Drop GCSB bill, Dunne urged

PETER DUNNE should withdraw his support for the prime minister’s controversial GCSB Bill in the wake of the widening spy scandal, Labour leader David Shearer says.

On Friday, the Government was forced to reveal unprecedented new privacy breaches in the spy scandal, showing the full contents of email exchanges between former minister Peter Dunne and Fairfax reporter Andrea Vance were sent to the Henry inquiry without permission, along with Vance’s phone logs.

Dunne’s vote is vital in ensuring John Key’s GCSB Bill becomes law, but yesterday Shearer said Dunne should pull his support in light of the explosive email revelations.

‘‘I find it extraordinary that he would still support the bill given the Government has actually gone behind his back and tried to access his emails.

‘‘What this issue demonstrates is that with all of the responsibility for oversight [of the GCSB] resting with John Key, it gives us no confidence that he will be somebody to trust to run the GCSB.

‘‘ If Peter Dunne can’t would be very surprised.’’

But Dunne is sticking to his guns, yesterday saying the two issues were unrelated and he will vote for the bill.

‘‘Saying that the GCSB Bill should not be passed because of this is like saying that because some people jaywalk, we shouldn’t build more motorways.’’

The saga has dogged the Government all year. It began when Key ordered the so- called Henry inquiry into the leaking to Vance of the dam-

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I There is a chilling warning in the latest revelations about the now infamous Henry inquiry.

What the Government’s dump of more than 130 pages of emails from the inquiry reveal is a culture within officialdom where the imprimatur of the prime minister is apparently all that’s required to trawl through someone’s phone records and private emails.

In the course of its snooping on Fairfax journalist Andrea Vance and politician Peter Dunne in pursuit of a government leaker, the Henry inquiry was handed a wealth of private information, including their phone records and emails.

The inquiry piously protests that in both cases the records were destroyed unread but that is not the full story.

If the emails weren’t read it was only because of a technical glitch; the inquiry certainly sought them, and clearly ning Kitteridge report on the workings of the GCSB. Commissioned in the wake of the Kim Dotcom saga, the report found 88 cases in which the agency might have spied unlawfully on New Zealanders.

The inquiry fingered Dunne as

the intended reading them. The document trail shows that on May 20 the Henry inquiry team requested how long it would take for emails to be pulled from Parliament’s server and ‘‘if those emails were from ministers whether that presented any issues’’. It seems there was no issue because a few hours later the inquiry emailed Parliamentary Service with a request for emails between Dunne and Vance, listed by day.

On May 22 the inquiry received the emails with a note: ‘‘The emails are in separate PST files for each mailbox.’’ That appears to have been at around 10.50am. Later that day, Parliamentary Service urgently recalled the email file, presumably after it realised Dunne had not given his permission.

Yet the following day the inquiry was still seeking a fix to the problem which prevented it from opening the DunneVance emails as an attachment.

According to the inquiry, the emails were never opened, but that was only out of consideration to Dunne’s position as a government minister. There was no thought given to seeking Vance’s permission. Anyway, the inquiry team were only at the end of the timeline. There is no doubt that Parliamentary Service and its contractors trawled through both sets of records, phones and emails. likely leaker, and he resigned as revenue minister rather than hand over emails between himself and Vance.

On Friday, it was revealed that the inquiry had accessed the pair’s emails and Vance’s phone logs, without permission. It had earlier also accessed

The staggering point about the Henry inquiry is that it had no special powers of inquiry and there was no issue of criminality – the leak was mainly of nuisance value, because it forced the Government to release a report on illegal spying by the Government Communications Security Bureau a few days early.

That made it a very different beast to the Paula Rebstock-led inquiry into leaked Ministry of Foreign Affairs papers. Rebstock had huge powers to gather information and interrogate people under oath.

Ironically, that point was noted by David Henry in his report to the Government; he observed that his lack of powers hadn’t hindered him in his pursuit of information. Now we know why. Whatever he asked for he got.

It would be easy to write off the tally of implausible stories as a Keystone Cops-style pursuit. But the implications are too sinister to laugh off.

The Government already directs huge resources into thwarting the media, with an army of highly paid consultants massaging the message and burying embarrassment.

Officialdom takes its cue from the top – and the cavalier disregard they’ve shown toward the confidentiality of journalist’s sources and the freedom of the press should worry everyone. Vance’s swipe card records to track her movements around Parliament the day before her story was published.

Key’s GCSB Bill, which will make it easier for our intelligence services to spy on New Zealanders, looked unlikely to pass until Dunne gave it his support in return for amendments he says will tighten oversight. But the bill remains unpopular, with protest marches held across the country.

Dunne said while he felt let down by the Henry inquiry’s invasion of his privacy, he said any such surveillance by the GCSB would be ‘‘subject to a warrant and need sign-off’’.

‘‘The irony in this case is that investigations by the Henry inquiry had no such approval process. The issue about protection of private information, freedom of movement, the standards that apply to an inquiry that had no formal investigative power . . . that is a very serious issue indeed. That’s why we need the Parliamentary Privileges Committee inquiry, to ensure this never happens again.’’

Dunne said he had been in touch with Vance since the news emerged.

‘‘I have had some contact with her and seen some of the things she has said. I fully understand how she might be feeling, I don’t have dissimilar feelings myself. The level of intrusion I think has been quite inappropriate in both cases.’’

Shearer said the public should have ‘‘ huge disquiet’’ about the developments, and called on Key to take responsibility for the repeated breaches.

‘‘ He should stand up and say ‘I screwed up, this should never have happened’.’’

Dunne is taking legal advice over the breaches, and may lay a complaint with the privacy commissioner. Fairfax has already done that over Vance’s treatment.