REPORT: New Zealand Police Used NSA PRISM Data To Nab Kim Dotcom
The documents reviewed by Keith Ng at On Point show that the police fed "selectors" to the country's Government Communications Security Bureau, which in turn fed them to a secret intelligence system (redacted) related to New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States.
"Selectors" is the same intelligence vernacular used for the identifying fields that hone down a search in the NSA's PRISM program.
There was already a ruling in New Zealand which said the GCSB illegally spied on domestic communications in order to take down Dotcom. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has said there isn't any loophole that lets the GCSB use international partners to get around domestic spying laws, though he declined to comment on whether the GCSB has access to technologies like PRISM.
Ng's report would appear to conclude that they do.
Ng writes:
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. Through the Bradley Ambrose case, we’ve seen that the Police are willing to use the full extent of their powers for entirely bullshit cases. Combine the two, and it makes me very, very queasy.
It goes without saying that there was a lot of pressure coming from the international community — in specific Hollywood — to shut down Dotcom's online operations under accusations of infringement.