NZ used XKEYSCORE to spy on World Trade Org election emails

New Zealand used the National Security Agency's XKEYSCORE to spy on World Trade Organisation elections targeting candidates from Indonesia, Brazil, and South Korea as its Trade Minister vied for the top job, according to reports. Secret documents obtained by the New Zealand Herald and Snowden spout The Intercept reveal …

[Steve Knox]

The WHO has been contacted for comment

Their response? "I Can't Explain".

When pressed about their security measures, they simply stated "Won't Get Fooled Again".

(I believe the line in the article should be "The WTO has been contacted..." as the story doesn't mention the World Health Organization or the 60's rock band. But I couldn't resist...)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The WHO has been contacted for comment

I suspect its 'A Legal Matter' and the NZ government has been spreading 'La-La-La-Lies'

[Ole Juul]

Revealing

Andrew Little said the spying efforts were "outrageous” calling it a "misuse" of security and intelligence agencies.

Besides, it shows they've got lots of time on their hands to do unrelated work. Obviously some budget cuts are in order.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Revealing

No. This is appropriate use.

1) Advancing your country cause internationally by providing correct information for your foreign policy to operate _IS_ what they are supposed to do.

2) Advancing the local [ plutocracy | cleptocracy | gerontocracy ] by wholesale spying on the entire population _IS_ _NOT_ what they are supposed to do.

Unfortunately for every case of 1 you nowdays have a thousand cases of 2.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Revealing

This message bought to you by the NZ GCSB - and sponsored by 5 Eyes Inc.

[Anonymous Coward]

How...

I'm a NZer and can verify that the spy gear at GCSB looks almost exactly just like the story's photo. How the hell did El Reg get an ACTUAL photo of NZ's spy switchboard?

[WillbeIT]

Please

Can we make the rabbit hole stop..my head is getting sore

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Please

See dan1980. Quite obviously you have tangled with the rabbit hole enough times if you are still sensitized to the pain. Try, try, again. You'll get it right.

[dan1980]

Government claims it needs to spy on everyone and everything because National Security. Government grossly misuses collected data to gain competitive advantage unrelated to National Security. Government refuses to explain or justify gross misuse of data for non-national security purposes because National Security.

The most telling things is that we should all be incensed at this but none of us are surprised in the least.

Our governments have the winning ticket - all they have to do is just keep ignoring everything and refusing to explain themselves and pretty soon we'll all be so desensitised we'll just carry on. Which is exactly what they want.

[Mark 85]

The most telling things is that we should all be incensed at this but none of us are surprised in the least.

I believe that because of who we are, the surprise was zilch. I also believe that while many (most?) of us are incensed, we know can't stop it. If at work, we know our employer's know what we do online and via email. So why not the governments.

As for being incensed... if we speak too loudly, I think we'll draw attention to ourselves and become a target for "rabble rousing" and possibly "stirring the masses"... or whatever illegality they want to use an excuse.

I read once that the best way to make a terrorist or a rebel is to put them in a place of distrust by government. It seems to be working if those groups in the Middle East are any indication based on their recruitment techniques. They don't worry me as much at the tinfoil hat types who are starting to feel the pressure and paranoia because of these actions. We've seen the Arab Spring which started with a nudge due to government excesses. At what point will we see a new "Spring" in the democratic societies?

[dan1980]

"If at work, we know our employer's know what we do online and via email. So why not the governments.

Because I am employed by my employer; I am there do work for them. The governments are - at least in theory - there to work for us. We should be monitoring the government, not the other way around.

[Mark 85]

Exactly. We in IT have been "trained" to be monitored. Thus the collective helplessness.

[Anonymous Coward]

My employer (and we are talking over 150,000 employees) even uses keylogging.

I love the fact there is an exception report generated if over 7% of keystrokes are backspaces.

No news yet on how that makes us more productive...and no comment on how much some of us care...

[Anonymous Coward]

I assumed all countries did this. The only reason we know about the adventures of the western powers' security agencies is Snowden & co. Do I assume Indonesia (pop. 249 million), s. Korea (50 million) or Brazil (200 million) don't spy at least as much as NZ (pop 4 million)

[dan1980]

Actually yes.

More specifically, I think that the combined Five Eyes countries - population 448 million, GDP 23 Trillion USD - have access to rather a bit more interception, storage and analysis capability than those mentioned nations.

[regadpellagru]

"Actually yes.

More specifically, I think that the combined Five Eyes countries - population 448 million, GDP 23 Trillion USD - have access to rather a bit more interception, storage and analysis capability than those mentioned nations."

This. Plus the good support of collaboration inside 5 eyes. This shows the perverse relationship of those 5 nations: give me access mate I need your support locally, and I'll share some of my really nice toys (without being too picky about theyr usage).

[Mark 85]

I think the best bet is your first sentence. Assume they all do this and everyone has a copy of your emails (or at least the metadata). And this includes everyone besides the 5-eyes.

[Richard Plinston]

> World Trade Organisation elections ... Wellington intercepted emails

And was able to do this because all emails in the world are routed via a couple of lumps of rock in the South Pacific.

It seems more likely that an American government organization intercepted the emails as they went through the network in USA and made them available to other countries. Whether those emails were actually intercepted and whether NZ GCSB viewed them seems to be entirely speculative.

[dan1980]

This appears to be the case, given the 'XKEYSCORE' program referenced. As current information has it, XKEYSCORE is not a collection program so much as system for storing and searching against the nearly unimaginable reams of data that is collected by other programs.

In other words, it is a gigantic searchable database of all the data that has been collected by the Five-Eyes agencies.

So, what NZ did was to submit a search to this database through the XKEYSCORE system, the format of which is as published in the linked PDF.

Some of that vast cache of data would have been gather by the GCSB as part of their participation in this unholy alliance but it might not have been this particular data and even if so, that interception was unlikely to have been targeted for this purpose. More that what has already been collected was searched for this rather non-critical, non-National Security purpose.

Which is why blanket collection and storage is so fucking heinous; it can be used for nearly any purpose. And this is exactly why the meta-data scheme doing the rounds in Australia is equally bad - it's a big, long-lived record that, while it 'justified' base on something, something, National Security, once it is there, no protections exist to prevent its use for other purposes.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a Surprise

Diplomats might have done what they are paid by to do, look after their country's interests.

Intelligence seekers might have tried to do what they are paid to do and find out intelligence of use to the diplomats.

A government might have tried to look after the interests of its citizens, wow how bad is that?

Was there something surprising hidden in this revelation that some did the job they were supposed to do or is that news these days?

[John H Woods]

Re: What a Surprise

Which do you think is more likely: that people who disagree with you can't do simple logic; or that they don't agree with one or both of your premises? Firstly, I would agree that diplomats are supposed to look after their country's interests but I disagree that this should be by any means possible. Secondly, I would contend that the role of intelligence seekers is not primarily to "find out intelligence of use to the diplomats" (isn't there the rather more pressing matter of national security?) but, to the extent that it is, I disagree that this should be any and all such intelligence.

[Alan Brown]

NZ got caught (again)

The GCSB got caught acting illegally a couple of years back - spying on NZers and NZ residents. That came out of the Kim dot Com fiasco

The govt's reaction was to pass retrospective legislation making it all ok.

The Prime Minister claims ignorance on that one on the basis that he was out of the country, selling bits off it off to his foreign friends.

[MonkeyCee]

Re: NZ got caught (again)

Not just GCSB but the NZ police. Turns out that while Jo Public is allowed to record anything they like from public property (take photos video, etc), if you are the police and you wish to use it in evidence, then you've got to get a search warrant. Always had to get a warrant if it was on private property. Turns out the police had been informed of this, but decided that getting warrants is really annoying.

The trumped up "terrorism" case got kicked out on this, and suddenly realising that they had been using ILLEGALLY GATHERED EVIDENCE for some 300+ successful convictions, the law was retroactively changed so it became legal.

Not that NZ cops are above the law, oh no. No way serial rapists could operate and get covered up (or wrecking trials) by their mates.

Fuck John Key too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, all of this - ALL OF IT, SINCE SNOWDEN - is rather like a child finally finding out that her parents were reading her diary (and phone calls. And emails. And search history. And Facebook / Twitter posts) and angrily confronting them about all that, supremely confident that it's impossible to not see how justice is unequivocally on her side. Meanwhile, her parents consider they simply did their job of being up to date with what she's up to - now, how likely do you think the result will be the parents repenting, begging for forgiveness and promising never to do that again? It's more like "How dare you question me?!? Tough shit missy, that's how it's going to continue to be, better get used to it". This isn't even necessarily malice - it's the fundamental conviction that with the burden of taking care of someone incapable of doing that himself, comes complete absolution of any accountability of how one chooses to go about that.

For the record, this is absolutely not how I see it - but they clearly do. And we have exactly about as few means for recourse like that child - we may slam the door and refuse to eat dinner, and that's about it. We can't touch those involved any more that that kid could fire her parents - because any and all power is with them, and none - none at all - is with us: because power is never, ever _given_. And _taking_ it always gets messy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had the means and resolve to make that mess.

[Mayhem]

Unsurprising

To be fair to NZ, all of their internet traffic is monitored at the far end by either the US via Hawaii or Australia - they only have two significant undersea cables out of the country, and one primary terrestrial ring domestically.

It's really in their best interest to join the 5 eyes club as at least that way they can share in the monitoring.

Of course, this kind of underhanded trick is completely typical of how governments today act - and of course it is totally different to the governments in the past that all wanted to but didn't have the capability.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be wary of anything published by Nicky Hager

This is the guy who hacked another journalists emails, selectively published the juicy bits that damaged the right, without any form of fact-checking or contact to the parties involved, which resulted in zero legal convictions and a massive swing to the right of the voting public come election time.

As John Key said "the guys an activist, not a journalist".

PS. Police investigations into the hacking are still ongoing, expect Hager to be wearing striped pyjamas in the big house pretty soon.

[Yes Me]

Re: I would be wary of anything published by Nicky Hager

I wouldn't; Hager has a long history of publishing inconvenient truths. And his selection of which bits to publish is no worse than selections made by right wingers; it's just different. The election was hardly affected by 'Dirty Politics' - as any fool knows, Key gets reelected because he takes care to keep the absurd real estate market in Auckland rolling along, so that undecided voters continue to believe that he is an economic super-hero. Bad luck if you are an underpaid working class Kiwi.

[LINCARD1000]

Re: I would be wary of anything published by Nicky Hager

The problem is that our (NZs) house of cards is built on some very, very shaky foundations... and to mix my metaphors even more, the wheels are going to come off this cart any time soon. Governments are very well versed in spouting all sorts of numbers that make things look a lot more rosy than they are in reality.

I loathe key and his government for what they are doing to our country, stripping our right to privacy. I loathe the political left for being pretty much just as bad when they were in power. And I loathe many of the people in this country who don't make those in power accountable for what they're doing.

...and I loathe myself for being one of them

[OzBob]

Re: I would be wary of anything published by Nicky Hager

"keep the absurd real estate market in Auckland rolling along"

Folks, that's NZ code for "doesn't stop the dirty asian foreigners from stealing our jobs and buying our houses". Kiwis are such bigoted idiots sometimes.