CDR: NZ: Sweeping powers for spy agencies

[An Metet]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/inl/print/0,1103,460236a10,FF.html 

29 OCTOBER 2000

Police and government spy agencies are pushing for major new surveillance powers - including the ability to intercept e-mails. 

In a move the Council for Civil Liberties labels a "major and disturbing intrusion" new surveillance laws are being planned which will allow police and intelligence agencies to hack covertly into home computers and intercept email and other electronic communication. 

Researcher and author Nicky Hager, says the proposed legislation strongly resembles the British Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act passed amid huge controversy three months ago. 

But he says unlike the British experience, the New Zealand legislation is being slipped through in stages, as extensions of present laws. The first is to be tabled in parliament in about 10 days. 

The laws were devised under the National government and can be traced back to a push by the FBI in the United States for standardised spy systems to intercept mobile phones and emails. 

The changes are now being promoted by Associate Justice Minister Paul Swain, and would also impose "requirements" on Internet service providers and phone companies to co-operate with intelligence agencies and police and install systems to assist spying on their customers. 

Hager, whose 1996 book on the global Echelon surveillance network prompted a year-long investigation by the European parliament, said the public had a right to demand proof that the new intrusive powers were so crucial that individuals had to give up privacy and freedoms. 

He said the way the changes were being introduced, piecemeal and in secret, was "a model of bad government". 

The first legislation expands the interception powers of the police and the Government Communications Security Bureau to cover all forms of electronic communications (including email, faxes and text messaging) and, for the Security Intelligence Service as well, to cover hacking into computer systems to view and copy people's files. 

This would be achieved by amending the Crimes Act to make it illegal to intercept emails or hack into computers - and then exempting all the intelligence and law enforcement agencies from the new law. 

The legislation will also increase the status of the GCSB, moving its existing powers into the Crimes Act. 

The other half of the plan is changes to the Telecommunications Act, requiring telephone companies to make systems "interceptable". 

Hager says New Zealand officials secretly agreed to implement the surveillance changes after attending a meeting at the FBI headquarters in Quantico, south of Washington DC, in 1993. 

Swain says the driving force of the law changes is the wish to protect privacy because there is no legislation to say "wandering into someone's internal communications system is illegal". 

The exemptions for the government agencies came later, he said.