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Former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden today accused the New Zealand government of spying on its citizens, just days before the country goes to the polls in national elections.

If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched, he wrote in an opinion piece for the Intercept, an online news site run by journalist Glenn Greenwald. In it, he said that he regularly saw data from New Zealand when he was working for the NSA.

His allegation threatens to upend what has so far been a predictable campaign a poll three days agoshowed Prime Minister John Key as the choice of 61.6 percent of voters, compared to 17.9 percent for his closest challenger, according to the New Zealand Herald.

Snowden's charges drew a quick rebuttal from Mr. Key, who vigorously denied that New Zealands Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) runs a mass surveillance program.

There is not, and never has been, mass surveillance of New Zealanders undertaken by the GCSB, he said in a statement.

In his op-ed, Snowden urged New Zealanders to vote, writing that come Sept. 20, New Zealanders have a checkbox of their own.

If you live in New Zealand, whatever party you choose to vote for, bear in mind the opportunity to send a message that this government wont need to spy on us to hear: The liberties of free people cannot be changed behind closed doors. Its time to stand up. Its time to restore our democracies. Its time to take back our rights. And it starts with you.

Snowden says Key's government, through the GCSB, funnels mass surveillance data into the NSA's XKeyscore program. He writes:

The GCSB provides mass surveillance data into XKEYSCORE. They also provide access to the communications of millions of New Zealanders to the NSA at facilities such as the GCSB station at Waihopai, and the Prime Minister is personally aware of this fact. Importantly, they do not merelyuseXKEYSCORE, but also actively and directly develop mass surveillance algorithms for it. GCSBs involvement with XKEYSCORE is not a theory, and it is not a future plan. The claim that it never went ahead, and that New Zealand merely looked at but never participated in the Five Eyes system of mass surveillance is false, and the GCSBs past and continuing involvement with XKEYSCORE is irrefutable.

Key went on New Zealand television programs over the weekend to say that New Zealand intelligence agencies considered setting up a mass surveillance system, but ultimately decided against it.

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Sept. 15 (BusinessDesk) - Fugitive spying whistleblower Edward Snowden put in an appearance via the internet at tonight's Internet Party Moment of Truth event to back up his claims that mass surveillance of New Zealanders is already taking place despite government denials.

Snowden had earlier posted an article on The Intercept website entitled "New Zealand's Prime Minister isn't telling the truth about mass surveillance", where he said any statement that mass surveillance isn't performed in New Zealand, or that internet communications are not comprehensively intercepted and monitored, is categorically false.

"If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched," he said. He also told the event there were two US National Security Agency facilities in New Zealand - one in Auckland and one further north.

Prime Minister John Key released declassified documents just before the Moment of Truth event, where 800 people had to be turned away from the packed Auckland Town Hall while more than 22,000 viewers watched on the YouTube livestream. Key again denied the claims by Snowden and American journalist Glen Greenwald concerning the operations of the Government Communications Security Bureau.

Greenwald also released a story today on The Intercept website which said New Zealand's spy agency, the GCSB, worked in 2012 and 2013 to implement a mass metadata surveillance system as top government officials publicly insisted no such programme was being planned and would not be legally permitted.

Both he and Snowden didn't add any new revelations beyond what was in the articles they published just before the event, although they both questioned why Key could release previously classified documents simply to defend his own reputation rather than in the national interest, and whether the documents should have been classified in the first place.

Greenwald said documents provided by Snowden show that the New Zealand government worked in secret to exploit a new internet surveillance law enacted in the wake of revelations of illegal domestic spying to initiate a new metadata collection programme that appeared to be designed to collect information about New Zealanders' communications.

Snowden accused Key of misleading the public about GCSB's role in mass surveillance.

"The prime minister's claim to the public, that 'there is not and there never has been any mass surveillance', is false," the former National Security Agency analyst wrote. "The GCSB, whose operations he is responsible for, is directly involved in the untargeted, bulk interception and algorithmic analysis of private communications sent via internet, satellite, radio and phone networks."

Continued here:

NSA whistleblower Snowden says kiwis are 'being watched'

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