Image for The Intercept: John Key needs to get his story straight on mass spying

The Intercept: John Key needs to get his story straight on mass spying

If New Zealanders think that their government has been honest with them about bulk surveillance of citizens, new information reveals that they need to think again. Article by Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher for The Intercept The New Zealand spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), worked in 2012 and 2013 to implement a mass metadata surveillance system even as top government officials publicly insisted no such program was being planned and would not be legally permitted.

If New Zealanders think that their government has been honest with them about bulk surveillance of citizens, new information reveals that they need to think again.

Article by Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher for The Intercept

The New Zealand spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), worked in 2012 and 2013 to implement a mass metadata surveillance system even as top government officials publicly insisted no such program was being planned and would not be legally permitted.

Documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show that the government worked in secret to exploit a new internet surveillance law enacted in the wake of revelations of illegal domestic spying to initiate a new metadata collection program that appeared designed to collect information about the communications of New Zealanders. Those actions are in direct conflict with the assurances given to the public by Prime Minister John Key (pictured above), who said the law was merely designed to fix “an ambiguous legal framework” by expressly allowing the agency to do what it had done for years, that it “isn’t and will never be wholesale spying on New Zealanders,” and the law “isn’t a revolution in the way New Zealand conducts its intelligence operations.”

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- Read more at The Intercept



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