[Infowarrior] - NZ's cyber spies win new powers

[Richard Forno]

NZ's cyber spies win new powers
By NICKY HAGER - Sunday Star Times
Last updated 09:10 03/01/2010
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3203448/NZs-cyber-spies-win-new-powers
New cyber-monitoring measures have been quietly introduced giving  
police and Security Intelligence Service  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.

In preparation, technicians have been installing specialist spying  
devices and software inside all telephone exchanges, internet  
companies and even fibre-optic data networks between cities and towns,  
providing police and spy agencies with the capability to monitor  
almost all communications.

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.

Police association vice-president Stuart Mills said the new  
capabilities are required because criminals were using new  
technologies to communicate, and that people who weren't committing  
criminal offences had little to fear.

However, civil liberties council spokesman Michael Bott said the new  
surveillance capabilities are part of a step-by-step erosion of civil  
rights in New Zealand.

Police Minister Judith Collins responded to questions from the Sunday  
Star-Times about the new surveillance capabilities, saying: "I support  
the rule of law." In last year's budget she approved extra police  
funds to subsidise companies wiring surveillance devices into their  
telecommunications networks.

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.

Official papers obtained by the Star-Times show that, despite  
government claims that it was done for domestic reasons, the new New  
Zealand spying capabilities are part of a push by United States  
agencies to have standardised surveillance capabilities available for  
their use from governments worldwide.

While US civil liberties groups unsuccessfully fought these  
surveillance capabilities being used on US citizens, the FBI was  
lobbying other governments to adopt them. FBI Director Robert Mueller  
III told a senate committee in March last year that the FBI needs  
"global reach" to fight cyber-crime and terrorism and that co- 
operation with "law enforcement partners" gives it "the means to  
leverage the collective resources of many countries".

Auckland lawyer Tim McBride, author of the forthcoming New Zealand  
Civil Rights Handbook, says our politicians had let down New  
Zealanders when they yielded to the foreign pressure and imported US- 
style surveillance into New Zealand.

He said "monitoring email, internet chatting and Facebook is like the  
police and SIS planting bugs in every cafe and park. It would probably  
help solve a few crimes, but the cost is just too great".

The 2004 New Zealand law, which mirrors laws overseas, requires the  
content of any communication plus "call associated data", such as  
times, phone numbers, IP addresses and mobile phone locations, to be  
able to be copied and sent to the police, SIS or Government  
Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) at the time of transmission or  
"as close as practicable" to that time.

In practice, a specialist said, this means someone's email can be "at  
the agency within one or two minutes of it actually being on the wires".

When the police and SIS were pushing for the interception capability  
law they argued repeatedly that it would not "change or extend in any  
way the existing powers".

But civil libertarians say that the invisibility of electronic  
surveillance reduces the opportunity to challenge it.

A technician familiar with the developments said the previous  
surveillance technology dated from the early 1980s when the Telecom  
phone system went digital. Police bugged individual phones and could  
request suspects' call logs.

More recently police had taken a warrant to telcos and gone away with  
printed emails, but did it rarely as there were problems using the  
evidence in court.

"This is the first big jump from there," said the technician.

"They've never had the powers to force ISPs to build in spying  
capabilities before now. I imagine law enforcement is very excited  
about this."