Judge Helps Ensure That The More Ignorant Law Enforcement Officers Are, The More They'll Be Able To Get Away With

New Zealand's Raid On Investigatory Journalist Was Illegal

from the all-these-raids dept

Tue, Jan 5th 2016 11:29pm — Mike Masnick

Back in the fall of 2014, we wrote about a highly questionable police raid on the home of Nicky Hager, a well-known journalist who had published powerful pieces criticizing the government (and who was working on some investigations concerning the Snowden documents and New Zealand's involvement in mass surveillance). The wonderful Freedom of the Press Foundation (who helped raise funds for Hager's legal defense) has now alerted us to the fact that the raid on Hager's home was deemed illegal by New Zealand's High Court:

The judge found that the search was illegal. He said that the Police had failed to disclose relevant information to the Judge who issued the warrant. As a result, he formally declared that the warrant was “fundamentally unlawful”. He also found that the search was therefore unlawful. Justice Clifford also expressed concerns about other aspects of the Police’s actions.

This reminds me of the raids on Kim Dotcom's house as well, which involved a bogus warrant. Though, in that case, the High Court, after admitting that the warrants were not drafted properly, decided they were "good enough." Either way, those are the only two law enforcement raids in New Zealand, and both came under sketchy circumstances, where the police couldn't be bothered to actually follow the rules. What's going on down there?

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Filed Under: journalism, new zealand, nicky hager, privacy, protecting sources, raid, warrants

22 Comments

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Anonymous, 6 Jan 2016 @ 1:20am

It's the same down here as everywhere. When the government is found to be at fault there is no one who is responsible. Who will they punish for doing wrong? The system did wrong, how do you punish the system?
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jan 2016 @ 2:17am

Contempt for the law, believing they are above it because its for the greater good that those they decide are criminals don't deserve to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. Take your pick. Big brother knows best.
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 6 Jan 2016 @ 2:50am

Now the trick will get the courts to do more than just expressing concerns.
The rights of the citizens are only as good as the penalties imposed when they are trampled, far to often the penalty seems to be a tsk tsk tsk don't do it again rather than an actual punishment in line with the severity of the rights trampled.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jan 2016 @ 5:30am

Re:
If those were the only two raids in 2014, we are probably looking at an area where the legal restraints haven't been sufficiently defined.

But this is politics: If you act first and let the legal questions wait, you will violate innocents, while if you ask questions first, you will let guilty people go free. Politicians define instructions on how agressive the implementation should be.

By "assumption of innocence" you should be protected against these kinds of things. But politically the world has turned towards "safety first", then "assumption of innocence".

Or in strategy: Since "think of the children", "tough on crime" and "fight terrorism" are so strong paroles, the politicians would rather take responsibility for too aggressive enforcement than giving political opponents ammunition for using them!

In the end this question is also a symptom of mainstream media being biased - understandably so - towards bigger headlines and less towards a more balanced coverage. An example is the coverage of a crime: It starts with someone getting arrested, which is heavily covered in the press, then a long time of only huge court cases making media stories as they happen and ultimately the ruling is covered generally. All mitigating factors are removed and since many do not differ betweeen being arrested and being sentenced, most cases will look like either an evil getting punished or an evil escaping justice. Mainstream journalism today are horrible at covering crime reporting in a balanced way or with deep and diverse enough angles. Same generally goes for geopolitical coverage where it often gets into "us versus them" instead of more analysis of what is dividing them and what the sides are generally acting against/for.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jan 2016 @ 6:09am

Re: Re:
Corporate owned and controlled media has a corporate bias ... film at eleven.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jan 2016 @ 6:13am

Re:
... only in low court.

In high court, people are always innocent so they are let go - some of them go to Mexico and order pizza while getting drunk and ogling strippers.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jan 2016 @ 6:22am

Re:
I am sure that if anyone gets "punished" it will be along the lines of retiring with a full pension while holding down another government job in the next department.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jan 2016 @ 6:55am

Re:
how do you punish the system?

I believe the French used a guillotine at one point.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jan 2016 @ 8:02am

Two words: Puppet Police
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Mason Wheeler (profile), 6 Jan 2016 @ 9:03am

Re: Re:
They did. That period of time went down in history under the name "the Reign of Terror." It's worth noting that this name didn't come about as an accusation of a political opponent of the reigning terrorists, nor was it coined by a later historian looking back upon those days with a critical eye. No, it was actually explicitly (and enthusiastically) described as such by Maximilien Robespierre, the guy in charge of all the terror and reigning.

I really hope no one today is seriously looking to those times as inspiration.
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Personanongrata, 6 Jan 2016 @ 10:57am

Genuflection
What's going on down there?

The New Zealand government as a junior member of the Five Eyes global surveillance program overseen/funded by the US and British governments must genuflect upon command or lose the "privilege" of participating in the program.

From Wikipedia:

Five Eyes

In the late 1990s, the existence of ECHELON was disclosed to the public, triggering a major debate in the European Parliament and, to a lesser extent, the United States Congress. As part of efforts in the ongoing War on Terror since 2001, the FVEY further expanded their surveillance capabilities, with much emphasis placed on monitoring the World Wide Web. The former NSA contractor Edward Snowden described the Five Eyes as a "supra-national intelligence organisation that doesn't answer to the known laws of its own countries".[6] Documents leaked by Snowden in 2013 revealed that the FVEY have been spying on one another's citizens and sharing the collected information with each other in order to circumvent restrictive domestic regulations on surveillance of citizens.[7][8][9][10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
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tqk (profile), 6 Jan 2016 @ 10:59am

Re: Re: Re:
I really hope no one today is seriously looking to those times as inspiration.

I propose a pilot project. Once we've seen a few from Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros., and the Fed go through the process, we can evaluate the result. Until then, I'll just sit here waiting, wishing I had some cake.

I am not going to soon forget what those bastards pulled. I do want to see heads roll.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jan 2016 @ 11:06am

Re: Re:
That is what I was thinking.

With punishments like that, who needs rewards?
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Mason Wheeler (profile), 6 Jan 2016 @ 11:13am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
Here's my plan for what I will do with Wall Street when I am president:

Break up huge financial institutions in the first year of my administration. Within the first 100 days of my administration, I will require the Secretary of the Treasury to establish a “Too Big to Fail” list of commercial banks, shadow banks, and insurance companies whose failure would pose a catastrophic risk to the U.S. economy without a taxpayer bailout. Within one year, my administration will break these institutions up so that they no longer pose a grave threat to the economy.

...

End too-big-to-jail. We live in a country today that has an economy that is rigged, a campaign finance system which is corrupt, and a criminal justice system which often does not dispense justice. The average American sees kids being arrested and sometimes even jailed for possessing marijuana. But when it comes to Wall Street executives — some of the most wealthy and powerful people in this country whose illegal behavior hurt millions of Americans — somehow nothing happens to them. No jail time. No police record. No justice.

Not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy. That will change under my administration. “Equal Justice Under Law” will not just be words engraved on the entrance of the Supreme Court. It will be the standard that applies to Wall Street and all Americans.

-- Bernie Sanders

At the very least, it sounds like a better plan than sharpening up the ol' French National Razors.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jan 2016 @ 11:18am

Re: Re: Re:
The term your thinking of is propaganda.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jan 2016 @ 2:22pm

Re:
> How do you punish the system?

De-fund it.
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GEMont (profile), 6 Jan 2016 @ 7:02pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Slight technical alteration to improve reality...

"Here's my plan for what I will do with Wall Street when I am president:

Break up huge financial institutions in the first year of my administration."

Breaking news:

President Mason Wheeler was killed today; only days after his State of the Nation address announcement that he would be fielding legislation to break up all the huge US financial institutions, when his bulletproof limousine was crushed by Boeing 747 flight 215 out of Kansas, that literally dropped out of the sky directly on top of the president's car as he and his entourage waited for a street light on 35th avenue, in Boston. There were no survivors.

Rooters

---
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GEMont (profile), 6 Jan 2016 @ 7:11pm

Re: Genuflection
:)

Order of the Realm:
Hierarchy of The English Speaking White Guys Club

Great Britain --------------- Director
United States of America - Operations
Canada ---------------------- Technology
Australia -------------------- Ways and Means
New Zealand ---------------- Wet-work

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Mason Wheeler (profile), 7 Jan 2016 @ 8:00am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Just out of curiosity, have you ever read Jennifer Government?
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Wendy Cockcroft, 11 Jan 2016 @ 5:41am

Re: Re:
You've just explained why asset forfeiture has become a key element of funding these days. De-funding alone won't stop them, you have to root out the people and the culture.
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Wendy Cockcroft, 11 Jan 2016 @ 5:43am

Re: Re: Genuflection
LOL! When America extradites its citizens to the UK as easily as we do ours, I'll agree with you.
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Wendy Cockcroft, 11 Jan 2016 @ 5:43am

Re: Re: Genuflection
LOL! When America extradites its citizens to the UK as easily as we do ours, I'll agree with you.
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