Posts by Alfie
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Key: Snowden "may well be right"
Prime Minister John Key has acknowledged that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's claim that New Zealanders' data is accessible through the controversial XKeyscore system "may well be right".
However, Mr Key maintains that information will not have been gathered under any Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) mass surveillance programme as the agency doesn't have that capability.
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to Jake Starrow,
She's a highly-respected journalist and doesn't deserve such defamatory tosh.
Sorry Mr S Puppet, but that statement is as absurd as claiming that Hosking and Henry are both respected journos. When it comes to judging journalistic credentials, I'm afraid that National Party approval doesn't count.
On the other hand, Glenn Greenwald is a highly respected journalist.
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to Jake Starrow,
Was it really that good ? !!
No.
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Hard News: Interview: Glenn Greenwald, in reply to Russell Brown,
And speaking of asking the next questions: this letter to the Prime Minister from security specialist Daniel Ayers.
Here's something slightly screwy. The email address quoted by Ayres in his letter to the PM is tactics dot net dot nz. At the moment that domain seems to be redirecting to an architectual company's Facebook page. Maybe Daniel could comment?
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to simon g,
This is my favourite ...
Hmmm... sharonthekiwi -- a hairdresser from Foxton perhaps?
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OnPoint: "Project SPEARGUN underway", in reply to CJM,
Just listened to Key on RNZ with Ryan talking about mass surveillance.
I've mentioned this piece from Hunter Thurman before, but it's worth repeating in the context of almost all of Key's interviews.
Starting your sentences with "so" demonstrates that you’re not as comfortable with your story as you think you are. And there's a good chance that you may be lying.
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Briscoe from Southern Cross disputes Key's claim that GCSB tapped the cable to collect metadata.
Mr Key on Monday acknowledged the GCSB had indeed tapped into the cable, but for the purposes of a cybersecurity programme.
However, Mr Key said concerns the project would be perceived as mass surveillance led to it being scaled back to a much narrower programme.
But Southern Cross' chief executive Anthony Briscoe told Radio New Zealand he did not believe a test probe was ever put in place.
He said the idea was crazy and Mr Key should check his facts.
Get your story straight boys.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Paul Campbell,
Last night TVNZ said they'd previously been in this situation with a Coldplay song and "Chariots of Fire", surely this 3rd strike means they're out?
+1 ;-)
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Andrea Vance has a 3:31 video interview with Glenn Greenwald.
Key said he pulled the plug on Project Speargun, a mass surveillance programme. He said its replacement Cortex is less intrusive because it doesn't indiscriminately sift through all internet traffic.
Greenwald cast doubt on those claims, however. He said Cortex, by design, has to filter through communications to identify attacks and to function must have access to the Southern Cross cable.
"Even if you believe the prime minister that this programme is limited - as he wants to claim it is - the only way that you could make any progress at all in guarding against cyber-attacks or detecting malware is if you were monitoring vast amounts of traffic, which is a form of mass surveillance by definition," he said.
"It is not targeted at specific people who you think are being targeted or who you think are up to no good. It is watching, keeping an eye on, the flow of internet traffic into and out of New Zealand in order to find things that you say you want to find. That is mass surveillance by definition."
Key declassified documents last night in a bid to disprove Greenwald and Snowden's claims. But Greenwald said they "have almost nothing to do with the programme that the NSA documents that we reported on are describing."
And she's managed to extract something out of Ferguson's otherwise bland "don't know nuffin" interviews.
However, former director of the GCSB Bruce Ferguson today admitted agents were trained in the data-harvesting technology.
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Is this serious? David Fisher suggests that the PM may have breached national security.
Secret documents which John Key says he made public to protect his reputation threatened massive damage to New Zealand's wellbeing if made public without permission, according to the GCSB's own threat estimates.
Is he taking the piss?