Cunliffe David: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill — Referral to Law and Order Committee Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill — Referral to Law and Order Committee Second Reading[Sitting date: 15 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:13844. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Leader of the Opposition): I rise to take a call in this second reading of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill to place on record Labour’s continuing strong opposition to this legislation. We do so for three principal reasons. The first is that the bill facilitates the implementation of its companion legislation the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act which fundamentally reduces the rights and freedoms of New Zealanders by providing insufficient protection against the spying on New Zealand citizens by State agencies. The second reason is that the bill is so poorly and broadly drafted that it raises a raft of questions that have not been fully debated in the Law and Order Committee or by the Minister for Communications and Information Technology who cannot even be bothered listening to the arguments that have been raised. Shame—shame! Thirdly it is because such concessions as have been made under pressure have been made only to the global majors theGoogles and theFacebooks not to the citizens of New Zealand and that is very revealing about whose interests this Government will in fact listen to.Let us turn first to the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act and this is relevant and absolutely fundamental to the core of this bill because the interception capabilities it provides for are a necessary step for the operation of the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act. It is completely nonsensical to say as the Minister just has that this bill does not change the privacy protections. It does not need to because they have just been done away with in theGovernment Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act which this legislation implements. Without this legislation the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act could not work because it would not be able to plumb into people’s telecommunications systems. Likewise the Minister’s protestation that this is only real-time interception and has nothing to do with data storage is ridiculous because it facilitates the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act which makes clear that the storage of data is completely within the powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). So it goes through the pipe which this bill institutes and it is then subsequently stored. We oppose this bill because of its instrumental effects as well as its intrinsic weaknesses.Let me turn to a raft of problems in the drafting. To say that this bill is too broad and its drafting is shoddy is to pay it a compliment. It expands the reach of interception obligations to a much wider group of companies—now for the very first time including service providers. So all internet service providers are as a starting proposition covered by the impact of this bill. Any internet service providers even smaller ones must at the very least be “intercept ready” and substantial ones must actually be intercepted. That is a huge cost and it is a huge broadening of the powers of the State to access the private information of New Zealanders. But they do not care about the balance between protecting New Zealanders from foreign attack and protecting New Zealanders from the loss of their own freedoms because there is no adequate protection in this bill.Let me get a little technical for a second. In the companion Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act it provides for the ability to intercept “all transmissions” that apply to “information infrastructure” for any purpose to do with “cybersecurity”. So the GCSB only has to decide that a risk is related to cyber-security and it can take any step without a warrant to address matters to do with information infrastructure which includes all of the transmissions going across it. That is not just phone calls; that is emails text messages gaming records from Google and Facebook—a history of anybody’s internet use. In fact the entire so-called digital shadow of any New Zealand citizen could be deemed to be a transmission for the purposes of information infrastructure and thus is accessible without a warrant under the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act. It is this bill that technically makes that possible. How could any responsible party sign up to that?The Prime Minister when confronted with those issues said that he would require a warrant for cyber-security intercepts. When asked to put that personal assurance in the bill he said: “Oh no—oh no.” We all know that the Prime Minister’s personal assurances are not worth the paper that the media report is written on. Take for example “I will not raise GST.” or “Working for Families is communism by stealth.” or a host of other slippery little manoeuvres that mean that the Prime Minister’s word is not to be accepted. The case for the expansion of these powers has not been made.Let me raise another very serious matter in relation to that. In the companion bill now the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act there is no explicit requirement for the warranting provisions to apply to overseas-sourced data that is used by the New Zealand agencies. As we all know we are part of the “Five Eyes” partners. If the New Zealand agencies were required to get a warrant to access the data on say a member of Parliament the overseas partners were not. Thus the New Zealand agency need only ask for or dial up the information obtained by the “Five Eyes” partner and hey presto the requirement for a warrant could be circumvented. The Government has never in the history of the GCSB legislation answered that debate. Today we are asked to pass legislation that provides the pipes and wires that make that travesty possible. So there is no doubt at all as to why the Labour Party opposes this rotten bill.It is because it gives effect to another rotten bill that should never have been passed by the New Zealand Parliament.The definitions in this bill are all over the place. It widens its scope to network operators service providers and resold overseas telecommunications company services. Like the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act it widens the scope for interception from security matters to economic matters. Well goodness me! Economic matters could be anything—anything—within the purview of the Minister for Economic Development—Grant Robertson: That’s everything.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —which is as we know pretty much anything because here he is representing the entire Government. Why? Because this bill gives him the power to intercept anything that he or his agencies deem to be of economic advantage. That is a travesty. The only thing standing between New Zealanders’ personal privacy and that Minister is John Key’s word.Iain Lees-Galloway: That’s a scary thought.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: That is a truly scary thought.On the third broad issue that we have raised we welcome the withdrawal of the odious clause 39 which meant that the Government by fiat could prevent the provision at all of a telecommunications service in New Zealand. But we note that it is only in response to theGoogles and theMicrosofts of the world—rather like perhaps the Warner Bros of the world—that this Government is ever prepared to change its mind. To say “change its mind” might be something of an overstatement in regard to certain of its members.But what about the interests of the ordinary New Zealander? Today we drew attention to the loss of jobs in our regions and the Government felt it was OK to laugh. It may laugh but New Zealanders will get their own back when the ballot boxes open in a year’s time and they rise up to say very very simply: “No. 1 we think our rights and freedoms matter. No. 2 you Big Brother National have not made the case to take them away. You have not got the balance right. This legislation stinks and we the little people matter.” They matter as much as Google. They matter as much as Facebook. They matter as much as Apple. They matter as much as Amazon. They matter as much as anything because it is the principle not the power that should be guiding the Government in framing fundamentally important legislation that affects the rights personal freedoms and privileges of every single New Zealander.