Don’t believe the spin

Stuff reports:

Hager told Radio New Zealand that he accepted the police had the right to be at his home, but he was critical of the “rather draconian” Search and Surveillance Bill passed in 2012 that allowed the raid.

That’s just Hager once again misleading people to try and score political points. I’m 99% certain the Police had the powers to search his house under pre-existing laws. The Search and Surveillance Bill was more about harmonising the powers of other agencies – the Police have always had the power to search and seize for the purposes of a criminal investigation – if a Judge or JP signs a warrant.

Similar raids had not been made in response to a police complaint by the Greens into hacking on the Labour Party’s website allegedly involving National Party staffer Jason Ede, as detailed in Dirty Politics, he claimed. “That is a real crime.”

In Hager world, accessing a website that was left wide open on the World Wide Web is a crime, while hacking someone’s Gmail, Facebook and other accounts is not a crime.

If National had been stupid enough to leave their credit card donation website unsecured on the Internet so you can access it without a password, then I suspect Hager would have published a conspiracy theory book which listed every donor to National and how 65% are members of Rotary or something. Give Whale Oil some credit that he never published any of the names that Labour left unsecured.