Browning Steffan: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: General Debate[Sitting date: 10 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9236. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I would like to speak about the security and intelligence travesty called the Government Communications Security Bureau.Hon Member: Name and party.STEFFAN BROWNING: The failure of Governments to get control and deep oversight of this foreign-dominated intelligence beast and its unsavoury Echelon alliance—and apparently I should state that I am speaking for the Green Party on this. New Zealand as an independent State should have a role in promoting civil rights and peace reducing conflict confronting injustice and protecting the environment. We have shown an example with our nuclear-free policy. However operating the eavesdropping facilities of the Government Communications Security Bureau’s bases at Waihopai and Tangimoana makes a mockery of New Zealanders’ preferred peace-based role in the world.First announced in 1987 Waihopai is operated by the Government Communications Security Bureau in the interests of the foreign powers grouped together in the very super-secret UK-USA agreement known as Echelon. Echelon shares global electronic and signals intelligence among the spy agencies of the US UK Canada Australia and New Zealand. Waihopai’s satellite interception dishes intercept a huge volume of civilian telephone calls telexes faxes email and computer data communications. Waihopai spies variously on Latin America Russia China Japan other Asian neighbours of ours our very close friends in the South Pacific and now illegally also on us—New Zealanders. This material is forwarded on to the major partners in the UK-USA agreement specifically the US National Security Agency the NSA. Mr English in his faux pas today speaking on behalf of the Government Communications Security Bureau would have been a lot more accurate if he had said he was speaking on behalf of the USA.Waihopai’s targets are international civilian communications including the interception of New Zealanders’ international phone calls. New Zealanders will also be really intrigued to know that their mobiles even when they are not speaking on them assuch are effectively Government Communications Security Bureau microphones if that is the will of the spy agencies—or maybe of the Prime Minister.Nicky Hager’s book published back in 1996Secret Power: New Zealand’s Role in the International Spy Network included a foreword by David Lange: “In the mid-1980s we bucked the system. We may have been ahead of our time on matters nuclear but we were out of step with what was called the ‘Western Alliance’. It took a break with the United States and Britain to make the people of New Zealand aware that we were part of an international intelligence organisation which had its roots in a different world order and which could command compliance from us while withholding from us the benefits of others’ intelligence.” He went on: “Life at the time was full of unpleasant surprises. State-sponsored terrorism was a crime against humanity as long as it wasn’t being practiced by the allies when it was studiously ignored. In the national interest it became necessary to say ‘ouch’ and frown and bear certain reprisals of our intelligence partners. We even went the length of building a satellite station at Waihopai.”—in my words for the USA and maybe the UK. Lange continued that “it was not until I read this book that I had any idea that we had been committed to an international integrated electronic network.” So even the Prime Minister of the day did not know what our security chiefs had hooked us into.But now we have got John Key wanting to legitimise his mate Ian Fletcher’s illegal spying on New Zealanders for the USA and it was not just Ian Fletcher; it obviously went on for some time before that. But it suited to carry on for the 88 people that little bit longer until they realised they could not get away with it any longer. Waihopai needs closing down. The Government Communications Security Bureau has been given well over $600 million of taxpayers’ money in the past two decades.