Donald Rod: Government Communications Security Bureau Bill — In Committee 
Donald Rod: Government Communications Security Bureau Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:607;Page:4394] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The previous speaker Ron Mark said earlier in his speech that we all know what this bill is about. I am beginning to wonder whether some Government members do actually know what this bill is about because they have not risen to their feet to comment on it in any way whatsoever which suggests to me they do not have a clue about what is going on here. 
I would therefore like to point out briefly that what we are talking about in all these polite words is the Tangimoana radio signal station—that is the station that failed to pre-empt the  
Rainbow Warrior 
 bombing by not picking up that the French yacht the  
Ouvea 
 was on its way to New Zealand—and the Waihopai satellite communications station which we all know failed to predict the Fiji coup because it clearly was not listening to communications coming out of or going into Fiji. That is what the Government Communications Security Bureau is and does and it has all the international connections that we have referred to previously. 
I digress by saying that I have visited the Waihopai base in Blenheim a couple of times. My first visit was made without advance warning. It was fascinating to look at the foyer because up on the wall were photographs of all the other bases—the Australian British and American ones. When I came back a couple of months later on an official visit I think with Labour MP Tim Barnett those photographs had been taken down. On that second visit the most fascinating thing about the foyer was the empty picture hooks on the walls and the fascinating thing about the base commander’s office was that all the mugs bar half a dozen of them were missing from the shelves on the back wall because they had engraved on them all the different conferences he had been to overseas. The second time round he had been to many fewer conferences! 
I return to the part. Mr Worth said earlier that there needed to be a balance and we entirely agree. We are simply saying that the balance is wrong and in this particular part I appeal to all other parties in the Committee to support the amendments Keith Locke has put up. He is trying to give effect to the very real concerns raised by the Privacy Commissioner and those concerns are real. So in the same way that in the previous part we would prefer not to have “economic well-being” and “international well-being”—instead accepting that there does need to be a concern for security but constraining that to acts of espionage sabotage and terrorism—in this part we are saying that there does need to be a limit placed on the extent to which the interceptions authorised by warrant can be applied. That is why we want to add the words “otherwise intercept any private communications”. Equally with clause 16 we want to delete the words “or by another enactment”. 
From our point of view what we are dealing with here is a bill that gives the Government Communications Security Bureau extraordinary powers to hack into people’s computers and to tap their phones and bug their homes. We at least want those aspects of the bill that are subject to ministerial warrant or authorisation to be as tight as possible because the organisation the Waihopai spy base can do extraordinary invasions of people’s privacy through its electronic-trawling exercise known as Echelon. We know that that interception system monitors every phone call every fax and every email transmitted via international telecommunication satellites which in our view infringes the privacy of law-abiding individuals and organisations. There is nothing we can do to stop that but the very least this Committee could do is support the amendments in Keith Locke’s name to ensure that where a warrant is issued it is issued for the very narrowest of purposes. 
On that point I would like to finish on clause 14 “Interceptions not to target domestic communications”. The issue is “target”. The purpose cannot be to intercept domestic communications. As I said on an earlier part the tape will not be turned off when people here taking part in a foreign conversation respond because then the conversation would not make any sense. So although people’s communications might not be targeted certainly they are being monitored recorded and analysed. According to the best sources we have those communications are going straight back to the National Security Agency in the United States of America which supplied the Echelon system the ‘dictionary” system and which in effect runs the Waihopai spy base even though it is our taxes that pay for it.