On news level:
This is too much for a small country .. Whatever .. I didn't get the
citizenship so I say "It is their country":
On personal level, as this country (New Zealand) is all together less than the
population of Baghdad city, then I better watch it carefully before being a
(guinea pig) in one of the many fronts that the west wants guilty people from
the Middle East to prove their corrupted theories on terrorism that they -the
west- breed themselves from Islamic and Arab countries. Practically this means
less contributions from Sumerian, till I will be able to stand firm in this
place or elsewhere
S1000+
NZ's cyber spies win new powers
By NICKY HAGER
-
Sunday Star Times
Last updated 05:00 03/01/2010
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.
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."
=======
S1000+
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/3203413/NZs-cyber-spies-win-new-powers
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"World-thread" group.
To post to this group, send email to world-thr...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
world-thread+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/world-thread?hl=en.
