Cunliffe David: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — Referral to Government Administration Committee In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — Referral to Government Administration Committee In Committee[Sitting date: 06 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12371. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn):I rise to address Part 1 of the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. In doing so I am going to speak from first principles and speak to the grave and fundamental constitutional and privacy concerns that are surrounding this bill. Let us restate at the outset that Labour will immediately set up a cross-party inquiry to thoroughly and independently review the effects of this bill if it yet passes on our security agencies and on the rule of law. Following that review we will repeal the bill in its current form and replace it with new provisions that get the balance right between privacy constitutionality and the rule of law.Before taking calls to detail exactly what is wrong with the drafting of the bill and how it must change let me first state several issues that the bill is not about. Firstly it is not about Fonterra although it is intriguing that Friday’s 4.30 p.m. dump of sensitive stolen emails that implicate the Chief Executive of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff occurred shortly after the Government was notified at around 12.30 that day ofFonterra’s imminent disclosure. It takes something akin to botulism to make this bill appear mildly palatable to some.Secondly this bill is not specifically about the details of the Peter Dunne - Andrea Vance email trail. However the broad context is relevant. Let the Committee and the public of New Zealand recall that those stolen emails related to an inquiry into a leakeddocument. The document was theKitteridge report—the damning litany of the legal and oversight failures of the very same Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). TheKitteridge report was prompted by the fiasco that was the illegal spying on Kim Dotcom and it transpires that Mr Dotcom was one of at least 88 New Zealand citizens upon whom illegal spying operations have been conducted. For all we know on that list of 88 might well be current or former members of this House. Let us be absolutely clear: the appropriate response to spies running amok and illegally spying on New Zealand citizens is not simply to legalise that. As others have said the response to illegal speeding is not to raise the speed limit and the proper response to theft is not to legalise stealing. The proper response to illegal spying is not simply to legalise the practices that were hitherto illegal.Thirdly—and this is important—this debate is not about removing from New Zealand the capability to defend ourselves against foreign cyber-attack. New Zealand needs to have those capabilities and must be equipped to perform them well but—and it is a huge but—those capabilities should not be deployed against our own citizens except in the most unusual and exceptional and verifiable circumstances and then only with a judge’s warrant based upon an independent and thoroughly and substantially evidenced threshold of proof. The warrant process must protect our citizens from arbitrary mass surveillance whether performed directly by New Zealand’s GCSB or indirectly by the access of information sourced from other partner-country’s agencies.This bill should be about crafting rules that achieve a proper constitutional framework for activities that may be necessary in exceptional circumstances but must never become routine. The definitions of “information infrastructure” in Part 1 of this bill which include all emissions all communications transmitted across all networks—