Browning Steffan: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 05 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14342. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Today the Government is ticking through what we are calling the “TICS” bill the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill. It is ticking it through this Parliament to ensure the spying agencies’ technical ability to access right into all of our communications—all the communications networks. Of course this bill is the partner to the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) legislation which was passed into law in August. These bills collectively are arrogant unjustified and fundamentally an extension of the State to intrude into the privacy and the private lives of ordinary New Zealanders. This bill is a National Government bill and I heard just before a rather P-focused and I will call it a Sabin-rattler pretending that this bill has nothing to do with getting into New Zealanders’ privacy and that it has nothing to do with the USA’s National Security Agency’s illegal and very vast spying throughout the total globe our world that we know at this point. Day after day there are new revelations.I will just go back a little. Australia recently had a lot of heat put on to it over its spying role in some of the earlier forms of spying that the National Security Agency was up to. One was called the ThinThread. What we found was that it was actually tested in New Zealand. What do New Zealanders think of that—their privacy being invaded in order for the National Security Agency of the USA to test in New Zealand its devices for doing vast spying? Well the agency did that. It ran it for a bit then that was dropped and it went to yet another system that was tried internationally as well. What we had more recently were the revelations by Edward Snowden about the PRISM system. The PRISM system allows absolutely everything to be gathered—in the way that the National Security Agency through agencies like the GCSB through installations such as the Waihopai spy base out in Marlborough just across the Cook Strait there allows that and all that information that they can collect to be gathered.I hear various murmurings from the front bench of the Government about this. [Interruption] Yes actually you are dead right Mr Joyce. This system does allow all of that and there is absolutely no doubt anymore that the Waihopai spy base is being used as part of that total international communications grab. There is no way in hang that we should be putting through a bill this “TICS” bill that enables that to happen all the more easily. It is actually time to tear Waihopai down. Waihopai has had its time. We said that—groups such as the Anti-Bases Campaign.The Hollow Men was pointed out earlier on as a book but you realise that Nicky Hager the author of that book also did some fantastic investigative journalism that pointed out what Waihopai was doing. All we have got recently of course is more confirmation of that. It is time for Waihopai to be torn down.Although this bill ostensibly says that we will just set up the structures so that the spying that is allowed by the Government Communications Security Bureau Act which has got warrants and whatever else all around it can happen this bill does more than that. It ensures that there is absolutely no network that the spy agencies want to get at that will not be accessible. One thing that has come out in the news revelations recently as well with regard to organisations such as Google Yahoo! and others is that the cables going throughout the world under the oceans are all able to be accessed whether or not the organisations that operate them know. So the Green Party will be opposing this bill. We are looking for the days when we have a full independent investigation and that we close Waihopai down.