Slashdot Mirror
New Zealand Spied On Nearly Two Dozen Pacific Countries
An anonymous reader writes New documents from Edward Snowden indicate New Zealand undertook "full take" interception of communications from Pacific nations and forwarded the data to the NSA. The data, collected by New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau, was then fed into the NSA's XKeyscore search engine to allow analysts to trawl for intelligence. The New Zealand link helped flesh out the NSA's ambitions to intercept communications globally.
Is the general attitude of the public simply not giving a shit. This is currently front page news in the New Zealand Herald but it'll quickly be gone and forgotten, and nothing will change.
What is the deal with the general public's apathy when it comes to NSA/GCQH/GCSB/etc ?
Are we really at the point where it's too late to do anything about this and just admit defeat?
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Probably on the hunt for some Rugby talent.
Again.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Every government tries to spy on every other government. Don't be surprised by it. Don't be surprised when they get caught doing it. How many Israeli spies have the US caught in the last 30 years? And the US is suppose to be Israel's BFF.
The shock would be the ones not doing it.
They would have to be incompetent.
it's what they do. find stuff out about other countries that they don't want anyone else to know
Will gather intelligence to the best of it's ability.
Why is this so shocking?
Here you go
http://theaviationist.com/2014...
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Who actually cares, NZ has a population of about 4 million people. Scaaaaary.
It's not the people you have to worry about, it's the sheep.
On the other hand, having watched both Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles I wouldn't want to mess with a country that produced Peter Jackson.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Already two guys playing the "welp that's what they're supposed to do!" card. Very useful fallback when you can't use the tired old "We knew about this before Snowden!" line, huh?
Is this the first time we've gotten documentation of actual full take occurring? It's the first one I recall; if it's not, does anyone have a link to past reports?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Yes?
Every single time, like clockwork.
"This isn't new information!"
"Well they're a spy agency, what do you expect?"
"I don't care who reads all my text messages!"
Even though this isn't representative of what most users will post later on in time.
It's almost as if a bunch of people are employed to squat on Snowden threads and post the same old reheated bullshit!.. Oh wait, that's totally what's happening.
What were they looking for? A general weakness for wool products? The likelihood of spending lots of money on tickets to see Flight of the Conchords? Susceptible coastlines perfect for beaching wakas and unloading a bunch of All Blacks?
"Excuse me, do you speak English?"
"No."
Although I intensely dislike what New Zealand (where I live), if you live in New Zealand this is indeed not news. That NZ is part of 5 eyes is understood here by anyone that cares in the least. That there is equipment owned by the USA for spying on everyone else is also not news - The Waihopai Ploughsares incident - where activists damaged a spy dome was big news at the time (ie April 2008). Wikipedia even has a whole article on this spy base - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waihopai_Station and its public history.
Don't forget Braindead
No dragons, just Hobbits.
Every single time, like clockwork.
"This isn't new information!"
"Well they're a spy agency, what do you expect?"
"I don't care who reads all my text messages!"
Even though this isn't representative of what most users will post later on in time.
It's almost as if a bunch of people are employed to squat on Snowden threads and post the same old reheated bullshit!.. Oh wait, that's totally what's happening.
So... what do you think Intelligence IS?
Of course this is what spy agencies do, nobody disputes this. The point is that they are overdoing it, and that is dangerous.
And there is always a platoon of commenters that use the same worn-out arguments to muddy the discussion. Personally I'm not convinced these people are professionals rather than amateurs, but the distracting effect is there all the same.
Filthy little hobbitses!
NZ for 51st State!
Then I'd consider moving back there.
I remember reading Nicky Hagers book "Secret Power" that there was a major diplomatic incident in the 90's when New Zealand was caught spying deep inside the Japanese government.
Everybody who read Nicky Hager's book 'Secret Power' from 1996 pretty much knew since then, what not just New Zealand and Australia were doing in their corner of the world, but how the 'five eyes' in general operate. Snowden basically confirmed it directly from the source and filled in a lot of blanks, details and a more updated view, as far as that goes.
Rusty Crowe is bloody scary, have you seen him as Maximus in Gladiator?
Though these days he tries to pass himself off as New South Welsh, having lost his kiwi accent.
Can someone in the know explain how does this work? are new documents being leaked constantly or what? how is it that we see new stories like these so frequently?
If new documents are being leaked, by whom?
And NZ has been spying on the pacific at the behest of the US for years. .. Emails, Phone, Text etc .. the Prime Minister at the time ..
Remember Echelon? Dictionary Style search system, sifts through fax
looking for keywords. The penny was dropped I think in the 1980's by Robert Muldoon
that the Waihopai Spy Station {Satellite up-links etc} existed and its basic function.
Waihopai for those not familar with NZ, is at the top of the South Island in a picturesque farming sort of valley.
Tangimoana on the west coast of the south island is the radio spying version, operated since ww2 {approx}.
Waihopai I believe was paid for by the US at the time , all the information sifted by this station goes back to the NSA on the east coast of the US.
Much of it I would suspect NZ wouldn't even see
Hope the History is at least informative and from my memory is correct. .. our Aussy neighbours have an even bigger installation at Pine Gap. :)
Many NZ'ERS aren't surprised by any of these revelations, as we have known for many years now. Its not a matter of being blind and not caring.
Every country spy's really
Maybe you missed this:
"Top-secret documents appeared to show that the GCSB and NSA cooperated to implement Phase I of the surveillance program code named "Speargun", involving the installation of cable access equipment into the Southern Cross Cable, New Zealand's main cyberlink to the rest of the world"
The New Zealand spy agency spied on its own people for the NSA. That tap is NEW ZEALANDS main internet trunk, not some minor islands.
And it was a FULL TAKE they gave GCHQ and NSA access to. So they handed a foreign power total surveillance over New Zealanders internet access.
Or Black Sheep... The Weta Workshop was involved, though I'm not sure if Peter Jackson directly played a part. It's certainly in line with what we know he's capable of though (from his early work). ;)
Too much to publish at once.
Am shocked and horrified that the GCSB, a government department charged with spying on foreign governments was wasting their time by actually....... spying on foreign governments so......... not a secret they were doing their job.
sitting on top of barad-dur
"Muddy the discussion"? You mean like having two opposing viewpoints represented? Having an actual discussion instead of choir practice? Well, that's the problem isn't it? Far too many people are here for choir practice instead of discussion, and a lot of that "music" is pretty crappy given the varous claims about geeks and "superior" intellects. Too few people post correct information about this and related topics.
And your crack about "same worn-out arguments" cuts both ways. Or at least you would realize it if you have any genuine insight. The right answer doesn't change just because you're tired of reading it.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
fair trial.
He absolutely will if he comes back home. Then he will get a improper execution using the new drug cocktail that does not work well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I typing this while using my digital television with digital decoder that doesn't require a external power source, just the signal from the average size on an average size house antenna.
I'm sorry, but I don't have the intellect to see why replying to the allegation 'this spy agency is spying way too much' with 'yawn, we knew this', or 'spy agencies spy, what did you expect?' is a valuable contribution to the discussion. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that it is just a gaseous burp from an underbelly rather than intentional muddying of the discussion, but a helpful reply? Sorry, no, I don't see it.
Regarding facts, if you think the news item under discussion is in some way factually incorrect, feel free to contribute a correction. And no, the worn-out arguments are not equally divided between both sides of the discussion. There is a constant flow of new revelations about the spy agencies overstepping reasonable bounds, and that is exactly what is so disturbing.
It really should be a big deal. We still have major cred overseas as that tiny country with the balls to tell the yanks to fuck off with their nukes. They still haven't forgiven us for that. Yet here we are helping them damage our own reputation as a fair, fearless, and independent nation. I guess we don't need our reputation when negotiating trade deals with other countries anymore. Maybe if we grovel really hard the US will throw us some scraps instead. Look at Australia (six prime ministers no less) begging Indonesia to save the lives of two of it's citizens on death row, a year after Australia was revealed to have spied on Indonesias’ president on behalf of the US. We don't need that. Reputation matters.
I am really happy the jury acquitted the activists who sabotaged the Waihopai spy station. It shows we haven't gone completely limp yet.
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
1. Let's suppose they're not actually spying on you. But they collect everyone's data so they:
- Could actually be spying on every major journalist.
- Could actually be spying on politic opponents.
- Could actually be spying on opposing (not necesarilly bad or good, just opposing) governments.
Once you're in power, they can use parallel construction. Just release some anonymous pointers about corruption about opponents and hide for a latter time the bits about corruption of friends. (2 years ago we were wondering why NSA was spying on Petrobras. Maybe it's only a coincidence, yet the Petrobras scandal gained a lot of force in the last week before Brazil's elections)
2. They totally can do a lot of harm without reading your posts. There is just a thing as automated NLP, sentiment analysis and that shit. I once even saw one commercial offering that listed "Belief propragation analysis in social graphs". Think about identifying who's spreading those dangerous ideas in time. And they even had the dubious taste of using Chelsea Manning as the bad boy to identify. And these are commercial offerings ... the US military compound was traditionally many years ahead in technology than the commercial world, I'm not sure that still holds, but I haven's seen any indication to the contrary either.
"We still have major cred overseas as that tiny country with the balls to tell the yanks to fuck off with their nukes. They still haven't forgiven us for that"
NZ has been bending over backwards to please the USA for the last 15-20 years. Whatever credibility it might have as a result of "Truck off Fuckston" should have evaporated a long time ago.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry...
Care to tell me why the NSA cares about the por anyone looks at, if not to discredit them?