The Rawshark Investigation & secret Police mass surveillance program against 100 000 NZ'ers
Martyn
Bradbury
28
August, 2017
Here
is what we know about the Rawshark Investigation:
It
was originally just Nicky Hager, but it also included myself and
possibly several other left wing activists and senior figures within
the political left including the Labour Party.
With
Jacinda likely to become the next Prime Minister, the NZ Police need
to be upfront with the Labour Party over how extensive their
Operation Rawshark surveillance really was.
The
entire case collapsed once Nicky Hager challenged it in court and all
evidence and information had to be destroyed.
Here
is what we know about the secret Police mass mass surveillance
program against 100 000 NZers:
The
loophole which the NZ Police have exploited to gain personal
information was part of a far wider secret mass surveillance program
that we estimate has impacted anywhere between 100 000 – 200 000
NZers. This information has been taken and saved in the Police
Intelligence computer and all that information is open to the SIS,
GCSB and half a dozen other security agencies.
Remember:
No
one outed in Nicky’s book ‘Dirty
Politics‘
was investigated…
…but
the Police did illegally investigate Nicky and conduct illegal
searches against him. They breached my privacy and civil rights and I
believe they did the same thing to other leading figures of the NZ
Political left.
I
believe this case cuts to the very heart of political neutrality
within the NZ Police force.
What
needs to happen?
The
Police must be honest about how far their illegal surveillance into
the political Left over Operation Rawshark went and there must be an
inquiry into the manner in which the Police sought, took and stored
the information of tens of thousands of NZers which they had no right
to gain that in the first place.
What
happens next?
The
Privacy Commission has investigated my complaint and have found the
Police breached my privacy and my civil rights. I have taken a formal
complaint to the Human Rights Review Tribunal over the Police
actions.
I
will keep everyone up to date with how that progresses.
My
case against a secret NZ Police investigation that breached my
privacy and my civil rights
28
August, 2017
Let
me start by categorically stating, I never hacked Cameron Slater’s
computer and have no idea who hacked Cameron Slater’s computer for
the information that appeared in Nicky Hager’s book, ‘Dirty
Politics’.In 2015/2016 I began to get suspicious.
I
was applying to extend credit to keep the blog afloat and I kept
getting declined.
The
extensions of credit weren’t extravagant and the manner in which
the declines occurred just seemed odd.
I
had followed the Nicky Hager case closely where Police had sent out
warrantless requests for information and had obtained that
information illegally and had even written a blog myself at the time
of how the process of obtaining that information by Police could
damage peoples credit rating and had even hypothesised that the
Police could abuse this by targeting activists they didn’t like out
of spite.
I
don’t know why, but I felt suspicious and so wrote to the Banking
Ombudsman and asked for access to my banking files to see if there
was any 3rd person interaction.
The
Banking Ombudsman replied early this year, and to my shock, I found
out that the Police had, as part of their 2014 investigation into
Nicky Hager, sent every bank in NZ a request for information claiming
‘Computer Fraud’.
The
material released showed that before I was declined on my credit
applications, each one had been referred in the first instance to the
Banks computer fraud unit because the Police request red flagged my
account.
Once
I had discovered this, I requested information from the NZ Police
into why they had secretly included me in the Nicky Hager
investigation. They responded that while that had sent the requests,
they wouldn’t tell me why.
Let
me categorically state again. I never hacked Cameron Slater’s
computer and have no idea who hacked Cameron Slater’s computer.
I
sent all the material I had from the Banking Ombudsman including the
Police request and response to the Privacy Commission and lodged a
compliant regarding the Police actions.
The
Privacy Commission have just finished their investigation and found
that not only did the Police breach my privacy, they also breached my
civil rights by effectively conducting an illegal search.
The
harm that I have faced by this gross invasion into my privacy by the
Police has been significant to me in terms of loss, detriment, damage
and injury.
At
the age of 18, I had a car accident that left me with a serious brain
injury. The legacy of that has been severe depression. Over the last
5 years that depression has become very difficult to manage and the
financial stress of not extending credit all combined in late
2016 in two suicidal episodes.
I’m
in a better headspace now and far from those two moments in part
because finding out what had actually happened behind the scenes has
given me an anger that has fuelled me to demand to know what the
bloody hell the Police were up to, and hold someone to account.
I
am taking the Privacy Commission Certificate of Investigation to the
Human Rights Review Tribunal and they will process my complaint
against the Police for breaching my privacy and civil rights through
unlawful search.
It’s
not important to like or dislike my work, but I think we can all
agree that allowing the Police to conduct secret investigations into
activists and political bloggers that then damage their reputation
negatively based on spurious grounds isn’t acceptable in a liberal
democracy.
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