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| Edward Snowden |
By Zachary Keck
Edward Snowden is accusing Prime Minister John Key and the GCSB of collecting New Zealanders’ online metadata.
Edward Snowden is accusing New Zealand of conducting mass electronic surveillance despite Prime Minister John Key’s repeated denials.
Snowden used Glenn Greenwald’s The Intercept to publish documents which allege that New Zealand’s domestic spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), exploited a new internet surveillance law to collect metadata on New Zealanders’ online behavior.
The Intercept said that the leaked top secret documents show that the GCSB and NSA implemented Phase I of a mass surveillance effort called “Speargun” sometime in 2012 or early 2013. According to the report, Speargun involved tapping the country’s main undersea cable link, the Southern Cross cable, which carries most of New Zealand’s internet communication with the outside world. “If you live in New Zealand you are being watched,” Snowden said on The Intercept’s website.
Prime Minister Key had originally said that the new surveillance law wouldn’t lead to a radical overhaul of how the GCSB conducted its mission. In anticipation of the leaked documents, however, Key recently said that a mass surveillance program had been developed but that he had stopped it from being implemented. The program “never got off the ground,” Key told reporters.
Read the full story at The Diplomat