PM downplays spy boost
The prime minister is downplaying talk of mass surveillance as attention turns to whether New Zealand’s security agencies could have foreseen and prevented the Christchurch terror attack, which killed 50 Muslims.
Jacinda Ardern has indicated a reluctance to entertain any wholesale strengthening of the agencies’ power and capabilities.
Instead, she suggested an investigation into how they might have prevented the shocking attack could be more likely to turn up answers around how existing resources could have been more appropriately used.
On Monday, Ardern announced a royal commission of inquiry into the attacks. While details of the terms of reference and the makeup of the inquiry were yet to be decided, she said it would look into the role of all security agencies in the leadup to the March 15 attack.
Speaking to Stuff yesterday, Ardern said she was not setting any expectations on the findings of the impending royal commission, particularly related to spying.
‘‘Obviously, I am privy to the conversations that I have directly with our agencies, some of that I’ve shared in response to questions over whether or not our New Zealand SIS were looking at Right-wing violent extremists, for instance.’’
It comes after National Party leader Simon Bridges called on the Government to revisit Project Speargun – a reportedly defunct spying capability that the Government, under former prime minister John Key, walked away from.
Ardern, however, questioned whether that view was held amongst the wider National caucus.
‘‘I’ve actually heard members of the Opposition say almost the opposite as well. I think what we need to do needs to be evidence-based.’’
The independent view of a royal commission would answer some of those questions, ‘‘which I haven’t heard being around the general issue of powers’’.
‘‘I’ve heard more questions over whether or not the resource our intelligence community have, whether or not it was rightly applied in the right areas,’’ Ardern said.
But she called for caution in characterising Project Speargun as an exercise in mass surveillance.
It emerged throughout the course of the 2014 election campaign that the external spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), had toyed with the idea of implementing a project it confirmed was codenamed Speargun.
That was the first iteration of a programme in a suite of cyberdefence projects that the GCSB was investigating at the time.
Speargun was eventually abandoned, the GCSB went ahead with a programme now widely known as Cortex – high-level protection provided to companies and organisations ‘‘of national significance’’ against malware and hacking.
The involvement of high-profile United States journalist Glenn Greenwald and American National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden during the so-called ‘‘moment of truth’’ in the 2014 election campaign forced Key into a U-turn on denials that Speargun existed.
But in rejecting the duo’s claims that the GCSB was conducting widespread mass surveillance on behalf of the US, Key appeared to confirm Speargun was a ‘‘cable access’’ programme that he ordered abandoned as he realised there was too much scope for misuse or the perception of misuse.