By SIMON HENDERY
In the blend-into-the-background realm of international spying, it is an ironically distinctive structure.
The Waihopai satellite tapping station sticks out like a sore thumb - or, rather, the world's largest ping-pong balls - on sun-soaked farmland in a remote Marlborough valley.
Since it opened in 1989, Waihopai has been a magnet for peace activists who condemn New Zealand's involvement in a covert international intelligence-gathering network.
Every January, as they have done for more than a decade, the New Zealand Anti-Bases Campaign rallied outside the electric perimeter fence to denounce Government-sanctioned eavesdropping and demand the base's closure.
Among this year's protesters were Rod Donald and Keith Locke. The two Green MPs called for an inquiry into the base they say invades the privacy of average New Zealanders.
Do they have a point? Is Waihopai the spherical incarnation of George Orwell's Big Brother, or a legitimate tool in the Free World's fight for survival?
What happens at Waihopai?
A team of about three dozen technical, security and administrative staff work round-the-clock shifts monitoring telephone, fax and e-mail transmissions that are bounced across the globe via communication satellites above the Pacific.
The vast amount of intercepted data is decoded and trawled for titbits of security and diplomatic information.
Anything of interest is reported to the highest levels of the New Zealand Government, and passed to our allies overseas.
Why the ping-pong ball look?
The eye-catching 30m-high spherical "radomes" beside the base's more drab single-level operations building cover 18m-diameter satellite receiving dishes - the "ears" of the operation.
Hiding the dishes under the radomes means curious onlookers are unable to tell which of the 70-odd Pacific satellites is being targeted for eavesdropping.
How is information collected?
Peace activist and author Nicky Hager has spent 15 years researching espionage networks.
In his 1996 tell-all book Secret Power he says Waihopai "is to eavesdropping what a huge pulp and paper mill is to papermaking ... It is industrial-scale spying, using high-tech equipment and automation to handle the immense throughput of intercepted communications."
Hager says the Waihopai computers dredge the satellite feeds looking for messages containing key words and numbers selected by spy chiefs as most likely to appear in sensitive communications.
Who, outside the Government, has access to Waihopai information?
Waihopai and the Tangimoana radio interception base southwest of Sanson are run by New Zealand's largest intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).
The bases are part of the global Echelon spy network established under the 1948 UKUSA security pact to which Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand were signatories.
Under Echelon, New Zealand passes on information intercepted at its spy bases to the other countries.
The GCSB also uses information gleaned from Waihopai to prepare intelligence reports for the UKUSA alliance on a number of Pacific Island nations.
What does New Zealand gain by passing
this information on?
In return for its involvement in the spy network, New Zealand is given access to information gathered at other Echelon bases.
But Hager believes New Zealand is not aware of exactly what information is being extracted from Waihopai by our allies. He says what they receive could be used in ways contrary to our best interests.
Is electronic eavesdropping an effective intelligence-gathering tool?
Hager points out two major incidents that went undetected by the UKUSA network: the French bombing of the Rainbow Warrior and the 1987 Fiji coup.
His book suggests that our allies either failed to pass on information about the 1985 plan to sink the Greenpeace boat, or missed the information altogether because of the network's tight focus on other targets, such as Russia.
He also quotes a senior public servant as saying Echelon provided no useful information before, during or after the Fiji coup.
As a taxpayer, how much is the satellite
spy game costing me?
The GCSB has an annual budget of about $20 million.
About the same amount was spent building Waihopai in the late 1980s.
As a phone, fax and e-mail user (with no
interest in bringing down the Free
World), is my right to privacy threatened?
No, according to our chief spy-watcher, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Laurie Greig, a retired High Court judge.
Justice Greig said last year that he was satisfied New Zealanders' privacy interests were protected in the exchange of GCSB information with other Echelon powers.
Asked by the then Prime Minister, Jenny Shipley, to investigate whether Waihopai and Tangimoana were working in New Zealand's interests, he said the GCSB's cardinal rule was to focus on foreign communications, and not deliberately intercept those made by New Zealand citizens.
In Secret Power, Hager says it is unclear whether Waihopai spies on New Zealanders. Although UKUSA policy is that the network not be used to gather information about member countries or their citizens, "such interception would be almost impossible to prove."
All right, I do want to bring down the Free World. How should I go about it
without attracting Waihopai's attention?
Make sure your international communications are routed through undersea cables, rather than via satellite. Do not use words likely to be in the Waihopai dictionary of suspicious terms: "comrades," "conspiracy" and "world domination" are probably on the list.
Avoid any reference to phone or telex numbers associated with New Zealand-based foreign embassies. These numbers are also probably programmed into the dictionary.
Do our politicians know what's
going on at Waihopai?
The GCSB has a responsibility to report to the Prime Minister. But our spooks are often accused of keeping too much under their hats.
David Lange, who was Prime Minister when Waihopai was being built, later said he was not given the full facts about how information gathered at the base was used.
He was incorrectly assured that all Waihopai data sent to Australia was screened by the GCSB first.
Mr Lange said in 1996: "It is an outrage that I and other ministers were told so little, and this raises the question of to whom those concerned saw themselves ultimately answerable."
Electronic ears that never sleep
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