Hi Folks,
Personally, I would not underestimate the extent and capability of electronic
snooping these days.
I know that NZ has a population of only 4 million.
Nevertheless, recent court cases show that Telecom NZ do save private text
messages from cell-phones for some months after their clients used their
cell-phones (and therefore Telecom repeater stations). The information has
been used as telling evidence in court cases, and duly reported.
Similarly, at least the log-files of who phoned where and when are held
digitally for many months and are available to a wide range of law-
enforcement agencies.
And remember, the prime Bali bombing suspect was picked up just before
he fled the country (Indonesia) due to his using a cell-phone just before he
boarded the ferry, enabling the Australian electronics experts who were
helping the Indonesian police to more closely watch intending ferry
passengers at the "right" time. They also use voice-recognition software.
The Pakistan Foreign Minister is in New Zealand at the moment and was
interviewed on radio this morning - (I orally monitored the interview !!) and
the
extent of satellite monitoring of all kinds of communication being carried out
and which he alluded to was great.
If you have the money to do the job, the volume of records is no barrier to
storage and analysis.
My conclusion is that no electronic message is immune from interception
and recording - and now it is the law here that the encryption key *must* be
provided when requested to enable encrypted files to be read, if the law-
enforcement agency insists. The alternative to providing the key is gaol (or
jail, if you prefer), but I'm not sure for how long.
New Zealand has one large electronic snooping and transmission station
(Waihopai, in Blenheim) which exists solely to gather and send data to the
USA. There is apparently no New Zealand agency which uses the
information.
Brian .........................
> Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 14:08:56 +0100
> From: "Simon Worby" <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> James King wrote:
>
> > By UK law *all* internet traffic has to be routed through GCHQ
> > - the goverments spying agency.... and internet survice providers
> > are suppose to keep copies of all internet traffic for X number
> > of months... - without the government paying anything for the
> > massive storage costs!
>
> I'm quite sure this is not the law; and it's certainly not done.
>
> IMHO GCHQ don't know their arse from their elbow when it comes to
> digital surveiallance. My father-in-law works there for that department,
> so I have some relatively close-hand knowledge about what they're up to.
> Clearly he can't comment openly, but let's say that the little
> technology they do have goes into trying to target effetively what they
> monitor, rather than even trying to monitor everything, which they
> acknowlege is impossible.
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