Kim Dotcom accuses New Zealand government of mass spying - live updates

New Zealand’s election campaign collided with the biggest questions of the internet age on Monday - here’s how this remarkable day went down:

• Documents provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal that the New Zealand government worked to implement a secret mass surveillance program code-named “Speargun” throughout 2012 and 2013.
• It followed an admission at the weekend by the New Zealand prime minister, John Key, that his government considered a mass-spying proposal after a series of cyber attacks. Key says the proposed surveillance made him “uncomfortable” and that he halted it in March 2013.
• Edward Snowden has weighed in, warning New Zealanders that he was personally able to search their intercepted internet traffic while working as an NSA analyst in Hawai’i. “If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched,” he wrote.
  
• Key responded by releasing his own declassified documents, which he says prove that no mass spying ever took place.
• Snowden has appeared via live stream at Moment of Truth, an Internet party event at Auckland Town Hall intended to publicise the Speargun revelations. Snowden told the audience that the NSA’s reach extended even to Auckland, where he claimed the agency operated a spy facility.
• Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom has pledged to end any mass surveillance of New Zealanders if he fledgling political party wins the balance of power at this Saturday’s general election. “We’ll close one of the five eyes,” Dotcom said, in reference to the intelligence-sharing agreement between Australia, the US, the UK, New Zealand and Canada.

Twitter lights up with verdicts on today’s event...

Laila Harré looks to be wrapping up the event now. She thanks the “three modern prisoners” - Assange, Snowden and Dotcom - for appearing, and also lauds Greenwald and Amsterdam, “warriors for our right to know and our responsibility to hold government around the world accountable for honouring our human rights”.

“This moment of truth has delivered,” she says, to a standing ovation.

Amsterdam describes PM John Key as “inherently a traitor” who “doesn’t cling to fundamental principles of human rights”.

He denounces the 2012 raid on Dotcom’s New Zealand mansion. “The leader of the government should have resigned on the spot that day,” he says.

Here’s some opinion coming in from Twitter about the event so far:

We’re hearing now from Bob Amsterdam, a Canadian international lawyer representing Kim Dotcom. He’s going a little broader, questioning the way governments point to terrorism to justify mass surveillance programs.

“Who’s attacking New Zealand?” he asks. “Our government are trying to alienate us from each other, and the are using terror to invade our homes, to invade our internet accounts, and to engage in mass surveillance that is violative of our most basic constitutional rights.”

He says Kim Dotcom is a victim of a “war on culture”, fought by large American entertainment corporations pursuing the German entrepreneur for copyright breaches in relation to his cloud-storage website, Mega.

The standing ovation Snowden received inside Auckland Town Hall.

The moment Snowden took a pop at Assange. “…unless it affects my reputation; and then I’m gonna throw classified documents in the air like I’m Julian Assange.”

“There are two ways to fight mass surveillance. Number one is politically, which is what we’re tying to do here in New Zealand. Number two is technology - encryption,” Dotcom says.

He says both Assange and Snowden are beaming in via Dotcom’s new web-based “Skype on steroids”, which he claims is a “fully encrypted video conference solution”.

Kim Dotcom finally speaks!

The eccentric founder of MegaUpload promises that if his Internet party is granted the balance of power at this weekend’s NZ general election, he’ll stop any mass surveillance of Kiwis. “We’ll close one of the five eyes,” Dotcom says to applause.

Assange says Project Speargun is evidence of “an extreme, bizarre, Orwellian future that is being constructed secretly in New Zealand”.

Meanwhile, some real interest in this event among Kiwis.

Reports over Twitter than more than 22,000 people are currently watching the live stream over YouTube.

Glenn Greenwald calls John Key “shameless” for saying he would release classified documents, which Greenwald says would be his for his own political gain; and something he has never a head of state do before.

Assange now welcomed into the discussion, and begins by explaining the “rather loud banging sound” in the background. He claims “someone” has purchased the flat below the Ecuadorian embassy and is currently tunnelling - as a drill drowns out his voice.

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Here are the first documents Greenwald has shown from the Snowden files, the first from mid-2012 and the second from the beginning of 2013.

Here is the article Edward Snowden wrote for the Intercept, which Greenwald just encouraged everybody to read.