GCSB

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Reply # 694469 1-Oct-2012 20:12

1080p:
Sure, I'm happy to admit you may be right but I am yet to see a single - even theoretical - case in which the encryption I am using may be decrypted by a third 'MitM' party. The SIS/GCSB/NSA/FBI and any other acronym are welcome to my encrypted packets for all the good it will do them.

This makes the assumption that they haven't stored them until they can be decrypted and time travel back in time in electronic media is not possible.

When I consider the rate at which computer speed has increased over the past 45 years, I wonder what encryption you're using.

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oxnsox

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Reply # 694471 1-Oct-2012 20:13

1080p:
oxnsox:
kyhwana2:
1080p: I am interested to know how the paranoid are able to explain how the station in Waihopai is able to capture and process the data transmitted via the Southern Cross cable.

As far as I am aware, the Waihopai station is near Blenheim and the Southern Cross cable lands near Auckand.

See?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells?or?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

There probably is such a room somewhere in Auckland, though i've not heard a sniff of existence about it, since anyone letting it slip would be in loads of trouble.

Why put it in Auckland when you can capture it all at the other end of the cable?
(saves on tinfoil hats too)

Sure, I'm happy to admit you may be right but I am yet to see a single - even theoretical - case in which the encryption I am using may be decrypted by a third 'MitM' party. The SIS/GCSB/NSA/FBI and any other acronym are welcome to my encrypted packets for all the good it will do them.

Great... (well it is for the rest of us) they'll all be so focused on cracking you encryption we can just do all our stuff in plain text.

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1080p

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Reply # 694517 1-Oct-2012 21:23

DonGould:
1080p:
Sure, I'm happy to admit you may be right but I am yet to see a single - even theoretical - case in which the encryption I am using may be decrypted by a third 'MitM' party. The SIS/GCSB/NSA/FBI and any other acronym are welcome to my encrypted packets for all the good it will do them.

This makes the assumption that they haven't stored them until they can be decrypted and time travel back in time in electronic media is not possible.

When I consider the rate at which computer speed has increased over the past 45 years, I wonder what encryption you're using.

I know that I have had enough GZ when DonG replies with a time travel argument.

Standard encryption is still uncrackable in any decent period of time. Think the FBI trying to crack that one Brazilian bankers' hard drive a few years back. Have they succeeded yet? Nope :)

hachi

51 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 694535 1-Oct-2012 21:53

TheUngeek: *sigh*

I don't even know where to start...

That's because you don't have anywhere to start. You have been roundly defeated in an argument. Being an adult is being able to accept when you are wrong and take responsibility for what you have done or said, in this case apologising to the person you were arguing with.

TheUngeek

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Reply # 694538 1-Oct-2012 22:00

Oh yeah.... That's right. How silly of me.

Btw I'm also sarcastic

gzt

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Reply # 695328 3-Oct-2012 09:06

networkn: Well I am sure those with tinfoil hats will suggest this review is rigged blah blah but;

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10837715

Hard to see why anyone would want to rig it. It is a procedure and process review. Recommendations will include things like calling the immigration department to check residency status.

networkn

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Reply # 695339 3-Oct-2012 09:23

gzt:
networkn: Well I am sure those with tinfoil hats will suggest this review is rigged blah blah but;

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10837715

Hard to see why anyone would want to rig it. It is a procedure and process review. Recommendations will include things like calling the immigration department to check residency status.

Yes to all those who use common sense and reason this is the case.

oxnsox

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Reply # 695375 3-Oct-2012 10:24

And in the most bizarre twist in all this the Police are now conducting there own investigation (based on a complaint by the Greens I believe). Am I missing something here? Wasn't the initial issue caused by a jolly police-person assuring the GCSB that dotcom was a valid target as he wasn't an NZ resident?
Are the Police using a mirror at the GCSB to look up their own trousers?

(Jolly police-personnage: 'No, you'll be right, go right ahead matey.... he speaks with an accent, no problems from us if you look in his letterbox and open his mail. No problems at all.'
Dark-suited agent: 'Very well Constable. Based on your assurance I'll have one of my chaps take a little look. And Constable.... Mums the word old chap, mums the word.')

John2010

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Reply # 695498 3-Oct-2012 13:35

oxnsox: And in the most bizarre twist in all this the Police are now conducting there own investigation (based on a complaint by the Greens I believe). Am I missing something here? Wasn't the initial issue caused by a jolly police-person assuring the GCSB that dotcom was a valid target as he wasn't an NZ resident?
Are the Police using a mirror at the GCSB to look up their own trousers?....

I assume the GCSB falls under the State Sector Act, in which case its employees (and the Chief Executive) are personally immune from any liability unless their actions were not conducted in good faith in pursuance of the powers of the department i.e. unless they set out to break the law, they are personally immune from mistaken interpretations of the legislation under which they work, and this is the case in most (all?) western jurisdictions.

So, assuming Russell Norman knows that (which I would not bank on), then all I can assume is that he thinks that employees or the Chief Executive have intentionally set out to intercept the communications of NZ residents and citizens knowing that they were not allowed to and so are not immune.

I would have thought that the other reviews would have soon turned this out into the open if it were to be so, so Norman's request of the police would seem to me to be just a typical political beat up in order to keep his name in the media. Most Greens, in my experience, believe there is a spy acting illegally behind every bush so his followers will not see that as being so, so no downside for him from them.

As you say, the fault, whether the surveillence was a genuine mistake or a deliberate action, could lie partly with the police.

gzt

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Reply # 698767 9-Oct-2012 22:17

It appears now that the information provided by the prime minister about the legality or otherwise of the GCSB surveillance under old/new legislation was completely incorrect.

A UoA law professor determined that under the older immigration legislation which the prime minister said the GCSB mistakenly thought they were operating under - the surveillance of Dotcom's communications would still have been completely illegal.

NZ Herald source: "University of Auckland emeritus professor of law Jim Evans, an expert in interpreting the meaning of laws, said: "It is not true that 'had he [Mr Dotcom] come to NZ at the time without changes to other laws, particularly GCSB's law, then his activities would not have been protected'. "So long as he was granted a resident permit when he arrived, his activities would have been protected."

The Herald article is short on detail but this one on Legal Beagle goes into immigration procedure and the details of the clauses in both revisions of the legislation.

The GCSB reviews performed so far are all internal reviews with constrained frames of reference. In one case the terms of reference were set directly by the prime minister.

The police investigation is a different matter and that has not yet concluded. It will likely be limited to issues of intentionality.

I think it has reached the point now where a genuine independent enquiry is needed.

TheUngeek

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Reply # 698838 10-Oct-2012 07:22

Can't believe the fuss over this, nzs petty polititcs drive me nuts. At the end of the day its a minor oops.
It's not as if the bumped off someone and got the wrong guy or were selling drugs to fund a war.
They listened to someone facing serious criminal.charges. oh wow the humanity!
Spies FTW!

MikeB4

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Reply # 698845 10-Oct-2012 07:37

The entire Dotcom affair is an embarrassment, from the time he was granted entry to NZ. But that is what covert agendas lead to.

Mike
Retired IT Manager.
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oxnsox

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Reply # 698891 10-Oct-2012 09:55

KiwiNZ: The entire Dotcom affair is an embarrassment, from the time he was granted entry to NZ. But that is what covert agendas lead to.

The Dotcom affair and the issue of whether the GCSB acted lawfully are two separate issues.

Lias

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Reply # 698898 10-Oct-2012 10:07

Time to overthrow the government, execute all the politicians (they are all as bad as each other) and make Kim Dotcom our god-emperor.

Information wants to be free. The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

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John2010

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Reply # 698925 10-Oct-2012 10:26

gzt: It appears now that the information provided by the prime minister about the legality or otherwise of the GCSB surveillance under old/new legislation was completely incorrect.

A UoA law professor determined that under the older immigration legislation which the prime minister said the GCSB mistakenly thought they were operating under - the surveillance of Dotcom's communications would still have been completely illegal.

NZ Herald source: "University of Auckland emeritus professor of law Jim Evans, an expert in interpreting the meaning of laws, said: "It is not true that 'had he [Mr Dotcom] come to NZ at the time without changes to other laws, particularly GCSB's law, then his activities would not have been protected'. "So long as he was granted a resident permit when he arrived, his activities would have been protected."

The Herald article is short on detail but this one on Legal Beagle goes into immigration procedure and the details of the clauses in both revisions of the legislation.

The GCSB reviews performed so far are all internal reviews with constrained frames of reference. In one case the terms of reference were set directly by the prime minister.

The police investigation is a different matter and that has not yet concluded. It will likely be limited to issues of intentionality.

I think it has reached the point now where a genuine independent enquiry is needed.

Someone is being mischevious with words here for political purposes.

The fact is that prior to 29 November 2010 a person in the country and holding only a visa of a residence type (and so not a permit) was not a resident and there is no question whatsoever about that.

At that time a visa entitled one to travel to NZ but did not entitle one to enter it. As the Evan's quote infers, but ignored by the jounalist, he would only be a resident if a permit had been issued at the border, that permit would carry the conditions of residency. Dot.com was never in possession of a permit as from 29 November 2010 the visa he held (now falling under transition arrangements in the Act), and assuming permission to enter (not a permit from then on) was granted at the border, then became the document carrying the conditions of residency and there was no longer such a thing as a permit.

Now there are plenty of legal and illegal ways in which a person could have been in NZ prior to 29 November 2010 with a visa of a residency type and no permit of a residency type, so it is mischevious to assume that one was issued at the border just because the person was now in NZ. For example, a completely legal one is that one may have traveled to NZ under the residency visa but the permit of a residency type refusedor not requested at the border, but a visitors' one (say) given; that permit being especially easy to get if the traveller is from a visa waiver nation (as, for example, dot.com is).

In dot.com's case, as best I can make out, he was issued a residency visa offshore in November 2010 but that prior to 29 November 2010. If he had travelled to NZ prior to 29 November 2010 he would expect to, but not be entitled to, have been issued a permit at the border entitling him to residency (assuming no issue raised at the border), but he travelled to NZ after 29 November 2010 and so no permit was issued at the border, he entered under the transitional arrangement that recognised pre 29 November visas as residence class visas under the new Act and which now serve the purpose of the old permit in setting out the conditions of residency on the NZ side of the border.

So the claims made that under the old Immigration Act that he would not have been a resident if he held only a visa of the residence type (and so subject to GCSB surveillence) are entirely correct because he was in fact never in possession of a permit that would have given him residency rights under that Act. This is all plain as day and everyone involved seems to agree this is so and that GSCB, etc made an error, so no investigation based on this is required, everything is admitted and clear. Any claim that even if he had been in NZ prior to 29 November 2010 and held a visa of a residency type he would have been a NZ resident is entirely fictitious, and in the quote's case of that justifying an independant investigation is entirely politically mischevious and preying on the the lack of knowledge of the details of the immigration changes by most of the population.

That is not to say that the GSCB (and possibly police, etc?) did not make a foolish mistake, as apart from having an apparant mind muddle over what the current legislation was, if they were thinking under the old system, one would have thought that someone would have checked up as to why he was here and apparantly did not have a permit - they would then have found that he did not need one as the immigration law had changed, and was in fact a resident. But everyone is agreed on that, whether in the Government, the opposition, the GCSB, etc, etc.

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