filesharing is terrism

Eugen Leitl eugen@leitl.org
Fri Aug 23 09:45:25 PDT 2013


http://www.itnews.com.au/News/354407,nz-police-affidavits-show-use-of-prism-for-surveillance.aspx

NZ police affidavits show use of PRISM for surveillance

By Juha Saarinen on Aug 23, 2013 5:46 AM (20 hours ago) 

Filed under Security
 
Police affidavits related to the raid on Kim Dotcom's Mega mansion appear to
show that New Zealand police and spy agencies are able to tap directly into
United States surveillance systems such as PRISM to capture email and other
traffic.

The discovery was made by blogger Keith Ng who wrote on his On Point blog
that the Organised and Financial Crime Agency New Zealand (OFCANZ) requested
assistance from the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), the
country's signals intelligence unit, which is charge of surveilling the
Pacific region under the Five-Eyes agreement.

A list of so-called selectors or search terms were provided to GCSB by the
police [PDF, redacted] for the surveillance of emails and other data traffic
generated by Dotcom and his Megaupload associates.

'Selectors' is the term used for the National Security Agency (NSA) XKEYSCORE
categorisation system that Australia and New Zealand contribute to and which
was leaked by Edward Snowden as part of his series of PRISM revelations.

Some "selectors of interest" have been redacted out, but others such as Kim
Dotcom's email addresses, the mail proxy server used for some of the accounts
and websites, remain in the documents.

Megaupload co-founders Bram van der Kolk and Sven Ecthernach was were also
targeted for electronic surveillance, ditto Dotcom's wife Mona.

Dotcom's mansion was raided by NZ police last year for crimes related to
online piracy, based on indictments filed in the US.

One note on the reports generated from the surveillance points to the system
used capturing real-time traffic.

Several of the documents are classified as "CONFIDENTIAL COMINT/NEW ZEALAND
EYES ONLY" with one being marked as "SECRET/COMINT/REL TO NZL, AUS, CAN, GBR,
USA".

The spying on Dotcom, his wife and van der Kolk was deemed to be illegal as
all three are residents of New Zealand and the GCSB is precluded by current
law from intercepting their communications.

In the United States, declassified government documents have been released to
the Electronic Frontier Fourndation that show the NSA operates an
eavesdropping program that has direct access to internet communications.

The documents are part of a statement by the US Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court (FISC) which berates the NSA for misleading the tribunal
on the extent of domestic spying on innocent people, saying such collection
was unconstitutional.

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