Today was a good day for what remains of our besieged democracy! The police raid on Nicky Hager’s home was ruled illegal and unlawful! My congratulations to Nicky Hager and many, many thanks for his courage and dignified response.
I know from experience how damaging and stressful both bullying on that scale and the subsequent effort to get justice can be. We need people like Nicky Hager to be able to do their work and we need whistle blowers to be safe when they expose people in power and their nasty dirty politics!
Also my heartfelt gratitude for Justice Clifford for the clear and forceful ruling he has made!
There should be repercussions for the people involved and heads should roll over the bullying tactics of the police and their superiors!
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The High Court in Wellington has found police failed to disclose relevant information to the judge who issued a search warrant.
The warrant was obtained and the search took place after blogger Cameron Slater laid a complaint when information from his computer, obtained by a hacker known as Rawshark, was published in Mr Hager’s book Dirty Politics.
Justice Clifford declared the warrant was “fundamentally unlawful”.
Speaking on Checkpoint Mr Hager said it was a good day for journalism.
“If this decision had gone the wrong way then all around the country, and into the future, there would have been people we needed to be speaking up on issues as sources – telling the media what was going, on letting the public know about things – who would have been more frightened of doing that.”
He said the police action was a case of, “raid first and sort it out later.”
“What the police thought they could do …….they thought they could raid the house, take all our stuff, and then sometime in the future in a court case decide whether they were allowed it or not.”
Mr Hager said he was very happy with the decision, for his family and what he said were the important principles it upheld.
He said the public’s right to receive information about the actions of people in positions of authority was at the heart of the case.
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Aotearoa: A Wider Perspective 
The Crown’s “authority” is based on a fraudulent treaty in which it continues to claim it owns the land and resources of NZ and can govern the people with its corporation (govt) and the president of that corporation= John Key.The govt is not ever acting for the people its for the Crown.The Police actions were unlawful and they acted illegally.
The Crown has no lawful “authority” , since the treaty (which is its only “authority “) is also invalid legally it has no legal authority.
The IWI gravy train, payoff for ” invalid treaty” and silence keep it in business .
Warrants are issued with authority, but the Crown doesn’t have authority to take the property of a witness by force. It was a false warrant and the Crown is culpable for any loss suffered by Hager during the search.
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