Spotlight on whether security secrets can be released for defence

A woman facing what appear to be terrorism-related allegations that led to her New Zealand passport being cancelled, might only ever know the ‘‘gist’’ of why it was done.

The woman, who was not named in a court decision on her case, had her passport cancelled in May 2016.

Her challenge to the Minister of Internal Affairs’ decision has sparked a procedural conundrum over how the High Court can receive classified security information that the woman is not allowed to see. Even the hearings about the process have been secret.

In a decision issued on Thursday, Justice Robert Dobson has laid down guidelines that mean she might not be able to see even information that comes from her, or is from a publicly available source.

There is no suggestion in the decision about what kind of information has led to the woman’s passport being cancelled but two examples the judge gave, which he was careful to say were not drawn from the facts, concerned terrorism.

At the time the first round of her case was decided in April 2017 at the High Court in Wellington she was living in Melbourne and was representing herself.

To the extent the grounds for cancelling her passport rely on classified security information the court received the information but neither the woman, nor her lawyer if she had one, would be able to see that. Instead the Crown can provide a summary of the security information, that the judge said should ‘‘to the greatest extent possible’’ convey the gist of the case against her so she could prepare a rebuttal.

If there is information that the Crown does not think should be included in the summary it can withdraw the information, rather than allow the woman to see it, but then it could no longer rely on that information to justify cancelling her passport.

The law used to cancel the passport concerns having a reasonably supported finding that a person is a danger to the security of New Zealand or another country. In the woman’s case it was previously indicated that the alleged danger was to the security of another country.

The court appointed a ‘‘special advocate’’, lawyer Ben Keith, to look at the security information and put forward any arguments that might help the woman’s case. He urged a stringent and sceptical approach to claims that information should be withheld.

But the judge decided that Parliament was clear that protection of information, was more important than the rights of individuals.