By Helen Clark
Revelations emerge that New Zealand has been spying on friendly neighbors.
On Wednesday the New Zealand Heraldworking with the Intercept website revealed that New Zealand has been spying on many of its Pacific neighbors and passing vast troves of the collected information straight along to the United State’s National Security Agency. The allegations come from documents released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. This is part of the government’s work with the “Five Eyes,” alliance, which also comprises the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.
Working from its Waihopai base on New Zealand’s South Island, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) “hoovered up” large amounts of data from many Pacific nations and overseas French territories, all on friendly terms with New Zealand. The data was later shared through the XKEYSCORE NSA surveillance system and included chats, messages, emails and browsing sessions: all metadata, essentially.
“The Waihopai base focuses on gathering data and communications from another source – vacuuming them up as they are being transmitted through the air between satellites,” says the Intercept. Officials, politicians, NGOs, and government agencies were some of those routinely monitored.
That nations spy on one another might be cause for public diplomatic contretemps, but tacitly understood to occur. Similar revelations of Australia’s spying on Indonesia’s politicians and then President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (the revealed documents bear the motto in the bottom right corner “Reveal their secrets — protect our own”) caused huge friction between the two nations, whilst earlier reports of Chinese spying on Australia were dealt with more quietly.
Read the full story at The Diplomat