Snowden docs: New Zealand collects ‘full-take' data for NSA, 'Five Eyes'
New Zealand intelligence is spying on its neighbors throughout the Asia-Pacific region, intercepting mass data and sharing it with the National Security Agency in the United States, say the documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Sputnik reported.
The Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), New Zealand’s intelligence agency, has been targeting island nations such as Tuvalu, Nauru, Kiribati, Samoa, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tonga and France’s overseas territories New Caledonia and French Polynesia, according to the Intercept.
Each of those small nations and territories maintains friendly relations with New Zealand.
The GCSB collects data at a spy station in New Zealand’s Waihopai Valley. That data is shared through an NSA surveillance system called XKEYSCORE, which analyzes vast amounts of emails, internet browsing sessions and online chats intercepted from 150 different locations worldwide, the Intercept reported.
The spying was a part of New Zealand’s role in “Five Eyes,” a surveillance alliance that includes electronic eavesdropping agencies from New Zealand, the US, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
One NSA memo notes that New Zealand provides “valuable access not otherwise available to satisfy US intelligence requirement,” including information about trading partners in the area and about governments of island nations, The Intercept reported.
A New Zealand intelligence source confirmed these details, telling the New Zealand Herald that GCSB was monitoring government ministers and senior officials, government agencies, international organizations and non-government organizations in the South Pacific nations.