Browning Steffan: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14042. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): In Part 4 of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill there are a number of particular issues that concern us and there is an overriding aspect of human rights. But right from the start the network operators must register. As we discussed in other parts of the bill we are a little bit unsure how far that goes as to who is a network operator. It is not clearly defined enough or it may come right back to individuals having minimal networks but they might be included as well. But there is an obligation on those people to identify themselves and register. Actually theoretically it could even be people in this room—but hopefully not enforced—having to identify themselves and register. That is how I can best interpret it. On looking through it I cannot find why that is not the case. If that is the situation it is an unbelievably onerous and unfair thing to put on society in New Zealand to be looking and really thinking deeply having to know the law—because of course lack of knowledge is not an excuse around law—and having to find out whether I am a network operator and if so I have got to register with the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) of all people.Then it goes on. What is the information required for someone registering? If you are an operator and you have got employees you have to give the name and contact details of a suitable employee. That is seen by submitters as not being too fair and 2degrees submitted—and there was no change made to the bill from it—and said: “Look the characteristics required of an employee to be cleared should be listed.” Who is a suitable employee? What are the characteristics? There should also be a requirement for the employer to consult with the employee before nominating them and there are some provisions and some discussion around that. But there is no definitive list of characteristics and it all goes back to the GCSB to have the ultimate powers. And yet the operator is to find those suitable employees. The security agencies want the names and the contact details. The employee’s life suddenly becomes fully exposed to the security agencies of New Zealand to look at and to get their clearance. The agencies will be into their family and they will be into everything around the employee as those sorts of clearances go. What rights has that employee got? What rights do their associated family have when this is going on?They also want to know the total number of the network operator’s customers and in the case of an operator that offers retail services an estimate of the total number of end-users across all the services telecommunications services and the networks associated with them. The geographical coverage—OK how powerful is your gear? How far is it reaching? Do all network operators know? Is it hundreds of metres kilometres or whole regions—all of that? They want the lot. The whole lot is to go into this registration. Any particulars of any outsourcing arrangements including the date of the arrangement the names of the parties and the general nature—it is the works that is being required of the operators. Of course we know that the costs associated with setting up capability have to be taken on by the network operators and in our view that is quite an unfair arrangement.I would like to also talk about clause 76. There has been a further change to the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 366. The purpose of the change is to put it beyond doubt that the information-gathering provisions cannot be used to obtain information that would have been provided under an interception warrant or lawful interception authority. My interpretation of that is that the sort of eavesdropping that we anticipate through drug surveillance maybe—the sort of surveillance that we anticipate—is to be sieved out somehow from the material that might be covered under this bill and obviously under the GCSB legislation. It is sieving the different parts. How are they to tell the difference between this bit and that bit when they are doing these big grabs of information? I am just wondering how that is going to happen. I think part of that is some of the stuff that needs to be looked at under the Human Rights Act as to what material by whom and how it is going to be avoided.There is another aspect around that. There is a cost thing. The network operators are fully responsible for those costs of setting up but then there are issues around how they retrieve costs for when there is some actual spying going on the spying itself and the operational costs that the operators are able to retrieve. There is some intention there that if there is some argument then there is some arbitration.The piece that I was going to connect with—that sieving and the Human Rights Act—is actually about the liability as well. The liability provision to release operators from being liable is around good faith and as long as somebody is doing the job in good faith there will not be any sort of hitting on them by the people who are affected. You have to think about the 80-odd people who were spied on illegally in the past. They had no idea they have no recourse but this legislation sets it up as well that if the operators—not just the GCSB the SIS the police or whoever else ultimately gets access; the actual operators the neighbours the people in our community who will be providing those provisions—muck it up there is no recourse it seems for those spied on or even for the operators in turn if they are subsequent to other operators because there is an immunity effectively from liability. So that is something that really needs further addressing and there is a Minister in the chair today and there still is time for the Government to make some changes. [Interruption]There is plenty of noise about the thought of making some changes. There are a number of things to have changes made to them but the Green Party as we stated before in the other parts of the bill will be driving to have a full independent investigation of security services: how they are operating; how they have operated in the past; what went wrong; who was being slighted; who in fact was being disadvantaged; whose human rights were being breached; and how we might protect them in the future. So the Green Party will still be driving for that independent investigation to allow a proper community-agreed approach to surveillance interception capability and security. Thank you.