John Key has said he is aware of "some" but not all of the tools used by the GCSB amid fresh questions over an intrusive piece of spyware showcased by the United States' NSA to their Kiwi partners.
The Prime Minister stuck to his position in refusing to talk about "operational" details of the GCSB's work.
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But he repeated his oft-stated position there was no mass surveillance of New Zealanders and partners in the Five Eyes network were not used to get around the law.
And if you believe that, I have a round building in Wellington to sell you. They're on record as having an ethos of "sniff it all, collect it all... partner it all". The NSA sniffs every internet bottleneck out of NZ, and they track every cellphone in the world. And all of this information is shared with GCSB. If they want to know, say, that a kiwi software millionaire is at home in his Dotcom mansion, then they just ask. And they can do that to any one of us, if we ever come to their attention (and that attention need not be professional).
John Key is clearly happy with this situation. We shouldn't be. Instead, we should be shutting down this agency, and destroying its equipment so it can never be used against us.