The Theft Of Don Brash's E-Mails

Regular readers of The Hive will know that we don't buy into conspiracies supposedly involving the NZ Police. We have enormous respect for the average police officer. We know the everyday horrors of the job they have to do everyday, and we are also confident, that they do this job very well. We know Commissioner Howard Broad quite well and we have enormous respect for him as a person and have appreciated the work that he has done to clean things up at senior level. This can't have been easy.

So we are concerned to read Comrade Hooton's latest post about the police investigation into the theft of Don Brash's private e-mail correspondence. This just doesn't look right to us. Is Hooton not only converting to communism but also becoming infected by an NZ First like belief in conspiracies (what next - will he be telling us that Elvis is alive and well and working in the Upper Hutt KFC????).

We just don't believe that under Howard Broad's leadership the NZ Police would re-open an investigation simply to deny access to a sensitive file. likewise we don't believe that Broad would allow the police to be subject to any kind of political pressure.

Have a read of Hooton's article and see what you think.

Meanwhile we are concerned that no one has yet to be able to answer the question of who actually stole this correspondence. The possibilities are relatively limited:

• theft by a colleague or worker in the same general work area;
• theft by an IT professional - either in Parliamentary services or a company with access to Parliamentary Services servers;
• theft by an employee of a telecommunications provider;
• interception of the messages by a foreign intelligence organisation and then the release of these intercepts to Nicky Hager (why did the Japanese invite Hager to their National Day celebration a year of so back???)
• interception by the New Zealand Government.

The last is next to impossible as it would be so against the law not to be funny, and would see many people locked away for many years.

The penultimate has been talked about but we likewise judge this to be very unlikely. We would like to know more about the relationship between Hager and the Japanese but just can't see a fit there. There are some pretty radical people in the European Parliament and they seem to like Hager a lot. Should we be looking there??? We again are doubtful.

The teleco idea likewise seems unlikely.

So that leaves just options 1 and 2. The police report must deal with these. We strongly recommend its release asap or at least clarification by the NZ Police