Posts by Phil Lyth
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Put it another way. David Farrar, to be able to work for various Prime Ministers, had to be vetted. But formerly-long-haired-and-bearded Murray McCully has not once been vetted by the SIS despite being at Parliament for 23 years.
How bad is that!
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Before anybody assumes we have anything like Top Secret America, I'll make the point that a Top Secret clearance is not an open sesame to all the Government's secrets.
There is a strong 'need to know', so a TS network-engineer wouldn't have access to threat assessment papers; a diplomat in Sydney wouldn't have access to Budget papers. Etc.
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Grateful if you could cite sources for saying that MPs and Ministers are vetted.
To me vetting starts with filling out the form for the SIS and then they go and interview your friends family etc. Happened for staff including me. I checked my memory with two former MPs - vetting never happened for them in Parliament or in Government.
Putting someone onto a committee that deals with defence matters, for example, and then finding out that, actually, they're on the hook to some Chinese mafioso for gambling debts isn't a very good look. Doesn't mean they can't be elected, but it does mean they're probably not a good choice for handling national security material.
The Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade committee doesn't handle 'national security material', nor do other select committees. The committees don't make decisions but rather scrutinise the government. Their papers are not secret and they report publicly.
There is the Intelligence and Security Committee which handles SIS GCSB and any security business. Meets rarely, you can look at NRT for his take on it. Current members are Key, Goff, Turia, Hide, and Russel Norman.
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900 for defence? Really?
heroic assumptions
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Only just read Matthew @ 4.42 and subsequent posts after my 5.14pm. You'll see I have had a stab at numbers.
MPs are certainly not vetted, and I believe Ministers are not. Certainly nothing I saw in a decade at Parliament. The presumption is that the vetting is part of the political process, if people vote them in, they pass muster.
Ministerial office staff have a clearance - not sure what the rating is. They ven cleared me. Other MPs staff, backbenchers and opposition, are not vetted.
All MFAT 'rotational' staff - ie diplomats and others posted overseas - are Top Secret.
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I bet nothing like 12,000 people (310m/854k=363. 4.37m/363=12,072) in NZ have TS clearances.
I'll have a very rough stab and say 3,500 as a first cut:
Dept Prime Minister and Cabinet, 100% = 100
Ministerial offices, 100% = 200
Foreign Affairs, 100% = 900
GCSB, 100% = 350
SIS, 100% = 250
Customs, 50% of non-frontline = 200
Defence, 10% = 900
Immigration, offshore and senior = 100
other agencies, say 10-ish people each = 500Many heroic assumptions above, eg, Ministry of Women's Affairs wouldn't have 10 clearances but Justice might have many more than that. Happy for anyone to collaborate and refine. Nicky?
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Matthew and others may want to peruse NZ's classification of information, and indeed the whole site
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Matthew, you're an order of magnitude or more out.
At the end of a two-year-investigation, the Washington Post reported last week (also carried by the Dom here in NZ) that
An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
Goodness knows how many can access mere Secret stuff and the rest.
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Thanks Steve H. Puts in terms I comprehend.
To protect the reputation of Andre, it is me rather than him than confuses an iPhone and an iPod
P.
who not only takes Danielle seriously but also has little idea about new-technology** I understood everything my first cellphone (brick, 1991 or so) was capable of. Now, no show .
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If that wasn't enough Pam Corkery for ya,
Never enuff! 1 woman against 4 men in that discussion and I heard every word she said. ;)
Had to work on hte same floor as La Corkery for three years. You could hear her quiet, dulcet, hushed tones clear across the building.