Key plays spy agency cards close to chest
Prime Minister John Key promises to resign if there’s proof of mass surveillance in New Zealand by the country’s spy agency. Tracy Watkins reports.
Prime Minister John Key says he won’t release documents to prove he’s not lying, until journalist Glenn Greenwald unveils his report.
On Saturday night it was reported Key was preparing to declassify documents that show New Zealand’s foreign spy agency considered mass surveillance, but the Government decided not to go ahead.
But yesterday Key said that while the papers exist – including a Cabinet paper – he wants to wait to hear what Greenwald has.
‘‘We’ll counter documents that come out. So, in the end, I can’t tell you the exact date. It’s incumbent on them [Greenwald] to release those documents . . . we are absolutely rock solid in our position.’’ Greenwald was invited to Auckland by Internet Party founder Kim Dotcom and will reveal his evidence at a ‘‘Moment of Truth’’ event tonight.
On Saturday, the American journalist said US National Security Agency documents, leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, showed the GCSB was carrying out widespread surveillance and cast doubt on how truthful the Government was about beefed-up spying laws, passed last year.
Key has been questioned repeatedly about mass surveillance and has said he would resign if it was taking place. Asked why he hadn’t produced the papers before Greenwald’s claims, Key said: ‘‘That’s because he is wrong. He is absolutely wrong . . . he said the GCSB is undertaking mass surveillance against New Zealanders. They are not. There is no ambiguity, no middle ground. I’m right, he’s wrong.’’
Key says there is a difference between mass surveillance and ‘‘widespread cyber protection.’’ However, it is still unclear what ‘‘bespoke’’ service GCSB offers to companies and how their initial plans for mass snooping would have stopped cyber attacks.
Key says he will declassify documents which show GCSB’s suggestion, and the proposal he brought to Cabinet, asking that the agency be allowed to prepare a business case.
Cabinet approved that the agency go and do work on the proposal and talk to other Five Eyes agencies, and Key says that is the documents Greenwald is holding. The conversations with overseas intelligence partners took place over the course of a year.
‘‘I am going to declassify the point that shows we decided not to do that, we rescinded, and I am probably going to declassify the actual programme that’s there . . . in the end I never actually got the business case and I never took the business case to Cabinet,’’ he insisted.
Key says he ‘‘understood the logic, why they would want the gold standard’’ but he deemed mass surveillance too broad. He put a hold on the work in March 2013.
He said he ‘‘didn’t need to’’ release the papers before now. ‘‘There’s nothing new here. I’d be pretty stupid to be making
Glenn Greenwald with Kim Dotcom at the Dotcom mansion. Prime Minister John Key is challenging Greenwald to release details he allegedly has on New Zealand’s spy agency. these things up 24 hours before he is going to release stuff . . . he releases things, we will prove that we are right.’’
Key has repeatedly refused to say if the GCSB has access to X Keyscore, the controversial spyware used by the NSA. He again refused to do so yesterday.
And he said that no matter what Greenwald produced, he would not talk about GCSB’s foreign intelligence activities.
He continued to attack Greenwald, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist as Dotcom’s ‘‘henchman’’ and derided their ‘‘sound and light show’’. ‘‘He got his costs paid for by Dotcom.’’