NSA Collecting Mass Surveillance Data on New Zealanders, Says Snowden

Former National Security Agency employee turned whistleblower Edward Snowden said Monday that the NSA is gathering mass surveillance data on  citizens of New Zealand through its Xkeyscore Program. The NSA has also established a facility in New Zealand's largest city to intercept the large amounts of data, he added.

Hundreds of people at Auckland's Town Hall heard Snowden speak through a video link from Russia. The event called "Moment of Truth", was organized by indicted Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom.

While American journalist Glenn Greenwald attended the event at the Town Hall in Auckland, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange spoke via video link from London.

However, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said in a statement that New Zealand's spy agency, Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), has never carried out mass surveillance of New Zealand citizens. He also released a series of declassified  documents to prove his point.

"Regarding XKeyscore, we don't discuss the specific programs the GCSB may or may not use," Key said. "But the GCSB does not collect mass metadata on New Zealanders, therefore it is clearly not contributing such data to anything or anyone, he said," reports the Associated Press.

But Snowden said that GCSB does gather information for the NSA.

"There are actually NSA facilities in New Zealand that the GCSB is aware of and that means the prime minister is aware of," Snowden said. "And one of them is in Auckland."

He also said Key was evading the issue by not talking about XKeyscore.

"To this day, he's said I won't talk about this. I won't talk about this because it's related to foreign intelligence," Snowden said. "But is it related to foreign intelligence if it's collecting the communications of every man, woman and child in the country of New Zealand?" he said, reports AP.

At the event, journalist Glenn Greenwald showed some NSA slides, which he said reveal that GCSB had taken steps to do surveillance through a program called Project Spear gun.

Under project Speargun, cable access equipment was covertly installed in to  New Zealand's main undersea cable link, the southern cross cable, through which internet data is transmitted between Australia, New Zealand and North America.

The secret documents provided by Snowden reveal that GCSB along with NSA implemented phase I one of the Speargun sometime in 2012 or 2013, reportsThe Sydney Morning Herald.

After completing the first stage, Speargun started phase II in which metadata probes were to be inserted into the cables. According to the leaked NSA documents, the first metadata probe was planned in mid-2013. Such surveillance is conducted by NSA and its partners like Australia Signals Directorate (ASD) to tap high capacity fiber optic communication cables. This allows them to get large amount of data including dates, senders  and  recipients' email, phone calls etc, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.