Waihopai Station facts for kids
The Waihopai Station is a special communication building located near Blenheim, New Zealand. It is run by a New Zealand government group called the Government Communications Security Bureau. This place has become well-known because of protests and disagreements about what it does and how it uses the information it collects.
What Waihopai Station Does
The idea to build this station started in 1987. New Zealand's leaders at the time decided it was important to work with Australia. This was because international communication was starting to use satellites a lot more. The Waihopai Station was built to help New Zealand keep up with these changes.
The station started working in 1989. Later, in 1998, it got bigger with a second large dish. The Waihopai Station is a place that monitors satellite communications. This means it listens to and collects information from satellites. It is located in the Waihopai Valley.
Some people believe this station is part of a bigger worldwide network called ECHELON. This network is made up of many listening stations around the world. It is run by a group of intelligence agencies from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They share electronic and signals information with each other.
The large dishes at Waihopai are covered by huge white domes called radomes. These domes protect the dishes. People think the station collects and processes phone calls, faxes, emails, and computer data. This information is then shared with the other countries in the UKUSA group. In 2007, a special antenna was added that can receive signals from many satellites at once. This antenna does not have a dome.
Monitoring Internet Cables
In 2014, it was found out that an engineer from the United States National Security Agency (NSA) visited Waihopai Station. They talked about monitoring all the traffic on the Southern Cross Cable. This cable is very important because it is the only way New Zealand connects to the international internet and phone lines.
A New Zealand politician, Russel Norman, was worried about this. He said it would allow the New Zealand and US governments to spy on all of New Zealand's internet traffic. The Prime Minister at the time, John Key, said this was not true. However, he did say they were discussing a "cable access programme" with the NSA. He did not explain what this program was or why the NSA was involved.
Before this, in 2013, a newspaper had reported that the companies owning the Southern Cross Cable had asked the NSA for money. This was because the NSA was collecting a lot of information from the cable.
Protests and What Happened at the Station
The Waihopai Station is often a place where people protest. Activists want the base to be closed down. A group called the Anti-Bases Campaign holds protests there every year.
In 1996, a writer named Nicky Hager went into the base at night with a TV crew. They filmed the operations room through a window. Hager returned in 1999 with some TV personalities. They managed to get into the base and danced in front of the cameras for a TV show.
