The government Communication and Security Bureau. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The spy agency watchdog has not asked a foreign agency if it used espionage equipment based in New Zealand for military action.
The existence of a foreign system run remotely from inside the government Communication and Security Bureau (GCSB) was revealed last week.
But the GCSB did not track how it was used, and lawmakers have said the public will never know.
RNZ asked the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Brendan Horsley, if he had asked the foreign agency if the system was used militarily.
But Horsley said there was no realistic possibility the foreign agency would confirm this or not.
"Given the limited tasking records at GCSB, the issue with obtaining tasking records dating back further than two years from partners ... the complexity of tracing the action of the system in question, and the level of protection normally applied by states to their records of military action on intelligence, we concluded there was no realistic possibility of the partner agency confirming whether or not any particular tasking of the system at GCSB resulted in military action," Horsley said in a statement on Tuesday.
"We have no jurisdiction over foreign agencies to compel any disclosure."
His investigation report said the GCSB reported in 2020, the year the system was shut down, that it had only been used "rarely... eight times in the past two years".
It got these records from the foreign partner in control of the system.
It was unable to provide records of what jobs were done dating back further than two years, to 2018, due to a "system upgrade".
Horsley reported the system was used at least several dozen times, and probably a lot more - but the whole operation was opaque.
A GCSB staffer trained in its use told him: "We have no input whatsoever into the process as it's all controlled from [overseas].
"[A staff member] has set up a separate data flow for the capability traffic so the process should be totally invisible to us."