We Talked to Nicky Hager About Privacy, NZ Politics, and Watching Cops Smash Your Hard Drive

Published in 2014, Dirty Politics by journalist Nicky Hager uncovered the history of correspondence between ultra right-wing blogger Cameron Slater and New Zealand Justice Minister Judith Collins. The book was based on evidence Nicky had uncovered through a hacker named Rawshark, who had illegally gained access to Slater's Gmail account.

In either case, Dirty Politics was political dynamite in New Zealand and Minister Collins was forced to resign.

In response, the Key government had Nicky Hager's home illegally searched 17 months ago, trying to uncover the identity of his source, Rawshark. Only now have the New Zealand police destroyed files cloned from the raid—a long overdue victory for Hager.

VICE sat down with Nicky Hager to talk political pressure, privacy, and how it felt to watch his cloned hard drive being beaten with a hammer.

VICE: Hey Nicky, the illegal raid on your home is one of many high profile police blunders in recent years—Kim Dot Com being another. Do you think this sort of thing happens more than public is aware of?
Nicky Hager: Well, there's a difference between what I know and what I think.

Tell me about both.
Ok. It feels to me like the police have thousands of cases to work on but some of them get an unnatural amount of attention. I wasn't even a suspect for a relatively minor crime, yet there was a huge effort to raid my house and keep me under surveillance. My strong belief is that there was some heavy political pressure or bias to explain this amount of effort. I believe police have slipped into a cozy pattern in how they investigate people.

The first thing they do is go to Trade Me, because lots of people use Trade Me and get a mobile number. Then they [take that number] to the phone company and get call history and text messages etc. They're getting information from companies New Zealanders use and trust.

So New Zealanders needs to be a more wary?
I think people just haven't had an experience that shows them what privacy means. As soon as you open up a pile of court documents and you see your text messages from the past six months, you'll be more conscious about privacy than you ever before.

But could there ever be a situation that justifies surveillance to that extent?
Maybe, but in my case there was nothing real in it. What there was, was a very angry prime minister, who was a good buddy of blogger and an angry minister of justice [Judith Collins] who had to resign because of my book. These three angry people looking for vengeance and I think that message went through the police force. It's their job to be totally apolitical but I think it was more a case of "Whoa, the ministers aren't happy, we should look really busy."

Can you explain how police ignored your journalistic privilege when they raided your house?
Well, one of things that struck me as pretty amazing was when the police came here, they promised they would take my privilege into account. What actually happened is instead of sticking evidence in bags, every time they found something they thought was interesting they took a sneaky photo of it. They also went after my bank information, which the bank handed over without a warrant. I think that is unlawful. The only reason they would need bank data is to find out my sources­­ and that is the very thing protected by journalistic privilege.

But the big song and dance seemed to be smashing your hard drive. Like that was a common practice?
They were required under court order to get rid of the information they had unlawfully gathered, but the fact they just kept banging and banging and banging was bizarre. It was almost psychological.

So there isn't a required number of times one must hit a hard drive until it's destroyed?
Well I'm not sure! But we know that if you open a hard drive up once and hit it you will have probably broken it. Five times? Definitely. When you past 10 you've probably got there.

Maybe it was cathartic for them?
It was a very interesting little moment in history for me to be in this dark corridor on a concrete floor with this going on.

Speaking of history, your case has allegedly inspired the Privacy Commissioner's transparency project–filtering agency requests for information on the public. What are your thoughts on this?
I honestly think it could be the biggest and most important thing that comes out of the raid. When the bank gave up my information without a warrant, there was a strong sense that they were doing it to thousands of people's bank accounts a year. Now having a public fight about it, we are seeing change.

How powerful is the example Westpac has set then, by changing their policy about releasing information to police?
If they have really changed it, then it proves they were doing something their customers would not like. It's just always been a cosy arrangement for police, I'm sure they're disappointed something so convenient for them has come to an end. But sunlight is what solved the problem.

Doesn't it always?
Yep, that's always the case.

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