New Zealand Cops Raided Home of Reporter Working on Snowden Documents
New Zealand Cops Raided Home of Reporter Working on Snowden Documents
By Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher @ggreenwald@rj_gallagher
10/16/2014 Today at 1:00 PM
Agents from New Zealands national police force ransacked the home of a prominent independent journalist earlier this month who was collaborating with The Intercept on stories from the NSA archive furnished by Edward Snowden. The stated purpose of the 10-hour police raid was to identify the source for allegations that the reporter, Nicky Hager, recently published in a book that caused a major political firestorm and led to the resignation of a top government minister.
But in seizing all the paper files and electronic devices in Hagers home, the authorities may have also taken source material concerning other unrelated stories that Hager was pursuing. Recognizing the severity of the threat posed to press freedoms from this raid, the Freedom of the Press Foundation today announced a global campaign to raise funds for Hagers legal defense.
In August, one month before New Zealands national election, Hager published Dirty Politics, which showed that key figures in Prime Minister John Keys National Party were feeding derogatory information about their opponents to a virulent right-wing blogger named Cameron Slater. Hager published evidence in the form of incriminating emails, provided by a hacker, demonstrating coordination between National Party officials and Slater. The ensuing scandal forced the resignation of a top Key ally, Justice Minister Judith Collins, and implicated numerous other National Party officials and supporters. Despite the scandal, the National Party won a resounding victory in the election, sending Key to a third term as prime minister.
On October 2less than two weeks after the electiondetectives from a regional major crime team came to Hagers Wellington home armed with a search warrant authorizing them to seize anything that might lead them to the identity of his source for Dirty Politics. The warrant shows that prior to the raid, a police intelligence analyst had studied Hagers media appearances in an effort to discover information about his sources for the book, taking particular note of references Hager made to knowing the sources identity.
More:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/16/nicky-hager-raid/
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Seems like information is also obtained without search warrants, in fact stolen.
Ash_F
(5,861 posts)The 5 Anglo countries in a club. Friends for life. All extremely close to each-other, even though they are each much more dependent on other non-white economic partners outside their group.
Race is a big deal to our policy makers. Even bigger than money.
grasswire
(50,130 posts)important stuff
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)That's just "daily politics" in the U.S....But I guess I'm pretty jaded...
At least Greenwald is (passively) admitting that he DID have a "side" when he participated in that shameless circus of a political rally last month...That's something he has been continually lying about since Kim Dotcom's party crashed and burned at the ballot box