NSA taps Oz and NZ internet metadata - Snowden

Is there any end to the US National Security Agency and it's world spying? With the latest Snowden revelations, we now find that the NSA is tapping the massive cables across the Pacific to Australia and New Zealand. They started metadata tracking in 2013. 

What an outrage. These assholes are spying on us and expect us to go running across the world for their latest stupid Iraq war. *pfffft*

Top secret documents provided by Mr Snowden show that the GCSB, with ongoing cooperation from the US National Security Agency, implemented Phase I of a mass surveillance program code-named "Speargun" at some time in 2012 or early 2013. 

"Speargun" involved the covert installation of "cable access" equipment connected to New Zealand's main undersea cable link, the Southern Cross Cable, which carries internet traffic between Australia, New Zealand and North America. 

Upon completion of the first stage, Speargun moved to Phase II, under which "metadata probes" were to be inserted into those cables. The leaked NSA documents note that the first such metadata probe was scheduled for installation in "mid-2013". Surveillance probes of this sort are used by NSA and its "5-eyes" partners including the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) to tap into high capacity fibre-optic communication cables, enabling them to extract vast flows of data including the dates, times, senders, and recipients of emails, phone calls, as well as the actual content of communications as required. more