jon Stephenson in Afghanistan

Insidious Creeping Fascism

So, to sum up. We belong to a particularly nasty club which doesn’t hesitate to spy, to kidnap, to torture and to assassinate by drone. Various Prime Ministers have clearly demonstrated they had no knowledge or control over the GCSB, and oversight hasn’t worked. Note that Michael Cullen, now given the responsibility of leading a review of NZ intelligence agencies, flatly denied any spying on Kiwis when he was involved in the oversight group (the Intelligence and Security Committee).  He should apologise.

The present Government doesn’t hesitate to use underhand methods against its opponents with both the Prime Minister’s Department and Judith Collins leaking information to damage opposition. And the power of surveillance is growing immeasurably day by day. The power to secretly gather, store and use data, is growing exponentially. But is our awareness of these events, and is our safeguarding of hard won liberties, equally growing? I think not. Maybe fascism comes, not with the marching of jackboots, but with the insidious penetration of computer apps and legislation to continually extend the powers of the spooks. 

What to do about it? One possible channel is to make sure there is a strong public response to the current Intelligence Review. But in the end we need to somehow get young people to understand the critical nature of our human rights and the dire consequences of standing back in the belief that it doesn’t affect us. CAFCA has been fighting for central principles for 40 years. There are many more battles to be fought. Thank you to all who have participated in that struggle. I look forward to continuing the fight with all of you for a number of years to come.


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