Wellington: New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has categorically denied claims he was involved in a plot to allow convicted fraudster and internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom into New Zealand, at the behest of Hollywood studio executives, in order to have him extradited to the US for questioning on internet piracy.
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And the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden has said that any statement that mass surveillance is not used in New Zealand is "categorically false".
In a post on The Intercept website on Monday afternoon, Mr Snowden, a former analyst with the US National Security Agency (NSA), said he had come across New Zealanders' communications in his work at the NSA. "If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched," he wrote.
Mr Key's claim that there never has been any mass surveillance by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) was false, Mr Snowden said.
"At the NSA, I routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in my work with a mass surveillance tool we share with GCSB, called XKEYSCORE," Mr Snowden wrote.
"I know this because it was my full-time job in Hawaii, where I worked every day in an NSA facility with a top-secret clearance."
Mr Key has denied there has been mass surveillance of New Zealanders.
On Monday night, NZ Internet Party founder Kim Dotcom – who is originally from Germany –was planning to release a "bombshell" revelation at an election campaign event. The revelation is reportedly from NSA documents leaked by Mr Snowden and published by US investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald.
The documents purport to show mass surveillance of its citizens by the NZ government and are said to include an email from Warner Bros executives that cites a conversation in which Mr Key had knowledge of plans to extradite Mr Dotcom to the US to face charges of internet piracy.
Mr Key has hit back at the allegations and said he will declassify intelligence service documents to disprove claims his government engaged in mass surveillance of its citizens.
Greenwald, who will be at the Internet Party event in Auckland, said he will release more NSA files on Monday showing NZ's complicity in mass surveillance with its partners in the Five Eyes network (Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States).
The documents will show the GCSB initiated a program aimed at mass surveillance, Greenwald said on Radio New Zealand.
Mr Key said he would be "highly surprised" if Greenwald had evidence that NSA had conducted mass surveillance on New Zealanders because the Five Eyes countries had an informal agreement they would not spy on each other. He would not be drawn on whether New Zealand had spied on its trading partners.
The unverified email, dated October 27, 2010, purports to be an exchange between Warner's chairman and chief executive Kevin Tsujihara to a senior executive at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the lobby group for the Hollywood studios.
The New Zealand Herald says it reads: "We had a really good meeting with the prime minister. He's a fan and we're getting what we came for. Your groundwork in New Zealand is paying off. I see strong support for our anti-piracy effort.
"John Key told me in private that they are granting Dotcom residency despite pushback from officials about his criminal past. His AG [attorney-general] will do everything in his power to assist us with our case. VIP treatment and then a one-way ticket to Virginia."
Warner Bros senior vice-president for corporate communications Paul McGuire said the email was a fake. The Motion Picture Association also deemed the email to be a fake.
"[President and managing director of Motion Picture Association Asia-Pacific] Mike Ellis never received the alleged email or discussed this matter with Kevin Tsujihara," MPAA spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield said.
Meanwhile, Mr Key has flatly rejected being involved in any plan to extradite Mr Dotcom to the US. Born in Germany, Mr Dotcom was the founder of the now closed Megaupload file-sharing site. He moved to New Zealand in 2010.
The prime minister said Greenwald was trying to hijack the election by doing Mr Dotcom's bidding, five days before the country went to the polls.
"Dotcom is trying to save Dotcom's butt, and it's a reasonably large one, so he's brought in all of these people, three little butts to save his butt," the prime minister said. "It won't work but they'll say and do anything to bamboozle people."
Mr Key said that while the GCSB had contemplated broad cyber surveillance, he had put a stop to it and the program had never got off the ground.
Fairfax New Zealand
