NSA used against Kim Dotcom in NZ copyright battle [View all]

[kpete]

Here's the NSA, part of the United States military, doing the bidding of large international corporations who howl about intellectual property. Not military threats, not terrorism, not violent crime, perhaps not even a crime at all:

A blog postby New Zealand-based Keith Ng http://publicaddress.net/onpoint/ich-bin-ein-cyberpunk/ spills the beans. New Zealand's intelligence agency is the GCSB, the Government Communications Security Bureau. Ng reports, based on a redacted government document, how GCSB worked with NSA's PRISM program.

Once the GCSB's lawyer had a look at it, the Police provided a list of "selectors" to the GCSB (we now know from the PRISM documents that "selectors" is the term used to describe the search terms used to make PRISM requests):

The selectors were entered into [five characters blacked out in Ng's document], in an email classified as "SECRET/COMINT/REL TO NZL, AUS, CAN, GBR, USA". In other words, the selectors were entered into a secret communications intelligence system, and this secret system was considered related to Five Eyes:
...
The email from the GCSB then described "traffic volume from these selectors": i.e. This secret system was capturing live traffic.
...
What does this mean? It means that GCSB assistance is NSA assistance. It means that government agencies can tap into these powers as part of bread-and-butter law enforcement.

So the PRISM program is not only collecting information on terrorists, it's collecting information used in a criminal investigation of copyright violation. True, it was "overseas", but it was a US long-arm operation against a business not located in the US with the help of a compliant government.


MORE:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/23/1233379/-NSA-used-against-Kim-Dotcom-in-NZ-copyright-battle