Nicky’s new powers
January 6th, 2010 at 4:41 pm by David FarrarIn the SST, a story from Nicky Hager had the headline:
NZ’s cyber spies win new powers
Like many, I wondered what law change had been quietly passed into law in late 2009, without us noticing.
NEW CYBER-MONITORING measures have been quietly introduced giving police and Security Intelligence Service (SIS) officers the power to monitor all aspects of someone’s online life.
The measures are the largest expansion of police and SIS surveillance capabilities for decades, and mean that all mobile calls and texts, email, internet surfing and online shopping, chatting and social networking can be monitored anywhere in New Zealand.
Oh my God. When did this happen? Actually back in 2004. Not exactly new.
And it is not giving the SIS and Police the power to monitor themselves – it gave them the power to get a warrant to get a telco or ISP intercept communications – just as they have had the power for many decades to get a warrant to have phone calls intercepted.
Now this doesn’t mean I necessarily support the 2004 law change. I’ve blogged a series of articles highlighting draconian provisions in the Search and Surveillance Bill before Parliament. Nicky’s article would have been more useful however in 2004, than in 2010.
Police and SIS must still obtain an interception warrant naming a person or place they want to monitor but, compared to the phone taps of the past, a single warrant now covers phone, email and all internet activity. It can even monitor a person’s location by detecting their mobile phone; all of this occurring almost instantaneously.
Police say in the year to June 2009, there were 68 interception warrant applications granted and 157 people prosecuted as a result of those interceptions.
What would be interesting is the details of those 68 warrants – were they for all Internet activity, or just some?
The measures are the consequence of a law, the 2004 Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Act, which gave internet and network companies until last year to install devices allowing automated access to internet and cellphone data.
Telecom, Vodafone and TelstraClear had earlier 2005 deadlines, and new cellphone provider 2degrees installed the interception equipment before launching last year.
So these “new” powers have actually been in place for four to five years, for 95% of the Internet population.
In an associated article, Hager says:
Not long ago, police and Security Intelligence Service (SIS) interception meant tapping your landline phone or bugging your kitchen. Now, under a new surveillance regime ushered in by the 2004 Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Act, a basic interception warrant also allows them access to all your emails, internet browsing, online shopping or dating, calls, texts and location for mobile phones, and much more – all delivered almost instantaneously to the surveillance agencies.
To catch other sorts of communications, including people using overseas-based email or other services, all the local communications networks are wired up as well, to monitor messages en route overseas.
Interception equipment built permanently into every segment of the country’s communications architecture will provide the sort of pervasive spying capability we normally associate with police states.
Now Hager is right in that all telcos and ISPs have to have the capability to intercept all Internet communications by a user, if presented with a warrant. However what is not made clear in the article is that the ISPs themselves do the intercepting, and forward the data onto the appropriate authority. The article almost implies that the Police/SIS/GCSB can merely push a switch remotely, and hey presto your data flows to them.
The law gave network companies five years to install the intercept capabilities and the five years was up last year. Many network companies dragged their feet about installing the new surveillance equipment, despite government subsidy of the cost. After four years of inactivity, a consultant with police and SIS ties attended the NZ Network Operators Group conference in Dunedin last year to read them the riot act.
Dean Pemberton, who had previously set up and run “lawful interception” equipment at TelstraClear, told the roomful of network specialists what “the agencies” expected from them and said the agencies expected them to install devices that could intercept data and forward it to the agencies “on a minute by minute basis”. If companies didn’t have this gear in place, they risked a $500,000 fine and “should get a lawyer”, he said.
This part of the article is rather misleading, and I can speak from first hand knowledge as I was at that conference when Dean spoke.
The first thing people should understand is that Dean is what I call an alpha geek 
He is one of the guys who built the Internet in New Zealand and he attends and presents almost every year without fail to the NZNOG Conference.
In 2008 he spoke of his experiences with the Interception Act requirements, and what you had to do to comply. I doubt a single person in the room saw this as Dean “laying down the law”, let alone the implication he was speaking on behalf of the SIS or Police. Dean was doing what he normally does – sharing his experiences with the technical community.
There’s some good research in Nicky’s article about how the FBI were a prime mover in the request for NZ to have the interception capability, and it is true many NZers will be unaware of the interception capability. However the article would have been a lot more useful in 2004 when the law was being considered, or in 2005 when the big telcos implemented it.
Next I await a story about how the Post Office has been given new powers to intercept and read postcards
January 6th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
So big brother can decide you’re a threat on the internet and flick the interception switch? Data flow via Christchurch Central or some spook cave and to hell with the Privacy Act! Oh well, I guess the authorities know best, however this monitoring system does create a murky climate to question such decisions. Mistakes always precede the discovery of the truth. Who is watching them?
Vote:January 6th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Hang on.
Wasn’t Helen Clark the Minister of SIS in 2004?
And hang on hang on, weren’t we in, then, a “benign strategic environment”?
January 6th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
The telco’s and ISP’s don’t really mind having to do this interception work for the State as it is fully chargeable, in fact they charge what they like and the Govt. agency has no choice but to pay up.
It can be big money as it can involve having to pay for leased circuits from the exchange to the the agency doing the monitoring.
Quite a few years ago someone suspected their ‘phone was being tapped by the State so they stopped paying their phone bill but the phone never did get cut off until many many months later!
Vote:January 6th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
So it’s ok for Nicky Hager to receive stolen National e-mails, but when the SIS do it (legitimately and legally) for criminal purposes he yells and screams???
January 6th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
I didn’t think Nicky’s suggestion that the FBI were the driving force in compelling us and the Europeans to adopt more sweeping interception powers to be that convincing. The Europeans have fewer restrictions on what they can intercept in theory and when Ashcroft was meeting his European Counterparts in the aftermath of 9/11, there was a comment made to the effect that the meeting wasn’t a one way street, the Europeans have asked for powers that made the Americans hesitate…
Vote:January 6th, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Which is why, when working on case research, I encrypt any email that is of even mild importance, encrypt my hard drives, never discuss anything confidential on the phone and make extensive use of couriers to hand-deliver documents to the recipient.
One particularly senior barrister with whom I work refuses to accept anything that isn’t faxed (my argument is that they can parallel your fax line easily enough and simply get a copy of everything sent and received) based on the prosecution’s apparent psychic abilities that have been accidentally let slip at many a trial. He believes they have a standing intercept on his phone, emails etc.
As for the “oh, but they have to get a warrant” argument, these are generally handed out like candy by relatively low-level judicial officers (JPs, registrars, maybe a judge on occasion) ex parte, so the process is a joke.
Vote:January 6th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Re your last paragraph, not wanting to let the truth get in the way eh Rex? Below is text copied and pasted from the SIS website (process doesn’t look like the joke you claim it is):
Domestic warrants
When an interception warrant relates to a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident, the Minister in Charge of the Service and also the Commissioner of Security Warrants (who must be a retired High Court Judge) must both agree to the operation. If they are both satisfied, they jointly issue the warrant.
The Commissioner of Security Warrants is currently Sir John Jeffries.
Foreign warrants
If an interception warrant relates to obtaining information about foreign capabilities, intentions or activities, the Minister in Charge is required to consult with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade before making a decision on whether to issue the warrant.
Warrant operations follow detailed procedures. These are designed to ensure that all legal requirements are complied with.
Vote:January 6th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
drhill – good call!
rex – was starting to think you were a paranoid freakshow, till i read your post again and saw “case research”.
Vote:January 6th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Kiwireader – you’re largely right, but also mistaken. The SIS website explains the process for the SIS obtaining interception warrants. There is a different process for police to obtain their (somewhat different) interception warrants. But you are right that it involves a higher level of scrutiny that does an ordinary search warrant.
Vote:January 6th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
I tend to stop reading when I see the story involves investigation Nicky Hager.
Vote:January 6th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Hager has a very strange obsession with irrelevant detail. It’s as if he thinks that by uncovering (and often misunderstanding) trivia, then he must have mastered the big picture. Or at least that he has uncovered something secret and therefore sinister.
So the link tells us that the interception kit comprises: “black boxes 13cm high and 48cm wide used by internet and phone companies that are labelled on internal system diagrams as “LI” “. Standard rack size then, as if we care. But are we really expected to believe that every network architect will label the equipment identically? Get real!
Then we have: “Banks, companies and a growing number of individuals use encryption programmes (programmes such as “PGP” can be downloaded for free from the internet). Currently encryption is easily available only for email and computer hard drives; agencies can still watch all internet browsing and texting.” What a mess! Individuals use encryption all the time when browsing the web and there is little that “agencies” can do about it, apart from running brute force decryption against SSL traffic. Someone has told Hager about PGP and you can tell he is fascinated with it, but he really doesn’t have a clue here.
And how about: “One cable goes into the unit but two come out: one continuing out to the world, the other coiling off to secret equipment marked “LI” on the system diagrams”. Again the obsession on labeling… I suspect that someone has showed Hager a network diagram and “LI” was the notation used on that specific diagram and now he thinks he is in possession of some great secret. But two cables? I suspect that Hager doesn’t understand how a LAN works and thinks that two cables are required to transmit network traffic to two locations.
I flicked through his book on Echelon and noted the same obsession on trivia. There were lengthy descriptions of how databases work, for instance, or about the format of paper forms.
Vote:January 6th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
“I tend to stop reading when I see the story involves investigation Nicky Hager.”
So do I. Hager is such a partisan (and poor) writer that his pieces are mainly drivel masquerading as journalism.
I cannot stand him, so I avoid the rubbish he spouts.
January 6th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
When I read the story in the SST I was sure that it was old news presented as new. You cant blame Nicky Hagar though. Hagars business is making money from conspiracy theories, I assume he has a new book out soon. As far as the SST is concerned there is a serious fault with the editorial policy of the SST when a story like this is published without making comment in when the legislation was passed.
Vote:January 6th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Hager is a biased single focus fuckwit.
Vote:Nothing to see here – move on.
January 6th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Hager has invented a genre: conspiracy theory spun to glorify leftists and villify everyone-else.
This is Hagiarism. When Hager gets information, he Hagiarises it.
DR Hill, Charlie Brown, and Manolo. You are right about Hager the Hagiarist.
Vote:January 7th, 2010 at 5:07 am
DPF I have worked it out. All of those warrents were Clark and Labour trying ot get dirt on John Key pre election.
Vote:January 7th, 2010 at 5:39 am
kiwireader days:
I know all about the SIS, kiwireader. I was the first journo ever to be granted an interview with the Director, back in the 80s.
I should however have made clearer that my last paragraph relates to the Police. Given the proliferation of search and intercept warrants sought by the Police vs the SIS you’d think the standards would be higher, but they’re not. The SIS have to meet a much higher standard to bug a suspected terrorist than the Police have to meet to bug you or I.
dime: Perhaps I should have said “porn”, then you’d have cottoned on faster ;-D
Vote:January 7th, 2010 at 6:44 am
If I planed to blow up parliament I would hardly email my fallow terrorists on the net, for fucks sake. If data gathering systems like Echelon are so sophisticated why is the world still such a dangerous place. Shit I read somewhere where information placed on the net is now often a false flag. If I was a spy the best way to bullshit the watches would be to use the net to get the law enforcement agencies to chase their tails.
Vote:January 7th, 2010 at 7:53 am
So, once again, the amazing Mr Hager alone, unaided and supported only by his feet, has accessed information from places which no-one else nas ever gone before. Wow, golly-gee, incredible – NOT!!
The gentleman (?) has now of course received his payout from the SST for his latest ‘expose’, and so can once again retire into the background until his need for money becomes once again so great that he just HAS to go searching to find more ‘shock, horror, amazement’-type material. At which point of course, IMHO we should really cue a ‘Tui’ response shouldn’t we. . .?
As other commenters also do, I by-pass his ‘revelations’ – they are so ‘yesterday’ and do wonder if he and a certain Mr Minto know each other. There are certain ‘similarities’ of operation.
Funny though that they are both socialists. ‘Connections’ anyone?
Vote:January 7th, 2010 at 9:07 am
nicky hagar, john minto, the greens, helen clark. the list of the no longer relevent is getting crowded with failed lefties isn’t it.
Might need to add NIWA as well.
Vote:January 7th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Excellent information – now we know the capability – and of course we absolutely trust that the process will be followed – cue a Tui advert – time to use the almost unbreakable Russian one time code system for writing to Bin Laden to arrange a world shattering terrorist scare by sending 10 Chinese Lanterns over the Beehive. Just to make sure Nicky can organise a denial of service attack on the wellington library computer by sending a couple of e-mails with the flag words to confuse Echelon and send the Pentagon into a spin.
Vote:January 7th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
1. Link to your 2004 articles on the Search and Surveillance bill
Would it be possible to add links to the 2004 articles you wrote on the Search and Surveillance bill?
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/?s=Search+and+Surveillance+Bill only shows articles written last year.
The keyword tags used for this article don’t take us back to those articles. Just thought it may be useful
for those interested to read what you wrote then (or even what’s been written about it on kiwiblog since then)
2. Hager’s article is PR for book
I think the article is probably publicity for Tim McBride’s next edition of The NZ Civil Rights Handbook. The third edition was published in 2001, before the bill. The next (4th) edition (according to McBride’s website http://www.timmcbridelaw.co.nz/) is due “to be published in late 2009″.
Also agree with DPF’s comment re Dean Pemberton. Like a few commenters here, when I initially saw who wrote the article, I didn’t read it. It wasn’t until I saw others giving it more attention (eg twitter comments, this blog entry) that I realised people may be taking it seriously.
Perhaps Mr Hager should be more concerned about the ability of employers to monitor employees internet and phone usage on equipment provided by employer. The herald article is probably only one of many employment related cases that arise from such monitoring.
Vote:January 7th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
I hear Nicky Hagar and John Minto are bedmates – any truth in the rumour?
Vote: