Hmmmmm…
GCSB deleted key evidence – Dotcom
The spy agency which illegally monitored Kim Dotcom’s communications has admitted deleting information needed in the upcoming $6 million damages hearing, according to the tycoon.Dotcom last night tweeted the claim, saying: “The GCSB spy agency seems to have deleted evidence relevant to my case against the GCSB for illegally spying on NZ residents.”
He quoted Crown lawyers as saying “some communications have automatically aged off. We propose to include … those communications which are still recoverable”.
Dotcom claimed lawyers acting for the GCSB told him the material had “aged off” the system, suggesting it had automatically deleted.
He also posted a video of Prime Minister John Key, who is in charge of the agency, saying: “This is a spy agency. We don’t delete things. We archive them.”
…let’s just ask ourselves some questions here.
Would the GCSB ‘age off’ data? I’m pretty sure irrelevant information they don’t care about might be ‘aged off’, but does anyone amongst us honestly think for one second that the GCSB would ‘age off’ any information relating to the largest foreign operation on NZ soil? An operation that required over 70 armed Police? An operation that the spineless GCSB live broadcast to the NSA and FBI? An operation that turned out to be illegal and an operation that led to a $6million lawsuit?
Do any of us think that when the stakes are so high for an operation so important to the Americans that anything would be deleted?
The only reason the GCSB would delete anything is to hide evidence of their wrong doing.
In March Kim Dotcom’s case against the Government will be heard and the claim is that Kim can prove Key has lied to the nation about when he was briefed about Dotcom. Snowden’s revelations have interestingly had nothing to do with NZ so far, I think that will change come March.
With so much at stake, it is not surprising at all that the GCSB are deleting information under the guise of ‘aged off’ as fast as they can hit the delete button.
Over the last ten years, funding for the Secret Intelligence Service increased by 250% to $41 million in 2012. It now employs 232 full time staff. The GCSB increased its full time staff to 294, with funding increasing by 174% over the same period of time to $63 million in 2012.
Vast surveillance powers have been granted to the Organised Crime Intelligence Unit, Financial Intelligence Unit, Strategic Intelligence Unit, National Bureau of Criminal Intelligence, Identity Intelligence Unit, Threat Assessment Unit, Police Terrorism Investigation and Intelligence Group and the Special Investigation Group despite very few prosecutions in NZ for any of the things those agencies are supposed to guard against under a new structure of command that gives John Key and his old school friend he appointed in a manner that went beyond the normal hiring process unmatched power.
Welcome to the new mass surveillance state that is accountable not to Wellington, but to Washington.
Believing that the GCSB would delete any information relating to Kim Dotcom’s case without a clear direction to do so seems naive in the extreme.
‘Aging off’ sounds more like a sexual act between superannuitants than it does the policy of a modern day spy agency.
Even if you think Kim Dotcom is the absolute worst human that ever drew breath, you should be damned concerned should any relevant data be being deleted by the GCSB – any data. If they are able to delete any then that means they could delete ANY!
The govt should be taking this extremely seriously.
What bothers me even more is how John Key is playing to the audience that thinks taking short cuts is okay so long as it fits with their world view, well, best they just understand where this sort of thinking takes people.
How likely is it the sun will rise tomorrow…..?
The Minister in charge, one John Phillip ShonKey seems to have much to gain from any “aging out*” of Dotcom info. It is highly unlikely to have disappeared completely given agencies like the NZSIS obsession with the past. More likely just stored somewhere NZ lawyers can’t easily go.
* slipperiest euphemism of the year to date
“Aging off”?
I’ve not heard that term until now.
Anyways. My understanding is that nothing can actually ever be deleted from a hard-drive and a skilled IT expert can recover “deleted” files.
So if the GCSB sez it can’t recover those “aged” files, then the only conclusion one can arrive at is that they don’t want to recover them.
It’s incredible that this is not the lead story in every media in the country!
I may be missing something here, but if the data was originally collected, then held for a while, and has now been “archived” , I would hope and expect that there would be some sort of structured backup regime in place, where there are daily / weekly backups of changes only, with monthly full backups of ALL data, changed or unchanged? Given that the relevant events happened months ago, there should be restorable copies of the data in each monthly full backup since it was collected? Or are we to believe that the backup regime employed by our spooks has one copy of the data only? ..Yeah right.Seems legit….
This sort of thing happens when you place loyal school buddies in charge of arse covering positions .
Nobody that I know who works with computers ever deletes anything except old emails. In my own work, I produce heaps of data, some of it demonstrably wrong, but I never ever delete any of it. The end result that is classified as my production is maybe 5% of what is on my computer, and everything is backed up in two other places.
John Key and the American puppets whom we pay are lying. I fervently believe this. TINA.
We have a Prime Minister who perverts (or is it “obstructs”?) the course of justice. How much more freaking bad is it going to get? And how freaking stupid can the media be not to raise the very obvious points highlighted in the comments above?
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