PM releases declassified docs, says they 'set the record straight'

RAW DATA: Timeline and declassified documents released by Prime Minister John Key this afternoon.

Documents

Document one (PDF)

Document two (PDF)

Document three (PDF)

Document four (PDF)

Timeline

3 April 2012 - Cabinet Minute (PDF3) shows Cabinet asks for business case on cyber security protection initiative.

September 2012 - It becomes clear there are issues with the GCSB’s surveillance of Mr Dotcom.

After this Rebecca Kitteridge is called in, problems with the legal framework and internal issues in the GCSB are identified through reviews.

March 2013 - PM tells GCSB not to bring business case forward. Informs GCSB it is too broad. Budget contingency funding will be rolled over and used for something else in cyber security.

September 2013 – Cabinet Minute (PDF2) shows formal rescinding of request for business case and notice of new, narrower project. The business case had been known only as initiative 7418 through the Budget process because of its classification.

July 2014 - Cabinet agrees to Cortex, a narrower cyber security programme. (Cab paper and minute PDF 1 and PDF4)

Prime Minister John Key has released declassified documents (above) to refute claims by American journalist Glen Greenwald concerning the operations of the Government Communications Security Bureau.

Greenwald released a story this evening on The Intercept website entitled 'New Zealand launched mass surveillance project while publicly denying it', just ahead of tonight's Moment of Truth event organised by Internet Party founder Kim Dotcom at the Auckland Town Hall.

Greenwald's story said New Zealand's spy agency, the GCSB, worked in 2012 and 2013 to implement a mass metadata surveillance system as top government officials publicly insisted no such programme was being planned and would not be legally permitted.

It said documents provided by fugitive spying whistleblower Edward Snowden show that the New Zealand 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 programme that appeared designed to collect information about New Zealanders' communications.

Snowden in a post for The Intercept published today, accused Key of misleading the public about GCSB's role in mass surveillance.

"The Prime Minister's claim to the public, that 'there is not and there never has been any mass surveillance', is false," the former National Security Agency analyst wrote. "The GCSB, whose operations he is responsible for, is directly involved in the untargeted, bulk interception and algorithmic analysis of private communications sent via internet, satellite, radio and phone networks."

He said while at the NSA he routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in his work with a mass surveillance tool shared with the GCSB, called X Keyscore. It searches for keywords and phrases that justify opening the metadata extracted from cyber messages.

There's little new in the story Greenwald has published today as he had already stated that the GCSB contributed large amounts of metadata on New Zealanders to the X-Keyscore database. The Five Eyes programme also involves Australia, Canada, the UK and the US and was first  documented by activist and journalist Nicky Hager in his 1996 book, Secret Power.

The top secret documents provided by Snowden apparently show that the GCSB with ongoing NSA cooperation, implemented phase 1 of the mass surveillance programme codenamed 'Speargun' at some point in 2012 or early 2013. Speargun involved the covert installation of cable access equipment - an apparent reference to surveillance of the country's main undersea cable, the Southern Cross cable, which carries most of the country's internet traffic to the rest of the world.

After that was completed Greenwald claims in today's article that Speargun moved to phase two, under which "metadata probes" were to be inserted into those cables. The NSA documents note that the first such metadata probe was scheduled for mid-2013. "The technique is almost by definition a form of mass surveillance; metadata is relatively useless for intelligence purposes without a massive amount of similar data to analyze it against and trace connections through," Greenwald said.

Southern Cross Cable scotched the claim, saying its cables linking New Zealand to Australia, the Pacific and the US were untouched and that no equipment was installed in either the cables themselves or the landing stations that could result in mass interception of communications.

“I can tell you quite categorically there is no facility by the NSA, the GCSB or anyone else on the Southern Cross cable network,” Southern Cross chief executive Anthony Briscoe said in a statement. "I can give you absolute assurances from Southern Cross – and me as a Kiwi – that there are no sites anywhere on the Southern Cross network that have to do with interception or anything else the NSA or GCSB might want to do."

Key has released  the declassified documents to correct what he dubbed "misinformation" put in the public domain about the GCSB.

"There is not, and never has been, mass surveillance of New Zealanders undertaken by the GCSB."

Regarding X Keyscore, he said he wouldn't discuss specific programmes the GCSB may or may not use, but he said the agency doesn't collect mass metadata on New Zealanders and is therefore, not contributing such data to anything or anyone.

"I am setting the record straight tonight because I believe New Zealanders deserve better than gettting half a story, embellished for dramatic effect and political gain, and based on incomplete information."

The impending release of the NSA files from Snowden forced the Government to admit last week that its foreign spy agency had been gearing up for mass surveillance. Key admitted that the GCSB had been working on a business study for a form of mass cyber protection for more than a year following cyber attacks on several large New Zealand companies. He said he stopped the work in March 2013 after an internal review uncovered a number of problems at the agency. The review by Rebecca Kitteridge was sparked when illegal surveillance of Dotcom came to light in September 2012. Her report found a further 88 Kiwis were unlawfully snooped on over a decade.

Key later said Greenwald’s documents might show New Zealand had been spying on some of its trading partners. 

The papers Key released tonight show the GCSB considered a variety of options for cyber security and presented an initial range to Cabinet for consideration in 2012. While the Cabinet initially expressed an interest in the agency developing a future business case for the strongest form of protection for the public and private sectors, that decision was later revoked.

"The business case for the highest form of protection was never completed or presented to Cabinet and never approved. Put simply, it never happened," Key said.

In September last year a Cabinet minute formally rescinded the request for a business case and the introduction of a new, narrower project named Cortex. That narrower programme was approved by Cabinet in July this year. All costings relating to the various cyber security options, including the one introduced, had been redacted in the documents Key released.

Greenwald's article said the documents indicate that Speargun was not just an idea that stalled at the discussion stage. Critically, Greenwald said, the NSA documents note in more than one place that completion of Speargun was impeded by one obstacle, the need to enact a new spying law that would allow the GCSB, for the first time, to spy on its own citizens as well as legal residents of the country.

The legislation eventually passed by National was said to merely provide oversight and to clarify that targeted domestic surveillance which had long been carried out by the agency was legal.

Before tonight’s reveal Key resorted to accusing Greenwald of trying to hijack this weekend’s election by doing Dotcom’s bidding before New Zealanders went to the polls. Greenwald's article today adds the rider that his travel expenses to New Zealand were paid for by the Internet Party and it had agreed to donate his speaking fee to a designated charity.

What do you think? How do you rate the moment of truth? Click here to vote in our subscriber-only business pulse poll.