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NZs Cyber Spies Win New Powers
By Nicky Hager - Sunday Star Times
03/01/2010
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.
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.
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.
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, "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."
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