It's one of New Zealand's less-known intelligence assets and it has been providing the Prime Minister with briefings on Covid-19 misinformation. New documents reveal such concern attached to false and misleading information that it is at 'national security' levels.
False and misleading information created or trafficked during New Zealand's fight against Covid-19 is being treated as a matter of national security with a key part of our intelligence apparatus involved in scanning for risks.
Documents released through the Official Information Act show disinformation and misinformation growth drew in the involvement of the National Assessments Bureau, a little-known unit inside our intelligence community.
The bureau is a unit in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) tasked with providing "intelligence assessments on events and developments of significance to New Zealand's national security".
It was connected with the Ministry of Health in a trial to produce an intelligence briefing for political and public service leaders on "less than criminal threats to the Covid-19 response".
The Prime Minister has gone out of her way to avoid directly naming disinformation and misinformation as a national security issue. Even her Harvard speech avoided directly making the connection though quoted a security studies academic saying "disinformation corrodes the foundation of liberal democracy".
The Herald used the OIA to find what briefings Ardern had after an exchange with the Prime Minister's staff that avoided direct questions as to whether disinformation and misinformation posed a "national security" risk.
The responding material showed Ardern received a string of briefings in her role as Prime Minister - and as Minister for National Security - in the first three months of this year, which included the 23-day long Parliament protest that ended on March 2.
The Prime Minister's chief of staff Raj Nahna said the briefings included those from the National Assessments Bureau, which would not be released.
Despite Ardern's office refusing to link misinformation and national security, Nahna said they were being withheld on the basis release would "prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand or the international relations of the Government of New Zealand".
The National Assessments Bureau also appeared during a "national security" briefing on February 4, two days before the protest convoy got under way.
The briefing was titled "Security challenges to New Zealand's Covid-19 response" and included an update on security threats "including mis/dis-information and violent extremism".
It set out DPMC's strategy for combating increasing levels of disinformation and misinformation, which aimed to have a "coordinated approach across government and into communities" that would improve resilience to "disinformation and online harms by promoting digital literacy and critical thinking".
It said the Government would also promote "credible information" that included "countering disinformation with facts". The volume of false information would be targeted by making sure people knew how to report it and by working with social media companies to reduce its spread.
The briefing also raised as a "key focus" the online harassment and threats aimed at communities, "public figures and public servants". It raised the Human Rights Commission's "dial it down" campaign to reduce "online hate in Covid-19 discussions" but said "more still needs to be done to support victims of online harassment and threats".
The briefing also reported on a trial "to more effectively triage and report information on less-than-criminal threats to the Covid-19 response".
This short-lived intelligence exercise led to the National Assessments Bureau working with the Ministry of Health to provide briefings on false and misleading information.
DPMC's National Security Group acting deputy chief executive Dan Eaton told the Herald two reports were produced highlighting trends in false or misleading information.
The practice appeared to end when the Omicron outbreak began. Eaton said "Covid-19 settings changed", leading to agencies providing assessments on their own areas of responsibility.
Another lynch pin element of New Zealand's counter-terrorism infrastructure - the Combined Threat Assessment Group - was consulted on the reports before they were distributed.
Eaton said "less-than-criminal threats" meant looking at false and misleading information trends "that do not necessarily lead to or are not associated with criminal acts" but contribute to "a breakdown in social cohesion, erosion of trust in democratic institutions and the undermining of public health and safety measures".
"They have a cumulative impact, whereby the material is less extreme but consumed repeatedly, which can normalise the beliefs and narratives from which the more violent and extremist material eventuates."
Agencies across government met fortnightly to discuss trends of false and misleading with recent work focused on Covid-19 disinformation and misinformation, he said.
The OIA documents show much of the long-term work on misinformation in New Zealand is being led by the National Security Group.
Its role is to prepare assessments on national security risks and oversee the ordering of New Zealand's intelligence priorities.
The OIA documents included an illustration of disinformation in New Zealand since the pandemic began.
It used a word map along a timeline to show how initial conspiracy theories about the origins of Covid-19 eventually led to false claims of masks not working and untrue claims about the vaccine, leading to encouragement of anti-authority actions and distrust in the media.
Work by The Disinformation Project, an academic study of false and misleading information, showed 12 outlets were responsible for more than 70 per cent of the disinformation and misinformation that reached the New Zealand public.