New Zealand’s Green Party has called for urgent reforms in the functioning of the country’s Spy Agency in order to ensure greater privacy of citizens in line with emerging global trends. The Green Party has come out with a demand to reform the agencies by pointing to the recent vote in the U.S. House of Representatives that prohibited bulk metadata collection by the National Security Agency. The party now wanted a similar legislative intervention in New Zealand to ensure better privacy.

Green Party’s spokesperson Kennedy Graham said the documents leaked by Edward Snowden showed that New Zealand's the Government Communications Security Bureau is into NSA like spying and surveillance. Recently, the strictures by American courts on NSA also made clear that systematic collection of the American public’s phone communication data is illegal and the Congress vote further reinforced it. “New Zealanders have the right to expect as much privacy as the Americans and Europeans have been granted,” Graham asserted.

Govt Blamed

Flaying the inertia displayed by the government on the issue, Graham said American and European law-makers have acted to protect the privacy of their citizens by making new laws to restrict collection of metadata. “But John Key has done nothing and is not admitting metadata on New Zealanders is collected. New Zealanders have a right to expect that the forthcoming review of our intelligence and security will bring New Zealand law into line with comparable jurisdictions within the Five Eyes where it has been clearly indicated that mass collection on one’s own citizens is illegal and unacceptable,” the Green Party spokesman added.

In this respect, Graham said, the upcoming review of the New Zealand spy agencies must be an opportunity to get it right and make sure the Government's intelligence activity is in sync with civil liberties. The Green Party spokesman said his party welcomed the review of the spy agencies and underscored the review to be enhanced by the engagement of those with acknowledged independence and expertise in the area.

Review Panel

Meanwhile, the government finalised a review panel that will look into the functioning of New Zealand's security and intelligence agencies. The review will be led by Sir Michael Cullen and Dame Patsy Reddy. According to acting Attorney-General Amy Adams, Cullen is a former deputy prime minister and Reddy is an eminent solicitor. The terms of reference will include assessing whether the mandate of the intelligence and security agencies such as GCSB and Security Intelligence Service SIS are within the legislative frameworks and well placed to protect national security and individual rights. The panel will also evalaute the oversight arrangements at operational, judicial and political level to ensure that their functioning is in a manner that is lawful and conducive enough to maintain public confidence.

(For feedback/comments, contact the writer at k.kumar@ibtimes.com.au)