Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to Paul Campbell,
So if something is declared secret, It’s illegal for me to reveal it, but if I’m not cleared I’m not allowed to know that it’s illegal for me to reveal it
If you have a security clearance and you know it’s classified, it’s clearly illegal. If you don’t have a clearance but you become aware that it’s classified, it’s probably also illegal (see below) but not necessarily.
The US has a particularly odious concept known as “born secret” whereby something that a civilian discovers on their own but which relates to classified materials (it’s normally to do with nukes) can be deemed to have been classified at the time of invention and thus the inventor is compelled to hand their invention over to the Feds without compensation; and with federal criminal charges hanging over them if they talk about their invention.can I tell others about it if the GCSB has declared it a secret and I don’t know?
Absolutely.
You appear to think that secrecy and security are some sort of absolute that binds everyone. They are not.
To be breaking NZ law you must “knowingly or recklessly, and with knowledge that [you are] acting without proper authority, communicate any official information or deliver any object to any other person knowing that such communication or delivery is likely to prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand”. And even then you’re only up for a maximum of three years, unless the government decides to try you for treason. Unlike the US, where unauthorised release of classified material can see you facing a life term (or the federal death penalty for treason).
So if you don’t know it’s classified, you’re free to tell the world. In reality, also, simply knowing that a bug in generally-available software was being exploited by the alphabet soup would be unlikely to constitute sufficient knowledge to achieve conviction. -
Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to nzlemming,
it’s not the clearance that compels you to keep a secret. It’s the fact that something has been declared secret.
Even more complex, the full answer is, "it's both."
Aforementioned friend still can't talk about anything classified he was read in on while in government employ, even if its existence is now public courtesy of Snowden. And he wasn't working for the spooks, either. If he was still employed in a vetted role, he wouldn't be allowed to talk about anything that Snowden's released because it's material that's classified by an allied intelligence partner so it's considered to be classified in NZ.
It's really frustrating when a conversation thread ends with "Yes, I've seen that news article, I can't talk about it." Fortunately there aren't too many things that Snowden's released that intersected with his work.
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Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to nzlemming,
When I held a TSV, my referees were definitely interviewed – probably I was as well
When I was referee for a friend's TSV back in 2005 I was one of two (of four) referees who was selected to be interviewed by an SIS officer. My friend was not interviewed. The two referees who were not interviewed were sent a written questionnaire.
As best I can ascertain vetting is still only routine for S and TS (to differing depths, obviously), but a check with Ministry of Justice is standard for C and R (and everything else in government, pretty much).
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Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to Matthew Poole,
UNCLASSIFIED is also the default classification on anything the national security apparatus of the government produces, at least in theory. So that also shoots down your "lazy bureaucrat" theory.
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Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Unclassified is a classification
Like I said “nitpick” but it is still lazy and allows abuse of the OIA by smart arsed bureaucrats.
No, it doesn't. It really, really, really doesn't. Documents classified as Unclassified cannot be withheld under the national security exemptions to the OIA. The national security classifications are, as already laid out, Confidential, Restricted, Secret, and Top Secret. Those are the ones that let bureaucrats withhold under the OIA, and realistically it's only S and TS that'll stand up to a determined challenge. Documents that are Unclassified are not deemed to pose a security risk. That's what Unclassified means.
As to
“Unclassified” != “not yet classified”
what are you saying here, sounds the same as what I said.What I'm saying is that "Unclassified" is not "not yet classified", which is what you're claiming. It's completely the opposite. What you said was:
an unclassified thing, document or whatever, just means it hasn’t been classified, so you couldn’t tell if it were meant to be secret or not
which means, as best I can tell, that you believe Unclassified means nobody has assessed it for a security risk which might justify an upgrade in classification. That's not the case. An Unclassified document has been assessed, determined to present no security risk, and thus marked as such. Given that classification is meant to be as granular as the sentence level it's possible to find documents that have mixtures of U/S/TS next to different lines to indicate the different classifications. Have a look through some of the Snowden slides to see what I mean. If Unclassified means it might actually be Secret or Top Secret if someone just bothered to look, how could it possibly be mingling casually with lines that are Secret or Top Secret?
Part of the reason that classification markings (look in SIGS) are written all in capitals is to avoid any ambiguity. The marking UNCLASSIFIED is a classification marking. If I were to be really precise here I would've done the same but, instead, I've just used an initial capital.
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Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to Paul Campbell,
There are only 2 NZ employees … do I need to register? need a clearance? can I be forced to get a clearance? is the choice “get a clearance or quit your job”?
You need to do two things.
1) Read the damned law, instead of speculating wildly and inaccurately about how it affects you. I've already told you you don't understand it, but you're still talking about it in exactly the same terms as you were before my post.2) Speak with your employer and/or your employer's lawyer. It's the provider who decides who gets put forward to apply for vetting to Secret. If your employer wishes to put you forward and you do not wish to comply, that's an employment matter not a legal one.
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Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Ok now its a nitpick but an unclassified thing, document or whatever, just means it hasn’t been classified, so you couldn’t tell if it were meant to be secret or not, It is like no-one has looked at it and made that decision yet.
Not true. Unclassified is a classification (See SIGS that nzlemming linked to back on page 1). It’s not a lack of classification, it’s a deliberate course of action to mark something as able to be released outside the community of people who hold security clearances at the appropriate level.
If what you are suggesting were true, nothing could ever be released to the public because there would be no form of classification decision available to make that so.
A document that is marked as “unclassified” has been purposefully considered to contain no risk to any of the categories of security that are considered by such things. “Unclassified” != “not yet classified”. -
Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to Paul Campbell,
I’m happy to see that the GCSB’s list of rules is marked twice on every page “UNCLASSIFIED” … sadly I guess that means that there are other rules that people all have to adhere to that are classified
Every document that comes out of GCSB has a classification marking. You cannot read anything into the presence of those markings other than that the contents are not classified.
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Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to Idiot Savant,
But demanding it of civilians who have nothing to do with the government
They may not want to have anything to do with the government, but by dint of working for a network provider who is legally required to have something to do with the government, they now do have something to do with the government. Interception capabilities for criminal investigations are sensitive subjects. It's not surprising that there's no desire at the GCSB to have any uncleared Joe have access to snoop at such things.
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Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to Stephen R,
I’d bet that if a network provider found a way to firewall off any command/control signals from outside their network, the GCSB would tell them to stop.
GCSB has no mandate to make such a demand. The law is pretty clear that interception capability is an on-premises activity, not one that takes place remotely. There is zero obligation on providers to allow GCSB to electronically prowl the network.