Snowden claims NSA collected data on New Zealanders

AUKLAND , New Zealand, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- Documents from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden claim Australian and New Zealand Internet data on private citizens was collected by the NSA.

The documents indicate a major undersea telecommunications cable -- linking New Zealand, Australia and North America -- was tapped to collect the data, beginning in 2012 or early 2013. Moreover, the documents suggest the government of New Zealand was aware of the program.

Information on the data collection was published Monday in the Sydney, Australia, Morning Herald and the website The Intercept.

New Zealand Prime Minster John Key denied his country's intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, was involved in the mass surveillance of citizens, although Snowden claimed Key was aware of the program.

"The GCSB, whose operations he (Key) is responsible for, is directly involved in the untargetted, bulk interception and algorithmic analysis of private communications sent via internet, satellite, radio, and phone networks," Snowden said in an interview with The Intercept.

"At the NSA, I routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in my work with a mass surveillance tool we share with GCSB, called 'X-Keyscore'. The GCSB provides mass surveillance data into X-KEYSCORE. They also provide access to the communications of millions of New Zealanders to the NSA at facilities such as the GCSB facility in Waihopai (New Zealand), and the Prime Minister is personally aware of this fact."

Key quickly denied Snowden's claim, saying, "There is not, and never has been, mass surveillance of New Zealanders undertaken by the GCSB," adding, "The GCSB does not collect mass metadata on New Zealanders, therefore it is clearly not contributing such data to anything or anyone."