Public waits for truth on spy agency

Who is bamboozling who? Prime Minister John Key may or may not be knocking down a straw man over the claim that the Government Communications Security Bureau conducted mass surveillance on New Zealanders.

Till we see the leaked documents at the centre of claims by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald that New Zealanders were misled by the Government over mass surveillance we can’t know for sure whether he and Key are even talking about the same thing.

But for now Key is utterly convinced he knows what Greenwald has and is busily rubbishing him as ‘‘Dotcom’s little henchman’’.

Some of Key’s ministers have gone even further, accusing Greenwald of half baked conspiracy theories and being part of a left wing plot. That is stronger rhetoric than most other foreign leaders have adopted over the explosive revelations from Greenwald and former defence contractor Edward Snowden.

But what Key has so far failed to address is his Government’s failure to front up a year ago to the fact the GCSB was considering tools that would enable it to expand its surveillance activities at the time the country was embroiled in a debate about the extent of its powers. Key now says that the business case never flew and he put a stop to it.

He stands by his repeated assurances that the GCSB has never been engaged in mass surveillance on New Zealanders and says he junked the business case for wider powers because he was worried that they were too invasive.

But what seems clear from Key’s comments is that at very the time the GCSB was embroiled in allegations it had spied illegally on Kiwis for years, it viewed the law change clarifying its powers as an opportunity to enhance those powers, rather than curb them.

It’s been left to Greenwald to shed more light on that discussion than anything the prime minister or any of his ministers bothered to provide to New Zealanders at the time.

The timing of Greenwald’s trip down under five days out from an election may be cynical - but it can hardly be argued that it is not also in the public interest.

Greenwald’s other likely revelations about the extent to which New Zealand has been spying on its neighbours, both friendly and hostile, are likely to be drowned out. The fallout from those revelations is unlikely to harm National’s election chances. The last Labour government is likely to be just as complicit as National in such activities. But the diplomatic implications could be far reaching. Key’s response will have to be more nuanced than to label Greenwald ‘‘Dotcom’s little henchman’’.