The Kiwi elections were supposed to be a run in the park for the ruling National Party, however it seems that Edward Snowden has managed to create a last minute.
Snowden and Kim Dotcom have joined hands and waded into New Zealand alleging prime minister John Key has told fibs about his government's involvement with the NSA spying. Snowden has said that when he worked at the NSA he had spied on New Zealand.
Prime minister John Key has insisted during the election campaign that New Zealand's government has not conducted mass surveillance of its people. Key is essentially a populist with very few policies other than looking good. However Snowden claims New Zealand's government is up to its neck in the NSA's activities.
He said that any statement that mass surveillance is not performed in New Zealand, or that the internet communications are not comprehensively intercepted and monitored, or that this is not intentionally and actively abetted by the GCSB, is categorically false. Snowden also says that when using the XKEYSCORE tool offers its users a "Five Eyes Defeat" button that gives analysts the option to exclude searches from data drawn from the five-way intelligence alliance involving the US, U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
New Zealanders needed to think why analysts have a checkbox on a top secret system that hides the results of mass surveillance in New Zealand if there is no mass surveillance in New Zealand, Snowden said. To make matters worse for Key an email from the movie studios has turned up which implied that Key allowed Dotcom to settle in the country because it would make it easier for the US to extradite him. The email comes from Warner's Kevin Tsujihara to Mikael Ellis of the MPAA.
Hack Glenn Greenwald has also detailing how the Kiwi government engaged in mass surveillance through its Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). The GCSB commenced work to implement a mass metadata surveillance system in 2012 and 2013, a project which Key insisted he killed off before it started. But top secret documents provided by the whistleblower demonstrate that the GCSB, with ongoing NSA cooperation, implemented Phase I of the mass surveillance program code-named 'Speargun' at some point in 2012 or early 2013.
“Speargun” involved the covert installation of 'cable access' equipment, which appears to refer to surveillance of the country’s main undersea cable link, the Southern Cross cable. This cable carries the vast majority of internet traffic between New Zealand and the rest of the world, and mass collection from it would mark the greatest expansion of GCSB spying activities in decades.
Key has been placed on the defensive and released four cabinet papershe says disproves the allegation of a cable tap and mass surveillance efforts.
It is unlikely that the revelations will have any impact on the election. The Internet Party run by Kim Dotcom and its allied Mana Party are on 3.5 per cent in opinion polls and any more votes is a bonus for them.
