Did New Zealand Use NSA to Spy on Kim Dotcom?

New Zealand has previously acknowledged surveillance of Kim Dotcom, the man behind file-sharing site Megaupload—and a new assessment suggests that NSA systems may have helped. The investigation, initially posted by New Zealand journalist Keith Ng and reviewed at Ars Technica, relates to the country's Government Communications Security Bureau, its version of the NSA. Ng finds that the GCSB was using technology related to "Five Eyes," a system for sharing data between the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

Dotcom tells Ars that "all Five Eyes partners have access (to NSA systems), including GCSB ... Everything goes into the US-based spy cloud. Including all the surveillance they have done on me." The upshot, per Ng: "GCSB assistance is NSA assistance," and "government agencies can tap into these powers as part of bread-and-butter law enforcement." In other words, Ars notes, it seems possible that NSA capabilities could be used outside of the military and counterintelligence applications the agency calls its mission. But some experts, including Dotcom's lawyer, caution against jumping to conclusions; Ars Technica has more. (More NSA stories.)