Edward Snowden reveals tapping of major Australia-New Zealand undersea telecommunications cable. Documents published by The Intercept website by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden show that New Zealand’s electronic spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), worked in 2012 and 2013 to create a mass metadata surveillance system based on covert access to the Southern Cross undersea cable network. Top secret documents provided by Mr Snowden show that the GCSB, with ongoing cooperation from the US National Security Agency, implemented Phase I of a mass surveillance program code-named “Speargun” at some time in 2012 or early 2013. “Speargun” involved the covert installation of “cable access” equipment connected to New Zealand’s main undersea cable link, the Southern Cross Cable, which carries internet traffic between Australia, New Zealand and North America. Upon completion of the first stage, Speargun moved to Phase II, under which “metadata probes” were to be inserted into those cables. The leaked NSA documents note that the first such metadata probe was scheduled for installation in “mid-2013″. Surveillance probes of this sort are used by NSA and its “5-eyes” partners including the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) to tap into high capacity fibre-optic communication cables, enabling them to extract vast flows of data including the dates, times, senders, and recipients of emails, phone calls, as well as the actual content of communications as required. ■ Prime Minister John Key denies mass surveillance exists, however Mr Snowden explained that “at the NSA, I routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in my work with a mass surveillance tool we share with GCSB, called ‘X-Keyscore”. He further observed that “the GCSB provides mass surveillance data into X-KEYSCORE. They also provide access to the communications of millions of New Zealanders to the NSA at facilities such as the GCSB facility in Waihopai, and the Prime Minister is personally aware of this fact.” Mr Key responded quickly to the latest disclosures, claiming that “there is not, and never has been, mass surveillance of New Zealanders undertaken by the GCSB”. These latest disclosures from top secret documents leaked by Mr Snowden come in the context of the final stages of New Zealand’s election campaign where New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has been under pressure to explain the extent of GCSB’s surveillance activities Mr Snowden, in a post for The Intercept, also published on Monday, has accused Prime Minster Key of misleading the New Zealand public about GCSB’s role in mass surveillance. “The Prime Minister’s claim to the public, that ‘there is no and there never has been any mass surveillance’, is false,” the former NSA analyst wrote. “The GCSB, whose operations he is responsible for, is directly involved in the untargetted, bulk interception and algorithmic analysis of private communications sent via internet, satellite, radio, and phone networks.” The New Zealand Prime Minister said he would not discuss the X-Keyscore program, saying “we don’t discuss the specific programmes the GCSB may, or may not use”. wearechange.org/edward-snowden-reveals-tapping-major-australia-new-zealand-undersea-telecommunications-cable/
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 15:37:03 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015