Police destroy Nicky Hager's seized material in a darkened room

This is absolutely SURREAL!

Having refused to have the return of Nicky Hager’s stolen material witnessed by media this was the police response. One has to wonder if the idea came from John Key himself.

"Nicky Hager’s attention is turning towards Westpac Bank’s handing over of his bank records after watching police smash 213 times a hard drive containing his material. "

Nicky Hager's cloned data destroyed by police

NZ Herald,

18 March, 2016

Nicky Hager has emerged from the High Court at Auckland clutching smashed clones of his hard drive and memory card seized during an "unlawful" search.

The hard drive and memory card contain files made by detectives during a raid in 2014.

The destroyed drive and card along with computer equipment which has been kept under seal at the High Court since the raid has been returned to Hager.

Photo / Dean Purcell

The return of the equipment brings to a close the police attempt to track the hacker Rawshark through Hager.

It was Rawshark who provided damning content from the email and social media accounts of blogger Cameron Slater which was then used in Hager's book Dirty Politics.

In December, Justice Denis Clifford ruled against the way police went about obtaining the search warrant used to search the journalist's home.

The judgment found detectives sought the search warrant with little more than a "hope" they would find useful information.

Hager described the "surreal" scene in which a police clone of his hard drive was destroyed.

"We went down to the basement of the high court building here into this narrow room without lights on and the police held torches around while one of the detectives destroyed the material of which they had copied from the house.

"The detective took an orange-handled hammer and he hit the hard drive 213 times, and then he took bolt cutters and put holes in it.

"I am obviously pleased about this as this is my work, this is my future projects, this is my livelihood... Now they'll never be able to have it."

Hager said this was the final stage of the court case which had stemmed from the raid in 2014.

"This has been a long 17 months, and I'm eternally grateful to my lawyers and I'm very grateful to the people from the media and elsewhere who were my witnesses.

"There are also hundreds of New Zealanders who have money towards the case because it cost a tremendous amount for this, and i hope they are joining in the sense of triumph today.

"We'll be walking off with it untouched, in our hands, safe forever."

Watching the copies of his equipment being destroyed, Hager said he felt he was "watching history going on".

"With each blow of that hammer, it was hitting home that the positives of this court case are they're now better protections, better legal protections for the media."

"I'm still gob smacked that police thought it was reasonable to arrive like Rambo and spend 11 hours doing over my house where they found nothing they wanted for their research.

"It was completely and utterly over the top."

Hager said he hoped the court case would ensure people weren't afraid to share information with the media.

He is confident there will not be a repeat of the experience he has gone through.

"I strongly believe that there will be no Rambo police raids into anyone like me or other parts of the media for a long time now, they've learnt their lesson.

"They've lost comprehensively, and they'd have to be fools to do it again."

In October 2014, while Hager was in Auckland, police arrived at his house with a search warrant, meeting his daughter at the door.

They spoke to Hager by phone, who said there was nothing to identify Rawshark in the house but he was concerned about other confidential source information he held.

In the High Court challenge to the search warrant, Hager said he was able to claim journalistic privilege under the Evidence Act, and a breach of the Bill of Rights.

It was also claimed the warrant was too broad.

The saga is not quite yet over for Hager, who said he expects to return to court for further issues with police behaviour.

"We've got a few things where we think the police were tricky while they were in the house... We've got more things to come, so the court case is not over... Where they went through my bank accounts and other kinds of data."

- NZ Herald

Herald bashing of Andrew Little is extraordinary in week PM lies about Jihadi Brides & Police smash Hager’s property

Martyn Bradbury

the Daily Blog,

18 March, 2016

So what would you expect to be the main story of the week that the Political Editor and Editorial of the largest newspaper in NZ focus on?

Surely the admission this week that the PM lied about ‘Jihadi Brides’ would be a contender right? Here the PM has been caught out purposely pretending these ‘Jihadi Brides’ were in NZ when in fact they actually lived in Australia – that would be the big story of the week right? Especially in light of how Key has used these supposed threats as the excuse to give the GCSB and SIS even MORE power.

But Audrey Young and the NZ Herald editorial didn’t focus on that story.

How about the fact the Police were forced to destroy and hand back Nicky Hager’s information they had seized illegally in a botched up raid on his house after he embarrassed the Government of the day? That’s a huge story that cuts to the very heart of the Fourth Estate being able to hold the powerful to account, that would be the big story right?

Wrong again. To my horror, they have decided to launch full scale attacks on Andrew Little for the racism nonsense and his desire to put the boot into the banks.

Threaten the lazy immigration that is keeping Auckland’s property bubble up and attack the banks who are fuelling it, and the Herald like a snarling attack dog leaps and mauls any politician who dares threaten the money that keeps them afloat.

The Herald is a compromised right wing rag there to protect the elites and attack anyone who threatens those elites.

Friends don’t let friends read the NZ Herald.

Fascism is on the march in New Zealand

Make no mistake. Fascism is on the march!

BREAKING: Unite Union broken into, equipment smashed

Someone smashed into Unite Union last night, kicked our doors in, went through all our files and drawers, stole all our equipment, cameras, laptops, credit card, membership vouchers and benefits and spare keys. I am furious beyond belief at the anti working class scumbags who would do this to an organisation that serves low paid and vulnerable workers.

---Joe Carolan

Campbell Live and Unite Union combine to do a formidable job in bringing Zero hour contracts to the attention of the public.

A well executed campaign has rapid success, with several fast food chains agreeing to ditch these abominable "agreements".

Campbell Live IMMEDIATELY gets threatened with closure, and now Unite Union offices have been "burgled", with all of their files and records gone through, and all their laptops stolen.

Coincidence? John Key is out control - he needs to go !

For Campbell live on Zero Hours - McDonald's customers' thoughts on zero-hour contracts – GO HERE

McDonald's workers walk out over zero hours

McDonald's workers furious at failed negotiations over zero-hours contracts have walked off the job today across the country.

Burger King has moved to guarantee secure hours for staff while Restaurant Brands, which operates KFC, Pizza Hutt and Starbucks abandoned the controversial practice last week.

Joel Cosgrove has been employed by zero-hours employers before and is showing his support at the Wellington protest.

"We've got maybe 100, 150 people down at Manners Mall," he told RadioLIVE.

"We've got workers from around Wellington who have come on down on strike against zero hours."

A group of protestors also marched up Queen St in Auckland for the same cause.

The Auckland protesters stopped outside Starbucks to applaud the scrapping of zero hours contracts there.

Labour's spokesman for labour relations, Ian Lees-Galloway was at the protest and said he hopes today's protests will lead to a good result for Unite Union members.

"This is about workers who are in bargaining, using their right to industrial action and other workers around them supporting them in solidarity," he said.

Mr Lees-Galloway is urging the Government to pass legislation scrapping zero-hour contracts.

Zero-hour contracts leave Kiwi families struggling (24 FEB)

See also this - 

NZ Govt will pay to shift mentally ill into work

Mentally ill people will be moved off state-funded benefits and into work using private employment agencies who will earn hefty fees for the service.

The Herald on Sunday has obtained leaked Ministry of Social Development documents detailing plans to get people suffering from depression, stress and anxiety disorders into paid work.

Campbell still Live, not gone

By Frank Macskasy  

ISIS plans to invade Europe

ISIS plans to invade Europe through Libya – report

ISIS’ plans to conquer Europe via Libya have been revealed in letters seen by an anti-terrorism group. Owing to its perfect location on the continental doorstep, the terrorists plan to ferry fighters from North Africa across the Mediterranean.

RT,

18 February, 2015

The plans, analyzed by anti-terrorism British think tank Quilliam, outline a strategy to illegally ferry fighters across the sea from Libya into southern Europe, into ports such as Italy’s southernmost island of Lampedusa, less than 300 miles (483km) away.

Libya “has a long coast and looks upon the southern Crusader states, which can be reached with ease by even a rudimentary boat,” an Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) propagandist says in the letters seen by Quilliam, according to the Telegraph.

That information originates from an IS supporter using the moniker Abu Ibrahim al-Libim. The propagandist is believed to be a strong force in IS recruitment online, with a focus on Libya.

The Telegraph could not independently confirm his identity, but the online recruiter is believed by analysts to be a great inspirer of troops and is widely-read.

"Twitter has shut down Libim's accounts several times and each time he starts a new one he gets thousands of followers very quickly, which is typical of an influential [IS] affiliate," Charlie Winter, researcher for the Quilliam Foundation, told the newspaper.

The plans Libim reveals revolve around posing as illegal immigrants, to then start an all-out attack on southern Europe by seeding chaos and bloodshed. The terrorists reportedly hope to flood Libya with other fighters from Syria and Iraq, with a whole army at the ready to invade.

"We will conquer Rome, by Allah's permission,” he says in a Sunday video depicting the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christian guest workers, the video that led to Egypt organizing a bombing campaign on militant positions in Libya. He also describes the country as having “immense potential” for the terrorist group, while making references to the spoils of war left after the ouster of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 – tons of weapons, ammunition and oil.

READ MORE: Ex-MI6 chief urges debate over Libya intervention after ISIS beheads Coptic Christians

Reuters / Stringer

Libim continues to explain how illegal immigration across into Italy is “huge in number” and that “if this was even partially exploited and developed strategically, pandemonium could be wrought in the southern European states and it is even possible that there could be a closure of shipping lines and targeting of Crusader ships and tankers.”

The video and the letters come shortly after renewed calls in the West to do something about Libya’s security problem. President Obama’s strategy, for one, depended heavily on a president forced to step down recently. Now, the country’s security is at an all-time low, and the various factions and jihadist groups vying for control of the oil-rich state have plans to remake Europe in that image.

And owing to Libya’s vast desert swaths and porous borders with sub-Saharan Africa, the country has long been a firm favorite for trafficking people into Europe

However, after the fall of Gaddafi in 2011, Libya’s status as a terrorist hub shot through the roof and, according to the documents, this could be a perfect country for an all-out incursion into southern Europe.

Security bells are ringing, especially in Italy, which saw 2,164 illegal migrants rescued in the space of 24 hours over the weekend. It could now be faced with many that are terrorists, according to Egyptian Ambassador to London Nasser Kamel. "Those boat people who go for immigration purposes and try to cross the Mediterranean ... in the next few weeks, if we do not act together, they will be boats full of terrorists also."

READ MORE: Libya crisis ‘created by NATO intervention’ – scholar

Just as these assessments came to light, Italy issued its own statement, outlining just how great a risk there is of Libyan militants merging with the IS. On Wednesday its Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni spoke of an "evident risk" and that time for Libya was "running out". He called for "a change of pace" from the international community.

Migrants at the Sicilian harbour of Pozzallo, February 15, 2015 (Reuters / Antonio Parrinello)

IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has openly been claiming Libya for his ‘caliphate’ recently.

While still not completely submerged, the country is fast on its way, as whole cities conquered by the group now adhere to its strict form of Islam, complete with executions.

Navigating Libya’s terrorist circles is also a daunting task: some are allied with the IS, others with Al-Qaeda. All are fiercely anti-government, though some have helped install a new government in Tripoli, after banishing the internationally-recognized one to Tobruk in the east.

"In terms of the demographics of [IS] support in Libya, we see a lot in common with its base of support in Iraq and Syria – many of its fighters are young, disfranchised men who have only bought into ISIL's brand of Islamist zealotry because they are looking to forcibly empower themselves in the penetrating absence of the state,” Winter explains.

"The risks Europe faces from ISIL pre-eminence in Libya are substantial."

READ MORE: 3,400 dead at sea: UN slams Europe for snubbing safety over immigration barriers

The onus would appear to be on the West to do something security-wise – especially in places like Italy. But that country is already facing a fierce backlash from UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, for seemingly caring more about implementing stringent security policies on immigrants, as opposed to caring for people’s safety when they drown just off the coast trying to make it to a better life.

More than 207,000 people have attempted the crossing to Europe over the Mediterranean Sea this year –“almost three times the previous known high of about 70,000 in 2011,” the UN pointed out. That year saw a spike on account of the Libyan civil war.

Libya requests UNSC lift arms embargo to fight ISIS

http://rt.com/news/233595-libya-arms-embargo-un/

Libya and Egypt have asked the UN Security Council to lift restrictions on the import of arms to the embattled Libyan government, but dropped an Egypt-backed request for a military intervention to combat ISIS extremist threat.

“Libya needs a decisive stance from the international community to help us build or national army’s capacity and this would come through a lifting of the embargo on weapons so our army can receive materiel and weapons so as to deal with this rampant terrorism,” Mohamed Al Dayri, Libya’s foreign minister told the Security Council. His country slipped into chaos following the 2011 NATO-led intervention which toppled Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s rule

ISIS have fetish for kinky underwear, Viagra, and ‘abnormal sex’ – report

http://rt.com/news/233563-raqqa-viagra-isis-report/

“Perverted” ISIS fighters in the Syrian stronghold of Raqqa indulge in “brutal and abnormal” sexual practices, in sharp contrast with the austere religious image they try to project, claims a new report compiled by local activist journalists.

“A large section of ISIS members suffer from sexual anomalies and brutal instinctive desire for sex, except for sadism and perversion which they [are] carrying already,” alleges the online report, produced by well-known underground citizen journalism group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (RSS).

Among the laundry list of purported perversions is the purchase of “strange underwear,” marrying “more than one wife, during short periods” and the “search for blue pills in order to increase their strength to have more sex.”

“Many cases that have been recorded from hospitals and physicians, about women who have been subjected to sexual practice in a brutal and abnormal manner,” says Abu Mohammed, the activist author, operating under a pseudonym.

Abu Ward Al-Raqqawi @alraqqawi

Follow

The toll of the women who got married to the #ISIS members in #Raqqa #DeirEzzor #Aleppo #Homs #Syria Via @sou_and_pic

3:43 AM - 19 Jan 2015

READ MORE: ‘Beheaded, crucified, buried alive’: UN slams ISIS for killing Iraqi children

Internet censorship

Internet Censorship Explodes - Google Receives 250,000 "Removal" Requests

Zero Hedge,

6 July, 2014

Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

"In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston’s arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."

----- From George Orwell’s 1984

The reason Big Brother and his band of technocrat authoritarians spend so much time and effort erasing history in the classic novel 1984, is because they are a bunch of total criminals and they know it. Their grip on power is made so much easier if the proles are kept ignorant, confused and in the dark. This strategy is not just fiction, it is the philosophy of tyrants and authoritarians throughout history.

While the internet is an amazing tool for communication and free speech, we must also be aware of how it can be abused by those in power who wish to whitewash history. For more on this epic struggle, read the post, Networks vs. Hierarchies: Which Will Win? Niall Furguson Weighs In. In it, Mr. Furguson explains that the biggest threat to networks overcoming hierarchies is if government technocrats are able to gain a hold of the technological tools we now use to communicate with each other. He fears this is already happening with the NSA’s PRISM program and the complicity of all the major tech companies in the agency’s unconstitutional spying.

So it appears Orwell’s feared “memory hole” has begun to emerge in Europe. This shouldn’t be seen as a surprise considering the region’s devastating youth unemployment rate and angst throughout society. The way censorship is gaining a foothold in the region is through something known as a “right to be forgotten” ruling issued by the European Court of Justice. This ruling states that Google must essentially delete “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” data from its results when a member of the public requests it.

Of course this is incredibly vague, and who is to decide what it “no longer relevant” anyway? Seems quite subjective. This is clearly an attempt to take a tool designed to decentralize information flow (the internet) and centralize and censor it. As such, it must be resisted at all costs.

So far, we know of two major media organizations that have been informed of deleted or censored articles, the BBC and the Guardian. The BBC story is the one that has received the most attention because the content related to former ex-Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O’Neal, who received a $161.5 million golden parachute compensation package after running the Wall Street firm into the ground and playing a key role in destroying the U.S. economy. The BBC reports that:

A blog I wrote in 2007 will no longer be findable when searching on Google in Europe.

Which means that to all intents and purposes the article has been removed from the public record, given that Google is the route to information and stories for most people.

So why has Google killed this example of my journalism?

Well it has responded to someone exercising his or her new “right to be forgotten”, following a ruling in May by the European Court of Justice that Google must delete “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” data from its results when a member of the public requests it.

Now in my blog, only one individual is named. He is Stan O’Neal, the former boss of the investment bank Merrill Lynch.

My column describes how O’Neal was forced out of Merrill after the investment bank suffered colossal losses on reckless investments it had made.

Is the data in it “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant”?

Hmmm.

Most people would argue that it is highly relevant for the track record, good or bad, of a business leader to remain on the public record – especially someone widely seen as having played an important role in the worst financial crisis in living memory (Merrill went to the brink of collapse the following year, and was rescued by Bank of America).

To be fair to Google, it opposed the European court ruling.

Maybe I am a victim of teething problems. It is only a few days since the ruling has been implemented – and Google tells me that since then it has received a staggering 50,000 requests for articles to be removed from European searches.

I asked Google if I can appeal against the casting of my article into the oblivion of unsearchable internet data.

Google is getting back to me.

Since the original post, the author has provided an update:

So there have been some interesting developments in my encounter with the EU’s “Right to be Forgotten” rules.

It is now almost certain that the request for oblivion has come from someone who left a comment about the story.

So only Google searches including his or her name are now impossible.

Which means you can still find the article if you put in the name of Merrill’s ousted boss, “Stan O’Neal”.

In other words, what Google has done is not quite the assault on public-interest journalism that it might have seemed.

I disagree with his conclusion, and here is why. As is noted on this Yahoo post:

We don’t know whether it was O’Neal who asked that the link be removed. In fact, O’Neal’s name may be being dragged through the mud unnecessarily here. Peston believes it may be someone mentioned by readers in the comments section under his story about the ruling.

He suggests that as a “Peter Dragomer” search triggers the same disclosure that a result may have been censored, that perhaps it was not O’Neal who requested the deletion. In an amazing coincidence, the person posting as “Peter Dragomer” claims to be an ex-Merrill employee.

Of course, it’s not an amazing coincidence. In fact, going forward someone else can just post a comment below an article on a high profile person to get the article removed so that the person in the article can pretend it wasn’t his doing. In any event, someone who voluntarily leaves a comment should have zero say under this law. They went ahead and made the comment in the first place. Now you want an article article removed because of a comment you made? Beyond absurd.

Now here’s the Guardian’s take:

When you Google someone from within the EU, you no longer see what the search giant thinks is the most important and relevant information about an individual. You see the most important information the target of your search is not trying to hide.

Stark evidence of this fact, the result of a European court ruling that individuals had the right to remove material about themselves from search engine results, arrived in the Guardian’s inbox this morning, in the form of an automated notification that six Guardian articles have been scrubbed from search results.

The first six articles down the memory hole – there will likely be many more as the rich and powerful look to scrub up their online images, doubtless with the help of a new wave of “reputation management” firms – are a strange bunch.

The Guardian has no form of appeal against parts of its journalism being made all but impossible for most of Europe’s 368 million to find. The strange aspect of the ruling is all the content is still there: if you click the links in this article, you can read all the “disappeared” stories on this site. No one has suggested the stories weren’t true, fair or accurate. But still they are made hard for anyone to find.

As for Google itself, it’s clearly a reluctant participant in what effectively amounts to censorship. Whether for commercial or free speech reasons (or both), it’s informing sites when their content is blocked – perhaps in the hope that they will write about it. It’s taking requests literally: only the exact pages requested for removal vanish and only when you search for them by the specified name.

But this isn’t enough. The Guardian, like the rest of the media, regularly writes about things people have done which might not be illegal but raise serious political, moral or ethical questions – tax avoidance, for example. These should not be allowed to disappear: to do so is a huge, if indirect, challenge to press freedom. The ruling has created a stopwatch on free expression – our journalism can be found only until someone asks for it to be hidden.

Publishers can and should do more to fight back. One route may be legal action. Others may be looking for search tools and engines outside the EU. Quicker than that is a direct innovation: how about any time a news outlet gets a notification, it tweets a link to the article that’s just been disappeared. Would you follow @GdnVanished?

This last idea is actually a great one. Every time an article gets censored it should be highlighted. If we could get one Twitter account to aggregate all the deleted stories (or perhaps just the high profile ones) it could make the whole censorship campaign backfire as the stories would get even more press than they would have through regular searches. Ah…the possibilities.

Interestingly, due to all the controversy, a European Commission spokesman has come forth to criticize Google for removing the BBC article. You can’t make this stuff up. From the BBC:

Google’s decision to remove a BBC article from some of its search results was “not a good judgement”, a European Commission spokesman has said.

A link to an article by Robert Peston was taken down under the European court’s “right to be forgotten” ruling.

But Ryan Heath, spokesman for the European Commission’s vice-president, said he could not see a “reasonable public interest” for the action.

He said the ruling should not allow people to “Photoshop their lives”.

The BBC understands that Google is sifting through more than 250,000 web links people wanted removed.

Perhaps it wasn’t in “good judgment ” to issue this idiotic ruling in the first place. Just another government shit-show. As usual.