Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Legal Beagle: Kim Dotcom: Questions and Answers, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Yeah, there is a difference between public availability and throwing anyone who asks in jail. There isn't a page like this or even like this on the GCSB website as far as I can tell.
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A couple of years ago a singer-guitarist from a significant FN band told me he'd rather people just illegally download his band's EPs, rather than bankrupt themselves by splashing out three-figure sums on Trade Me, etc
And nowadays it isn't that expensive to get one-off direct-cut disks, like these guys do.
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Completely legal and above-board.
If we were a colony of the US, maybe.
But suppose some of the emails were between Kim Dotcom in Coatesville, and counterparties here or elsewhere. The US seized/intercepted them from internet traffic or an ISP. That act had elements located within NZ (sending the email) and in the US (the interception). I reckon that under s7 of the Crimes Act, that might bring it under NZ jurisdiction, and hence illegal.
And before you say this is far fetched, consider that this is much the same doctrine by which the US claims jurisdiction in the substantive case against Dotcom.
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I'm suspecting a bit of collusion here. What may have happened is that, knowing that GCSB couldn't target NZ residents, the police, when requesting GCSB assistance provided a deliberately ambiguous statement of Dotcom's immigration status. GCSB came to the party by taking a generous interpretation of this and not enquiring further.
I'd like to see disclosed:
- the timeline of Mr Dotcom's various visa changes
- the memo from the police to GCSB requesting assistanceMy suspicion is that Key/Neasor decided to lay the blame on GCSB, because they are less vulnerable to scrutiny than police. I suspect the backstop is that Ian Fletcher or a subordinate official* will resign. What Key doesn't want is an IPCA investigation in which individual police officers might well kick back and defend their corner, causing more general embarrassment.
* GCSB staff other than the Director are, I think, anonymous. They could announce an un-named manager has resigned without us knowing if that person even existed.
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The visa he was granted in 2009 wouldn't have qualified him for protection, it seems, but a subsequent law change altered that status.
I'd be interested to know what visa he was granted in 2009 - perhaps Mr Dotcom himself might supply a copy by way of clarification?
The system before the Immigration Act 2009 was that visas and permits were different, related, things. When one was approved for residence (when overseas) a resident *visa* was granted, and this was supplanted by a *permit* on arrival in NZ. The 2009 Act and consequential changes merged the visa and permit concept, so now there are only visas.
Under the GCSB Act before 29-Nov-10, a 'resident permit' holder (a landed migrant granted permanent residence) was protected from interception. A 'resident visa' holder (a person approved to migrate but not yet arrived) was not.
After 29-Nov-10, both categories are protected from the date of visa grant.But Mr Dotcom, having landed, was, I suspect, protected in both circumstances.
The *confusion* sounds disingenous, to put it mildly. -
Legal Beagle: Kim Dotcom: Questions and Answers, in reply to Matthew Poole,
I don't buy that.
The system is quite simple - there are two main classes of visa, resident and temporary. The former defines "permanent resident" in the GCSB Act. When a person migrates to NZ, they will get a residence visa (usually) with conditions - once those are met, it becomes permanent.
These organisations employ and retain lawyers. They can get clarification any time, and it behooves them to do so when resident status is at the heart of the legality or otherwise of any GCSB action.
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Interesting that p19 of this doc refers to "emails intercepted by the FBI".
Which suggests that the US authorities do have such a capability and use it.
I'm interested in the legal liability of NZ authorities (GCSB, police) receiving such information. Legal if the monitoring was done overseas? Even if one or both parties were resident in NZ at the time? Would it be legal to solicit such information?
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Something Graeme might be able to help with regarding jurisdiction: if the GCSB receives information from intercepts conducted outside NZ, that isn't an offence, right?
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Legal Beagle: Kim Dotcom and the GCSB, in reply to Andre Alessi,
there's a process that everybody involved follows to ensure things are done correctly
I'm sure this happens for Police requests, and for the "two or three" GCSB warranted wiretaps each year. What I'm unconvinced of is that GCSB don't also have a backdoor that they can use to gather "foreign intelligence". This wouldn't be visible to ordinary telco employees at any level.
And my original question was whether *if* they had such a facility, it would be an illegal interception.
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Legal Beagle: Kim Dotcom and the GCSB, in reply to Andre Alessi,
I'm sure that most of the worker bees in telcos have the attitudes you suggest.
But that needn't matter. What would probably happen is that they'd install a lawful intercept configuration as described here and stick it in a cage at the data centre. Access would be limited to a small group of GCSB cleared (or even GCSB supplied) employees (a bit as described in this New Scientist article ).
(There's a legitimate reason for this in preventing the disclosure of the targets of monitoring activity).
Once you've done this, the actual configuration of the routers becomes something that isn't known outside the intelligence organisation, and can readily be changed to e.g. route all port 25 traffic off to NSA.