New Zealanders targeted by US surveillance: PM

0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Xinhua, September 17, 2014
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New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said on Wednesday that his government and intelligence agencies had no control over what data the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collected from New Zealanders.

Key has been under pressure since NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden told a public meeting in Auckland, via a video link from Russia, on Monday that the NSA had unfettered access to all New Zealand electronic communications, aided by New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).

In an interview with Radio New Zealand, Key refused again to discuss the NSA's XKeyscore mass surveillance tool, which Snowden had said was being used to gather New Zealand electronic communications.

While New Zealand would contribute to databases, it had no control over intelligence-gathering of its partners in the Five Eyes network: the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia.

"We don't control what other agencies and other people collect. There might be a variety of reasons for that," Key told Radio New Zealand.

"So it's true there will be New Zealanders there and Americans may have gathered information across a whole lot of reasons, legitimately. It might be for hundreds and hundreds of countries, but what is absolutely also true is that we can't circumvent our law."

Key said Snowden had incorrectly claimed New Zealand agencies were contributing metadata, but "we don't have the capability for mass surveillance."

Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Cheryl Gwyn on Tuesday issued a statement saying she was conducting an ongoing review of whether the GCSB complied with the restrictions on interception of New Zealanders' communications.

"I can advise that I have not identified any indiscriminate interception of New Zealanders' data in my work to date. I will continue to monitor these issues," Gwyn said.

U.S. investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, who also spoke at Monday's meeting, said that even if the GCSB "were just opening the door" for the NSA, it still meant the government was working on a system of mass surveillance.

"Not only are they collaborators in the collection of data they then have access to that data through the XKeyscore system," Greenwald told Radio New Zealand Wednesday.

Greenwald said Gwyn should also be aware of the global pattern for intelligence organizations to keep the people in charge of them in the dark about their true role.

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