Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and former NSA USA whistleblower Edward Snowden, via video link, with Laila Harre, Robert Amsterdam, Glenn Greenwald and Kim Dotcom. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Opinion
Serious allegations were made at a meeting at the Auckland Town Hall on Monday night regarding mass surveillance of New Zealand citizens.
Speakers at the meeting included Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, journalist Glen Greenwald and former NSA system analyst Edward Snowden.
Snowden claimed that while working at the NSA he
routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders through a mass surveillance tool shared with GCSB, called X-Keyscore. The tool allowed access to a database of communications collected through mass surveillance and was not used for the purposes of cybersecurity, but instead to read private emails, text messages, and internet traffic, Snowden claims.
Prime Minister John Key has denied the claims and released a series of documents which he says show that no such surveillance has taken place.
Debate on this article is now closed. Here is a selection of Your Views:
