Yesterday, this happened:
Heather du Plessis-Allan says police home search “unsettling”
Journalist Heather du Plessis-Allan has said the police search of her Wellington home was “unsettling” but says she will stand by the story she delivered.
On Tuesday morning police officers searched through her drawers and personal belongings in the Wellington apartment she shares with her husband, broadcaster Barry Soper, as part of an investigation into an alleged unlicensed purchase of a gun by mail order.
…
“They know what’s in my bedside drawer, they know what’s in the boxes under my bed,” du Plessis-Allan said.The search was criticised by MPs as a waste of resources and an example of the force’s “tunnel-visioned approach”. …
Earlier in the year of course police raided journalist Nicky Hager. Giovani Tiso yesterday posted this “reconstruction”:
The raid
…
And so on that Thursday morning in early October of last year, five police officers entered the journalist’s house, allowed his daughter to call a lawyer – upon her request – and, when she got no answer, commenced the search anyway. When she asked to get dressed by herself in the bathroom, they told her she had to do it in front of a police officer, as if she could have secreted on her person the information they were after. They then proceeded to search her room, rifling through her drawers and her private photo albums: again, as if there was a likelihood that this person, who wasn’t even a witness, might have hidden the information there. They cloned her phone, on which no journalistic privilege could be claimed, copying all her contacts and taking a year’s worth of personal messages, which they planned to review later. This person whose only crime was to live with her father, in the house of a journalist.Then they seized her laptop – because of course they did – just two weeks before the final papers for her Honour’s degree in History were due. ….
Well worth reading the whole piece, it’s a disturbing account.
These raids come on top of the 2011 police raids on journalists at TVNZ and The Herald as part of the “teapot tape” affair.
In short, it’s pretty clear that police raids on journalists (were there any in NZ prior to the teapot?) are a thing now. All part of the Brighter Future you see.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress