The ABC describes the Waihopai installation as a “spy base” because they say it is a key component of the super-secret world network of electronic listening posts, codenamed “Echelon”.

Based on interviews with more than 50 former employees of the intelligence services of countries involved with Echelon, New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager reported that the Waihopai station is part of the Echelon system and records all email, telephone calls and faxes sent by satellite between particular countries, primarily in the western Pacific.  It then electronically sorts and stores any material containing particular keywords in a vast database. This database is accessible by all member-governments of Echelon.

In 1997, a report commissioned by the Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA) department of the Directorate-General for Research of the European Parliament found that all email, telephone and fax communications in Europe were routinely intercepted by the US National Security Agency, via the Echelon network. A 2001 report by STOA reiterated these findings, saying, “The existence of a global system for intercepting communications, operated by means of cooperation proportionate to their capabilities among the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand under the UKUSA Agreement, is no longer in doubt.” The report stated further that “There can now be no doubt that the purpose of the system is to intercept, at the very least, private and commercial communications … although the technical capabilities of the system are probably not nearly as extensive as some sections of the media had assumed.” The report recommended that European Union governments use encryption to avoid interception by Echelon.

The 2001 report notes that the US National Security Agency refuses to admit to the existence of the UK-USA agreement or the Echelon system. However, in 1999, Martin Brady, then-director of Australia's electronic monitoring agency, the Defence Services Directorate (DSD), admitted in a letter to television reporter Ross Coulhart, that the Australian government was a party to the Echelon network, according to Nine Network’s Sunday Program.

The ABC claims that Waihopai's two giant domes, which contain satellite interception dishes, make New Zealand a direct contributor to US President George Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in any future unilateral military operation Washington may launch.

The New Zealand government, led by the Labour Party, budgeted almost NZ$30 million last year to fund the Government Communications Security Bureau, which operates the Waihopai and Tangimoana installations, according to the Green Party's foreign affairs spokesperson Keith Locke.

The ABC also notes that bases' operations are exempt from key provisions of New Zealand's privacy and crimes acts, making their activities unaccountable to the country's parliament.

The Waihopai protest has become an annual event. The action at the Waihopai base was the culmination of a weekend of protest activity. It began with a public meeting in Blenheim on January 16, attended by 60 people, and a rally and march in central on January 17, according to reports carried on IndyMedia New Zealand.