John Key is getting tied up in his own statements

Sep 17, 2014 13:56 GMT  ·  By
John Key says he's sure Snowden was truthful, but denied his govt part in the spying
   John Key says he's sure Snowden was truthful, but denied his govt part in the spying

Following the “Moment of Truth” event from Monday, when Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Kim Dotcom and Glenn Greenwald talked about how New Zealand’s government is spying on its own people, Prime Minister John Key has said that he can't be absolutely sure that New Zealanders aren’t being spied on, but rejected the idea of his government being a part of it.

The Prime Minister offered some contradictory statements. On the one hand, he says that he is sure that it’s absolutely true that Edward Snowden was telling the truth and that he did have the capacity to see information about citizens from New Zealand when he was working for the NSA, making it sound as if he did have knowledge about this.

On the other hand, he rebuked the idea that any of the data going into NSA’s data centers was coming from surveillance programs run by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).

This statement contradicts the pact between the New Zealand’s intelligence agency and the other members of the Five Eyes – the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada – where these nations swear not to spy on each other.

“That's not true, we're not collecting wholesale information. We don't have the capability for mass surveillance,” said the Prime Minister, referring to the statement Snowden made regarding the GCSB’s contribution to the metadata trove at the NSA.

XKeyscore files tell a different story

What’s interesting, however, is that the documents from the NSA stockpile state, “GCSB’s cable access program SPEARGUN Phase 1, awaiting new GSCB Act expected July 2013; first metadata probe mid 2013.” Later on, it states that the “partner cable access program achieved Phase 1.”

Despite all the evidence, and the fact that the “GSCB Act” mentioned in the document was actually passed last year and largely considered to be a way for the government to give the GCSB even more powers to spy on New Zealanders, Prime Minister Key continues to deny knowing anything about this issue.

According Snowden and the files he took from the NSA, agents within the intelligence agency could, at any time, look through data from New Zealand, or any other Five Eyes member state. The only thing keeping the information out of their queries was a checkbox.

The whistleblower has stated that when you made a search for some information or another, you’d do your best to keep that data out of searches. But when the results weren’t what you were expecting, then the checkbox was cleared and all information was served.