Dirty Politics
Isn’t the most dirty trick exposed in Nicky Hager’s book, the revelation that Hager reveals that he received six years of stolen e-mails, hacked from Cameron Slater’s Gmail and Facebook accounts?
Is it not ironic that so many on the left have marched and protested against the right of the GCSB to assist the SIS or the Police to intercept communications, if a Judge or retried Judge agrees that there is enough evidence of criminal or national security issues to give out an interception warrant. They protested for weeks and months.
Yet when we get evidence of a massive criminal hacking of six years of personal communications, then they do not see that as dirty politics. They celebrate it, because it occurred against someone they do not like. Does this not suggest a large degree of hypocrisy and faux outrage over the GCSB changes last year? Are any of those anti-GCSB protesters going to condemn Nicky Hager and his unknown associate/s for the hack and publication of Cameron Slater’s Gmail and Facebook?
Do all those journalists who wrote dozens and dozens of stories about the GCSB Bill, have a view on whether it is okay to criminally hack someone’s private communications, because you don’t like what they write? Is this where we want politics in New Zealand to go – partisans from the left and right trying to hack each other’s communications?
The book does expose dirty politics in New Zealand, the dirty politics of those who criminally hack private communications, and publish them. They’ve just had journalists in the UK go to jail for publishing stories that they knew were based on hacked voicemails. Here though, you get to make royalties out of them.
UPDATE:John Armstrong has got very excited and said:
Hager’s allegations are many and varied. They are extremely serious. But one stands out. The allegation that one of John Key’s minions hacked into the Labour Party’s database is – to put it bluntly – the modern-day equivalent of the 1972 burglary of the Democratic Party’s national committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington.
This is factually wrong, and somewhat hysterical. There was absolutely no hacking of the Labour Party. The only person who has been hacked is Cameron Slater.
The Labour Party had the technical competence of a five year old and had their credit card database lying openly on their webserver for the world to see. No hacking needed, no passwords needed. They placed the data openly on the world wide web.
Someone noticed this and e-mailed Cameron Slater. He of course delighted in their incompetence and prepared to blog on it. He mentioned it to a few people, who had a look around, including Jason. That’s not hacking, that is not burglary. It is curiosity. Again – this was information they had accidentally made publicly available.
The question arises of course as to how Cameron’s communications were hacked. The suggestion that it was related to the DOS attack on his site is a red herring I believe. His Facebook messages are not linked to his site, and I doubt his Gmail is either. Someone must have hacked both his Gmail and his Facebook. So who could have done this? Can we think of anyone who is a known successful hacker who hates Cameron? Someone who had a lackey blogging before the book came out, that he knew what was in it? Not hard to connect the dots is it.
UPDATE: Cameron Slate has alleged Kim Dotcom was responsible, but Dotcom and Hager deny this strongly. I have no direct knowledge of who is responsible, and as usual take people at their word until there is proof to the contrary.