More questions on spy scandal
Two public servants and four police officers worked for a surveillance firm on the side.
The end came swiftly for Ross Butler. The chairman of the government-owned Southern Response, a company tasked with settling Christchurch insurance claims after the collapse of AMI, resigned in the narrow window of time between the release of a scathing report on spying by his company and other government agencies, and a phone call from his minister, Megan Woods, that he was surely dreading.
He was the first to fall on his sword after publication of the report on Tuesday. Time will tell if there are others.
The story started with media reports that surveillance firm Thompson & Clark was hired to keep tabs on earthquake victims in Christchurch between 2014 and 2016. Further revelations, including spying on Greenpeace members and other groups, led to a broadening of the inquiry.
There must have been a sense of deja vu in some quarters. Departmental bosses were warned in 2008 that paying for covert information risked bringing the state services into disrepute. That warning followed revelations that governmentowned Solid Energy had used Thompson & Clark to infiltrate environmental groups.
Some either chose to ignore such warnings or were perhaps unaware of the so-called ‘‘mission creep’’ from appropriate uses of surveillance into practices that State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes has described as ‘‘an affront to democracy’’. As well as Southern Response, the then Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), Crown Law and the Ministry of Social Development were all found to have breached the code of conduct for state services.
Several other agencies, including ACC, played within the rules, the inquiry found. While surveillance was not ‘‘widespread’’, no fewer than nine agencies have used external security consultants to keep an eye on the public since 2004, under both Labour and National governments. Two public servants and four police officers were found to have worked for a surveillance firm on the side, and other public servants were seen to have had too close a relationship with Thompson & Clark.
Groups considered ‘‘issue motivated’’ by the spies ranged from Greenpeace and the Green Party to the Mana Movement and iwi groups in Northland, the East Coast and Taranaki.
The inference that otherwise apolitical earthquake victims could be put in this category and seen as a security concern has shocked many observers, and not just in Christchurch.
As well as direct surveillance, Thompson & Clark accessed the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) motor vehicle register to put together its dossier on Greenpeace volunteers, assisted by a MAF employee who had access to the NZTA database. This failure to control information is also seen as a breach of the code of conduct. The inquiry added that Thompson & Clark’s creation of false social media accounts with access to closed discussion groups may also be considered a form of surveillance.
There are still more questions than answers. The public needs to know more about this scandal that is so contrary to the way we expect our public servants to behave on our behalf. The public wants to know who approved of this surveillance, why it was considered necessary in a democracy and, perhaps most important of all, how much was really known about it by the ministers in charge.