It took seven months for police to set up their first team for scanning the internet after the mosque attacks - but it was almost immediately in danger of being shut down.
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Justice Minister Kris Faafoi announces new counter terrorism legislation in crackdown on precursor activity, the planning of an attack.
National security officials believe there is a “very high” risk of a significant terrorist attack occurring in the coming three years, according to information from a classified report obtained by
Stuff. A summary of the Government’s “Terrorism Risk Profile”, a classified report which informs the current counter-terrorism strategy, reveals the country’s national security agencies assessed the risk of a worst-case scenario attack occurring as “very high” within the five years from June 2019. Such an attack, it was assessed, could come from unidentified people with extremist right-wing ideology who have “intent and capability”, or from “a small number” of Islamist extremists known to the agencies who could commit an unsophisticated attack, or from other, unspecified violent issue-motivated groups or individuals.
It took seven months for police to set up their first team for scanning the internet after the mosque attacks - but it was almost immediately in danger of being shut down.
An internal report released under the Official Information Act (OIA) said this was despite the team already proving its worth many times over in countering violent extremists.
The unit still does not have dedicated funding, despite a warning last July it risked being turned off .
This is revealed in 170 pages of OIA documents charting police intelligence shortcomings over the past decade, from pre-2011 extending through to mid-2020, and their attempts to overhaul the national system since 2018. These show police had no dedicated team before 2019 to scan the Internet for threats - what is called an OSINT team, for Open Source Intelligence .
Police had no dedicated team to scan Internet before mosque attacks Phil Pennington
It took seven months for police to set up their first team for scanning the internet after the mosque attacks - but it was almost immediately in danger of being shut down.
An internal report released under the Official Information Act (OIA) said this was despite the team already proving its worth many times over in countering violent extremists.
The unit still does not have dedicated funding, despite a warning last July it risked being turned off .
This is revealed in 170 pages of OIA documents charting police intelligence shortcomings over the last decade, from pre-2011 extending through to mid-2020, and their attempts to overhaul the national system since 2018.