Why was GCSB spying on Dotcom?

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Why was GCSB spying on Dotcom? Big business is watching you!

Kim Dotcom was arrested on charges related to copyright infringement, not national security or “terrorism”. There is a worrying trend that the surveillance network involved the “Five Eyes” (NZ, Aussie, US, Canada and the UK), has shifted from it’s original mission and is being used for intelligence related to promoting corporate interests.
The GCSB’s website states:

The Mission of the GCSB is to contribute to the national security of New Zealand through:

• providing foreign intelligence to support and inform Government decision making;

• providing a 24/7 intelligence watch and warning service to Government;

• ensuring the integrity, availability and confidentiality of official information through information assurance (IA) services to Government; and

• contributing to the protection of Critical National Infrastructure from cyber threats.

NZ investigative journalist, Nicky Hager, was responsible for exposing the so-called “echelon” network of surveillance, by the Five Eyes, and the shift in its mission.

Intelligence monitoring of citizens, and their communications, in the area covered by the AUSCANNZUKUS security agreement has caused concern. British journalist Duncan Campbell and New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager asserted in the 1990s that the United States was exploiting ECHELON traffic for industrial espionage, rather than military and diplomatic purposes.

Today the story broke that John Key is traveling to Hollywood to promote NZ’s movie industry.
Today Kim Dotcom tweeted:

“Prime Minister meets studio bosses in Hollywood about doing business in NZ. Getting paid for the raid.”

Dotcom has made other claims about Key’s involvement with Hollywood:

Dotcom said he believed US Vice President Jo Biden personally ordered the closure of Megaupload on behalf of the American film industry, particularly his close friend and former senator Chris Dodd, who now heads the Motion Picture Association.

The Scoop team put out a press release today, explaining exactly what the GCSB was able to provide to aid the US in getting NZ police to arrest Kim Dotcom back on January 2012.
They claim that GCSB was able to provide real time viewing of the January 20 raid for interests in the US and elsewhere:

When New Zealand police raided Kim Dotcom’s mansion on Friday 20 January they were being watched by one of their colleagues 14,000km away in Washington D.C. — courtesy of GCSB-TV. …
Created by the FBI’s Law Enforcement Online (LEO) network in 2002, the Virtual Command Centre (VCC) enables enforcement agencies to post, track and spread information in a quick, secure environment. …
The GCSB’s value to police in the Dotcom raid was its expertise in managing top-secret data feeds so that New Zealand, at the centre of the FBI’s global move against Dotcom only because he chose to live here, could hold its own in the international law enforcement community.

I’m not sure how much truth there is to Dotcom’s claims about Dodd and Biden. However, just a few days after Dotcom’s arrest in January, the bill s targeting online piracy, which Dodd was championing, were pulled from both the US Congress and the Senate.

It’s been a rough two weeks for former senator Chris Dodd, who left government and took a gig as President of the Motion Picture Association of America. The SOPA and PIPA bills on online piracy he was fighting to get passed were pulled in both the House and Senate after a massive online protest.

It’s not easy to get to the truth about what has been going on with the Dotcom case and NZ authorities. But altogether there are some worrying trends in the use of surveillance capabilities by the “five eyes” international network.

http://thestandard.org.nz/why-was-gcsb-spying-on-dotcom-big-business-is-watching-you/