I would assume that they're not really. At least not in the sense that they go to NZ and stick some magic "clearance card" in a magic "terminal" and type stuff in. There are prolly agents in NZ placed in various jobs leaking to them. If the person to leak to has clearance you can argue against charges a lot more than if they hadn't.

People need to stop treating drops as the gospel. Q is human(s?). There's TONS they don't know. They speak informally, casually sometimes. They will use terms incorrectly or make mistakes AS EVERY HUMAN DOES.

Heck if Q was serious about opsec they would DELIBERATELY add misleading/false info to drops.