📸

Pacific and parts of Asia. As technology improved, so did the ability to use it for intercepting communications.

Developing that power became an increasing focus for the Five Eyes, encouraged by the US National Security Agency, the dominant partner in the grouping. It poured its military might into developing new techniques for capturing data on the internet — even testing new interception tools in New Zealand, according to one senior staffer. William Binney was a high-ranking NSA staff member who was involved in the design of the Echelon network. As the internet developed, he was drawn into working on the pursuit of the NSA's holy grail — a system which would intercept and analyse vast quantities of online data. In 2000, the NSA had developed ThinThread — a system that harvested data on a massive scale and used the patterns contained in it to highlight individuals of interest. US-based author Tim Shorrock wrote in 2013 that ThinThread was provided by the NSA to New Zealand for testing.

The sort of testing which was carried out would have been free of any law. Oddly, until 2003, the GCSB carried out its duties without any guiding legislation. District Court Court Judge David Harvey later wrote an essay arguing that laws passed at the time which made hacking illegal created the need for a law by which the GCSB could do it legally.

The legislation also included a clause which was the focus of debate in Parliament. Attorney General Michael Cullen told Parliament in 2001 there was concern among New Zealanders that they were the target of the GCSB. He told MPs: “I reiterate today that the Government Communications Security Bureau does not set out to intercept the communications of New Zealand citizens or permanent residents.”

The debate in Parliament veered back repeatedly to the privacy New Zealanders enjoyed and the infringements threatened by advances in technology. The final version of the law recognised the concerns, with a section banning the GCSB from spying on New Zealanders. It stated:

Neither the Director, nor an employee of the Bureau, nor a person acting on behalf of the Bureau may authorise or take any action for the purpose of intercepting the communications of a person (not being a foreign organisation or a foreign person) who is a New Zealand citizen or a permanent resident.

That was in 2003. In the years since, it emerged throughout 2013, the capabilities and power of the Five Eyes intelligence network had grown

165

📸