GCSB responses ‘‘nonsensical’’

THE Government Communication and Security Bureau denies it has changed its policy to issue a blanket refusal to anyone who asks if they are among the 88 New Zealanders illegally spied upon – despite admitting it in a letter.

People who have asked the spy agency if they are among the 88 identified by a government report have been met with a ‘‘neither confirm nor deny’’ response, which the Green Party says is a ‘‘completely inadequate’’ given the government’s conclusion GCSB had acted illegally.

Kate Dewes and Rob Green, former Green MP Keith Locke and Auckland University law professor Jane Kelsey are among those who have asked if they are among the 88. All were rebuffed. Dewes and Locke have lodged formal complaints with the Privacy Commissioner.

Dewes asked the GCSB in June 2012 if it held a file on her and was told it did not. She wrote again this May, after the revelations about the 88, to ask the same question. In reply, GCSB director Ian Fletcher wrote: ‘‘Since the response to your last request (dated 20 June 2012), GCSB has changed its policy on responding to requests. As such . . . GCSB can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of the information requested.’’

Despite Fletcher’s apparent admission, a spokesman denied any policy change or that all applicants were receiving the same reply: ‘‘Each response depends on the individual request. Requesters can ask for responses to be reviewed through the usual channels of the Ombudsman or the Privacy Commissioner, or through the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security.’’

Locke said first telling Dewes they had no file, then refusing to say even that was a ‘‘piece of bureaucratic idiocy’’. He hasn’t asked for his own file nor if he was currently being spied upon, but merely a yes-no as to whether he was among the 88. He says the ‘‘neither confirm nor deny’’ answer was thus ‘‘nonsensical’’.

Kelsey received a near-identical letter to Dewes on May 15. She said an appeal to the Privacy Commissioner would be a ‘‘waste of time’’ given the elongated process she went through in 1999 to secure a heavily-redacted version of her SIS file.

Green said he took GCSB’s rebuttals as a tacit confirmation he and Dewes were in the 88. ‘‘They will never say that they have [files] and we should not have any illusions about this process: it is a farce, pretending to be accountable when they are not.’’

Green Party intelligence spokesman Steffan Browning said the GCSB’s first reply to Dewes couldn’t be trusted, and ‘‘to now say ‘neither confirm nor deny’ is a meaningless statement - it’s inadequate.’’ The Privacy Commission and the SIS wouldn’t comment.