Image via WikipediaSIS Director Warren TuckerBy Patrick Gower
Feel like you are being watched ? Well, maybe you are...
New Zealand's spies have revealed they have secretly been keeping files on nearly 7,000 Kiwis.
The surveillance dates back 50 years and even covers old love interests.
However, the security intelligence service says we should not be spooked as only spies have access on a "need to know basis".
New Zealand’s top spy, Warren Tucker, rarely gives interviews. However, he was forced in from the cold today after it was revealed his agency holds files on 6,700 people.
His message: Trust us; we know what we are doing - and don't call me a spy.
“I don’t use the term spying. I use the term conducting intelligence collection or conducting a security investigation – and that’s what it is,” says SIS Director, Mr Tucker.
Mr Tucker is responding to an independent review that shows the security intelligence service has files for 6,700 targets. Additionally, "disposal" is under consideration, but has been since at least 1995. And even if they do it, it will be a "drawn out" process because of resource and bureaucratic constraints.
“I’m not going into our methods because we do need to be able to do our work,” continues Mr Tucker.
That work is stopping threats to national security. But Green MP Keith Locke says his file shows spies were out of control - they even looked into his love life.
“I was spied on for 55 years, for absolutely no good reason at any time,” alleges Mr Locke.
“I have to say that some of the things we were looking at 40 or 50 years ago do look a little quaint now,” says Mr Tucker.
Quaint or not, if you are concerned the spies might have a file on you, Mr Tucker says simply request your file under the Privacy Act by writing to him at Post Office Box 900, Wellington.
Trust and spies are not words that usually go together, but by coming out into the open Mr Tucker has invited the 6,700 people who were once targets to test his word.
That's if they know who they are.
Acknowledgements: Television 3 News
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