Norman Russel: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNorman Russel: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 20 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12610. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green):I rise to speak on the title clause of this bill the Government Communications and Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. Before I start I would just like to acknowledge the death a week ago of Bob Leonard who was one of the founders of the Anti-Bases Campaign. He will bewell-known to many people for dressing up as Uncle Sam at many of the Waihopai protests. It was people like Bob Leonard who drew attention to the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and the role of the GCSB long before many in the mainstream had perhaps picked up and understood its full significance. I think he would have very much appreciated the fact that the GCSB is now front and centre of the national debate as indeed it should be.In this title clause debate I would just like to talk about some aspects of the bill that have not come up so much before and one of them is its impact on New Zealand’s information and communications technology sector which I think has not been properly covered. Ian Apperley has written an article in theNational Business Reviewin I think just the last couple of days. He is a cloud-computing expert and he has talked about the impact of both the GCSB bill and the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill or the TICS bill—which is its partner bill if you like—on the New Zealand information and communications information sector. Why this is important is that the GCSB bill will affect not just the Government but will also have a big impact on particularly cloud computing.The reason why it has a big impact on cloud computing relates to the access it provides to Government agencies to intercept all of the data that companies and individuals might be putting up into the cloud. The Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill the parallel bill to this one requires that providers of such services as well as internet service providers install a back door into their services through which the Government can simply help itself to the information contained. What this means is that instead of the Government having to go through the front door and make requests present warrants and so forth the Government can simply stick its hand into the cloud or into the data that is stored and take it without having to go through the front door of the company. What this means is that the GCSB bill empowers the Government to acquire all this information and the telecommunications bill which runs parallel to it makes it technically possible and very simple for the Government to get the information. That bill is interesting as well because it can also gag the companies from telling anyone that the Government has installed a back door on their systems.What this sort of legislation means is that there is a flood of companies leaving the United States now. So with the PRISM system which has been established in the United States you have probably got—I mean the article in theNational Business Review said that 10 percent of all the contracts have been cancelled across the United States. Many tens of billions of dollars’ worth of business is now leaving the United States because the United States is no longer a secure environment in which to store data because of the PRISM system and because of the back doors that have been installed in all these data storage systems. This is a very significant development and what we have seen in Switzerland which bases itself on a secure data model is that it has had a doubling of its cloud-computing services and the money that is being spent in Switzerland on cloud computing as it has established itself as a secure location for information.This is a very significant development for the information and communications technology sector in New Zealand. What we do not realise is that this Government’s attempt to cripple the New Zealand information and communications technology sector will cost the sector somewhere in the order of $2 billion over 3 years in terms of lost business as estimated by the article in theNational Business Review . This is a sector that is growing rapidly and it should be part of New Zealand’s future. It is part of a smarter greener economy for New Zealand. It deals with some of the issues around the distance from our markets because of course information is gravity-free so it is a greatway for us to make money while being a long way from our markets. And of course we have access to renewable energy so there are some real advantages for New Zealand in the information and communications technology sector in terms of building a smarter greener economy.But the bill that the National Government is supporting will cripple the information and communications technology sector. That view is coming from the experts themselves in the cloud-computing area and in the New Zealand information and communications technology sector and that is why we have seen such strenuous opposition coming from many of the leading companies involved there. What this means is that the Government which prides itself on economic policy and tells us how great it is in that regard is in fact passing a piece of legislation that cripples one of New Zealand’s growing and quite important sectors and I think that that is a little-understood part of this whole debate.The other part that I think is important if we are debating the title which is supposed to include the words “Government Communications and Security Bureau” is the question of who on earth this agency really works for. There is this whole issue about the global framework within which the GCSB operates. The issue that I have been raising is around the issue of funding but it also relates to the issue of the “Five Eyes” network.So the GCSB is a member of the “Five Eyes” network which is essentially run by the United States but has a number of smaller of countries of Anglo origin involved in it—that is Canada New Zealand Australia and the UK. What has become clear during the revelations from the Snowdon leaks is that these five countries working together as part of “Five Eyes” have been spying on a lot of other countries which are now extremely upset with the “Five Eyes” network and are very unhappy—particularly the European Union countries—that the United States and the United Kingdom have been colluding to spy on all their internet traffic. That is why the issue of the US Government’s funding of the GCSB is critical to this whole debate and why it was such a scandal in the United Kingdom when it was revealed that the US Government the National Security Agency had provided about £100 million in funding to the equivalent of the GCSB in the United Kingdom—that is the GCHQ or the Government Communications Headquarters.If these agencies are working independently of the Governments that they are supposedly reporting to because they have independent sources of funding—because the US Government will fund them in order to do activities as we saw in the United Kingdom—then who on earth do they work for? Do they work for us? Is it really the New Zealand Government Communications Security Bureau or is it some part of the US Government? If it is taking large amounts of money from the US Government in order to do what the US Government wants it to do that gives it an element of independence from New Zealand citizens who are supposed to be controlling it via the elected Government. And of course if it has its own sources of income that gives it an independence from the New Zealand taxpayer who provides the money.The Prime Minister said that under various circumstances he would resign if it turned out that theGCSB was involved in mass surveillance and so forth. Well my challenge to him is this. Will he resign if it is discovered that the GCSB is in receipt of foreign money? That is my challenge to the Prime Minister. He has said: “Well this mass surveillance thing. That won’t happen and I will resign if anyone finds out that I have been engaging in mass surveillance.” But of course how would we find out? It all operates secretly. So he does have that very important caveat. But will he resign if it turns out to be the case that not only was the National Security Agency providing £100 million—which is hundreds of millions of New Zealand dollars—to the equivalentagency in the United Kingdom but it was also providing millions of dollars to the GCSB in New Zealand or some other such support? Will the Prime Minister resign? He refuses to answer the question as to the funding of the GCSB and whether it takes foreign Governments’ money.For which other Government organisation would we think it was acceptable for it to be working for another Government? In respect of which other Government organisation would we say: “OK that’s OK. You are funded by another Government a foreign Government and you are working for that other Government. That is acceptable modus operandi and you won’t even tell us how much money you are taking from the US Government.”? It seems to me that it is fundamental to our democratic structure and the accountabilities to this Parliament that the GCSB and the Minister responsible for it should be forced to tell us as New Zealand citizens whether the GCSB is in receipt of money from a foreign Government but the Prime Minister has repeatedly refused to answer the question.My suspicion is this: if he could deny it he would. If the Prime Minister could deny that the GCSB was in receipt of money from a foreign Government he would deny it because it is very damaging. But he refuses to deny that the GCSB has been in receipt of money from a foreign Government. That leads me to the conclusion that it is more than likely that the GCSB just like its equivalent in the United Kingdom has taken money from the US Government and hence it does not work just for us. In fact it also works for others and that is entirely the problem with the oversight function.When you have a rogue agency like this which is not only breaking the law repeatedly but also possibly or quite probably in receipt of money from the US Government it is very critical that we have proper oversight in place and we do not have that kind of oversight. It is for that reason that the Green Party has consistently supported the call for a proper inquiry and we will be supporting Grant Robertson’s amendment to the title clause so that there is a proper inquiry before this legislation ever comes into force. Thank you.