The Standard’s Lynn Prentice, gifted sys·op, complete idiot or plain nasty cyclops?

Over the past few weeks our mate Lynn Prentice at the Standard has continued his reign of terror on the truth. Now Prentice likes to push the notion that he is not a journalist, at least he did when the argument was raging over whether bloggers were journo’s an argument that LF and Slater had contended in the affirmative, that Bloggers were in fact journalists. Thankfully on that occasion the New Zealand Courts fell into line with various other western jurisdictions and agreed.

Prentice’s arguments had of course not been sincere, his position was predicated on Slater’s sorry predicament alone. Prentice was prepared to back an untenable position, one that he lost, for the sole purpose of seeing harm come to Slater. As was to be expected, so were the country’s mainstream media journos, especially those within the New Zealand Herald’s stable of hacks, the likes of David Fisher. They too, at the time, were shown up for what they were…malicious miscreants. The Herald and various other mainstream players arguably had a corporate agenda in promoting falsehood and misinformation at the time, but that argument can now no longer be run up the flag pole for reasons that we will touch on a little later.

Prentice too had his reasons for promoting a number of malicious falsehoods as fact. His reasons were however far less transparent, principally because they were purely personal and very political. Prentice more than any other citizen journalist is guilty of malice, pure unconcealed unadulterated malice in fact, as he has continued to wage his malicious campaign dragging in and attacking absolutely anyone who dared to post a contrary view on the New Zealand Labour party’s shite sheet “The Standard”

His latest effort is frankly beyond the pale, it is quite extraordinary in it’s audacity in more ways than one, Prentice opined:

Charge Cameron Slater or let me hack systems

Lynn Prentice, 20 July 2015

Early last week I made a statement to and complained to the police about Cameron Slater paying Ben Rachinger to try to hack into my computers on the behalf of his mysterious “funder”.

I’d read the various bits of information that Rachinger has scattered across various parts of the net since early this year. It reads just like Cameron Slater 1, and many parts of what he displayed and gave to the police should have been easily independently verifiable – especially the unaccounted “donations” to Ben Rachinger.

I am absolutely certain that Cameron Slater did knowingly pay someone who to gain unauthorized access to my computers. Cam’s farcical PR written denials just read like his usual lying.

That means he and his “funder” were soliciting for someone to commit an offence under Section 249 “Accessing computer system for dishonest purpose“ and/or Section 252 “Accessing computer system without authorisation“ of the much amended Crimes Act 1961. While Section 249 is probably the most applicable because of the benefits and advantages that Cameron Slater hoped to gain from his agent’s work, Section 252 leaves very little room to argue.

252 Accessing computer system without authorisation
(1) Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years who intentionally accesses, directly or indirectly, any computer system without authorisation, knowing that he or she is not authorised to access that computer system, or being reckless as to whether or not he or she is authorised to access that computer system.

(2) To avoid doubt, subsection (1) does not apply if a person who is authorised to access a computer system accesses that computer system for a purpose other than the one for which that person was given access.

Note that these are the offences that whoever accessed the Cameron Slater’s systems last year will also face if they charged before a court.

For most of the data that Rachinger reports that Cameron Slater was after, and apparently thought that Rachinger had acheived, would have been unauthorised. That is because on my systems they would require “super-admin” status on the website, something that only two people have, or a direct login to the machines which only I have.

That makes Cameron Slater and his funder chargeable under at least Section 311 “Attempt to commit or procure commission of offence“ (2). There are a very limited number of people who could have given Cameron Slater the information that he was reported as requesting.

311 Attempt to commit or procure commission of offence
(2) Every one who incites, counsels, or attempts to procure any person to commit any offence, when that offence is not in fact committed, is liable to the same punishment as if he or she had attempted to commit that offence, unless in respect of any such case a punishment is otherwise expressly provided by this Act or by some other enactment.

Now these aren’t the only parts of the Crimes Act that are applicable. They just seem to be the most applicable.

//—–

Cameron Slater is a serial offender at accessing other people’s systems for dishonest purposes and without authorisation. At present there are currently 3 known cases open on Cameron Slater’s computer related offending. They date back to 2011, have a still open complaint that dates back to early 2012, and yet shows no signs of either any charges being laid.

In 2011, Cameron Slater, Jason Ede of John Keys parliamentary office and an unnamed IT tech at National party head office accessed files without authorisation on the NZ Labour party website. Far from being the innocent accident that he and National portrayed it as being at the time, subsequent revelations in Dirty Politics (pages 28-36) and the rawshark email dumps showed that they’d actively opened files and paid someone to open database files.What is quite clear from those sources is that this group were deliberately attempting to gain political advantage using this material (which makes it a dishonest purpose under Section 249) and that it involved clearly reckless, unauthorised,and repeated access to the Labour party computer system. This was part of a formal complaint by the Labour party to the police in December 2014 after the election.There appears to have been no outcome from this to date, more than 6 months afterwards.2The Labour party deserves some flak for not laying a complaint with the police in 2011. They generously chose instead to believe the public lies that Cameron Slater and the National party hierarchy were using in 2011.
In 2012 Cameron Slater was given a hard disk and documents that are the property of Matthew Blomfield which he copied.The Crimes Act makes no differentiation between unauthorised access of information for a dishonest purpose on a hard disk or a networked computer. The source of these materials is currently the subject of a protracted legal appeals in a defamation case by Matthew Blomfield.What doesn’t appear to be under dispute is that Cameron Slater accessed this information and that he proceeded to use this material (at the very least) for the benefit of his website in constructing 87 posts partially or wholly based on the material from these sources until the a district court order in October 2012.A May 2012 complaint about the source of this material and the access to it was apparently ignored by police, and revived abruptly in October 2014 after the search warrant on Nicky Hager after Cameron Slater complained about him. The police appeared to have suddenly rediscovered that part of the law because they appeared to have used the same logic that they ignored on the initial complaint to obtain search warrants against Nicky Hager. There has been no apparent progress in this complain either. 3
Cameron Slater’s hiring of Ben Rachinger to access my computers. This appears to have been the subject of complaints about it since at least February this year. No substantive action appears to have been taken that I am aware of has taken place.I finally got around to organising time to go into a police to make statement myself before they even contacted me, and it was my computer systems. WTF?
The obvious contrast of the effective lassitude of these police investigation of these computer related crimes is the abrupt search of Nicky Hager. That happened in October 2014, a few short months after Dirty Politics was released.

Only the police can answer why that particular complaint was acted on with such rapidity where other very similar complaints appears to have been ignored or have no apparent progress over long periods of time. However that abrupt action by the police is currently in front of a judicial review and awaiting a decision on the way that they applied for, conducted, and subsequently acted on those search warrants.

//—-

Now I think that for trying to procure an unauthorised access to my computers for what I consider to be a dishonest purpose, a repeat offender like Cameron Slater and his equally criminal funder should stand before a judge and preferably be imprisoned. If hackers are a irritating blight on the net for most computer professionals, then their funders are even more so.

Sure I’m not exactly happy with Ben Rachinger either. But that is more for being a bullshit artist telling idiots like Cameron Slater and his unknown “funder” what they wanted to hear. But I’m really not worried about Ben Rachinger for another reason. As far as I can detect (see below) and after some extensive checks, Rachinger has never attempted to get into my systems at anything apart from the public level or beyond the background noise of the thousands of attempted hacks that my systems see every day.

Sure, I think that Ben Rachinger effectively scammed those suckers. They could always try complaining about fraud or a civil suit if they want restitution for their expenditure. But I suspect that the courts will take a dim view of them looking for payback on a criminal act.

//—-

The reason why I am sure that Rachinger didn’t manage to actually access my systems? Well that comes from my profession, skills and and experience. So here is a potted history 4

I am a 56 year old computer programmer who has been involved in programming and using computers since I first touched a HP21C programmable calculator in 1976. I have made a living off them since 1985/6 and effectively dropped out of doing management by 1991. I still spend about a quarter of my time learning new systems. That is just my profession, the one I get paid for. Most of the systems I have ever worked on have been networked targets for hackers. You develop a talent for not letting them access your systems.

I’ve also spent nearly 25 years being a volunteer political activist, much of that wielding a computer. That includes running this site.

So my systems have automated traps, notifications, scans, and logging on all levels on my systems for everything from logins to the traffic. The events that my systems flag as being more dangerous are routed directly to my cellphone. These include author logins from strange IP numbers especially for the social networking attacks by someone like Ben Rachinger. Access to these monitoring systems is something that can only be obtained with my physical presence, my keys, and are limited to specific devices.

In other words it is damn unlikely that anyone apart from me can conceal their being able to access my systems.

While it is possible that someone could bypass all of that, but it’d cost a damn sight more and require skill levels way way above those that Ban Rachinger, Cameron Slater, or his mysterious “funder” appear to have.

//—-

But to to the point of the post, finally. As many people are probably aware, I think that Cameron Slater is a technological illiterate.

I am not. I’m pretty competent.

But the laws that bind me from hacking into systems are exactly the same as those that bind Cameron. Unlike that computer criminal, I actually obey those laws – both the ones that came in in 2003 and the ones that existed before but were made more explicit in 2003.

So if the police have no intentions of enforcing those laws protecting computer systems for irresponsible people like Cameron Slater who has been so clearly violating them, then shouldn’t they tell us?

Back before these types of laws and changes to university regulations came into being, responsible hackers used to routinely test the security on systems. It was something that I did throughout my first degree at Waikato starting in 1978.

Let me be free to access the systems I want to have a look into. I have the tools, the background in security and networks. I’d love to openly and freely hack into systems without legal retribution – just like Cam does. I am sure that there are thousands of competent people like me in NZ here who’d enjoy doing that as well. There are several who are authors on this site.

Outside of the political sphere, there are way more non-political tech-heads who’d enjoy being given Cam’s apparent license against prosecution by the police. They would also like to remove themselves from the artificial and clearly unenforced legal restrictions that we currently voluntarily observe.

If the police don’t want to prosecute such crimes done by the irresponsible amongst us, then why constrain the responsible?

So I ask Mike Bush and his staff to just give us a clear signal and many of us will.

A clear signal like not laying charges against Cam for clear violations of the Crimes Act would be sufficient.

After all, why should we leave the fun to well connected technological idiots like Cameron Slater and the fools that fund him?

1. After reading Cameron Slater for the last seven years he has a distinctive ‘voice’. It is so distinctive, that it is easy enough to pick out when someone else has been writing using his name or when he writes under other names on other sites. Or for that matter when he is lying, bullshitting, or blustering.

2. I checked that nothing had actually resulted from this yesterday. Apparently Labour are hoping for a result soon.

3. Again I checked yesterday and there had been no result to date.

4. As usual I can expect the ignorant, useless, and general fuckwits to attack my background with stupid slogans. Of course they are usually the people who appear to know very little about computer systems. Since I don’t expect such morons to read to the end, I will announce that I will permanently ban people raising that as an issue here unless they can point to something more specific than repeating Barnacle Bill’s “greatest sysop” line. Think of it as evolution in action.

Source – The Standard

Now the first point to make is that Prentice, despite all the self promotion of his “Sys.ops” abilities, would not even know where to begin in hacking a website. The man is the consummate bullshit artist. He’s also quite obviously a man with a serious inferiority complex, feeling the need to put others down when he feels he needs to build himself up.

This behaviour is repeatedly demonstrated throughout the Standards comments sections, Prentice loves engaging in debate that flatters his fragile ego and on the other hand redacting anything he doesn’t like, often banning whoever it was that dared share an alternative view. In many of these instances Prentice likes to use the misnomer “Troll” when he’s engaging in bullying the Standards readers.

In fact its Prentice’s behaviours that evidence that, despite what he might say at any given point, the fact is that he, and he alone, has complete control over what is and what can and cannot be posted on “The Standard”. All of the waffle about whether or not the Standard is a Labour party vessel is irrelevant in our view.

Now the fact that Prentice is el hombre grande, numero uno, a legend in his own mind, at least when dealing with all things web related, is also significant when it comes to establishing who is legally responsible for what appears on the Standard. Of course there are others, “@iPrent’s” fan club so to speak, who post equally obnoxious material, with little if any regard for the truth, but they also have little if any culpability for its publishing, ultimately Lynn Prentice is culpable for everything that is published. After all, Prentice is, by his own admission, the worlds greatest sys·op and responsible for pushing all of the buttons on the Standard’s dashboard.

In addition to his inferiority complex  Lynn Prentice, not uncommonly, also presents as having an air of superiority, especially when the debate involves anything legal. LF have often been a favourite target in this regard, which despite Prentice later being proved completely and utterly wrong, his self assuredness and arrogance reamins unwavering (See bloggers are journalists above). Others too have fallen victim to Prentice’s bloated ego in this area, quickly dismissed as idiot savants or banned completely when they too dare to speak to Prentice’s glaringly obvious inaccuracies, untruths and or seriously flawed “predictions”:

Now interestingly in Prentice’s rant above he talks about “(stepping) over the legal limits”. We were not sure what it was that Standard reader “Lord Donkey” had posted, nor can we be certain of who “Lord Donkey” actually is. What we can however be sure of is that Prentice seems to have mistaken “Lord Donkey” for one or another party involved in one or more of the various court cases Prentice refers to in his latest post. The Standards readers however remain ignorant.

Somewhat strangely, LF received an anonymous email with an interesting attachment, obviously that individual, be they “Lord Donkey” or another reader, had also witnessed Prentice’s pathological hypocrisy in action;

We can also be fairly certain that whatever it was that “Lord Donkey” had proffered, by way of comment, was clearly NOT what Prentice had wanted his readers to see, most likely because, like the comment above, the information almost certainly proved Prentice to be a bold-faced liar……….. which of course he undoubtedly is.

Now to prove that Prentice is a liar, that he is a man who is more than prepared to forgo any semblance of truth in pursuit of his own political agenda LF has decided to focus on just two of the myths promulgated by Prentice and his mates at the Standard. There are of course many more blatant lies that need to be exposed but for the purposes of demonstrating just how devious Lynn Prentice really is two of the oldest falsehoods are enough, that the Hard Drive in the Blomfield v Slater case was stolen property, and that subsequently the police had failed to investigate the theft of the Hard Drive, thus somehow treating Cameron Slater with favour.

Prentice has likewise castigated LF, using the Standard and other blogs such as Pete Georges “YourNZ”, attempting to paint a picture so far from the truth as to be seen as unrecognisable. Prentice’s obsessive hatred of Slater and by default anyone who sticks up for the bloke, boarders on dangerous.

Unlike Prentice, anyone else at the Standard, or for that matter the mainstream media, team LF have at their disposal all of the available evidence, the oral accounts, court documents, never before seen police files and the pleadings of the various parties involved in the litigation Prentice is referring to.

Prentice on the other hand has a fraction of the material that LF has at it’s disposal. In fact, even when we have posted documents that evidence beyond any doubt that Prentice and his cohort have been misleading the New Zealand public Prentice, somewhat tactically, fails to acknowledge that fact, and again he simply continues to promote the more convenient false account of the events that support of Blomfields version,  almost as if he expects his readers to belive that the truth had not been brought to his attention.

Of course Prentice has not been alone when deploying this little stratagem. LF has obtained irrefutable evidence that New Zealand Herald senior investigative journalist David Fisher has also wilfully lied in much the same way, producing false accounts of events and facts, often by ommittion, for his readers consumption. In the case of the New Zealand Herald team LF believe that both malice and intent were present when David Fisher deliberately wrote an article designed to mislead his readers and damage the credibility of the victim of the newspapers commercially driven malice.

When it comes to anything Blomfield and the MSM David Fisher has not been alone, there are a raft of current and ex APN journos who have assisted Blomfield over the years, each and every one of them having played no small part in facilitating the legal and financial rorts and frauds Blomfield has managed to execute.

Team LF further believes that the behaviour of the New Zealand Herald and David Fisher may well be actionable by way of the tort of defamation, that defamation arising on at least two seperate occasions that we are aware of, in relation to Slater and those assisting Blomfield’s victims. There are others however that seem to have become collateral damage, also framed and defamed by the New Zealand Herald and a large handful of its more malicious journo’s, people such as David Fisher, Robb Kidd, Matt Nippert, Maria Slade and Bevan Hurley. LF have also become aware of at least three other Kiwi journalists, all employees of Mediaworks TV3, who have been acting in a very similar ethically questionable manner, in fact it seems that malice may also be present but our investigation in that area is of course ongoing.

For the purpose of LF’s account on this occasion, and in relation to the behaviour of the New Zealand Herald, we mention this in passing as it relates to Prentice’s use of the material the Herald has published immediately prior. We will deal with the New Zealand Herald’s own seriously egregious behaviour in future posts.

On the 9th October 2014 the New Zealand Herald published two stories penned by David Fisher, Fishers efforts were then used by Lynn Prentice to pen a story for the Standard. These three articles and the events surrounding their publishing in October 2014 also serve as a little contemporaneous record and background to Prentice’s latest rant (above);

Police review complaint against Whaleoil blogger

David Fisher

9th October 2014

Police are reviewing a two-year-old criminal complaint against Whaleoil blogger Cameron Slater over material he used on his website.

The review is studying how Slater obtained a vast quantity of private emails which were used as the basis of posts on his blog.

It comes as police investigate a complaint from Slater over the hacking of his computer. Detectives investigating Slater’s complaint this week executed a search warrant on the home of author Nicky Hager, who used material obtained by the hacker known as Rawshark to write Dirty Politics.

The police review stems from a complaint laid in May 2012 by businessman Matt Blomfield, who has taken a defamation case against Slater over articles on the Whaleoil blog.

Cameron Slater in August. He is being sued by former Hell Pizza boss Matt Blomfield. Photo / Doug Sherring

Slater wrote on his blog that the articles were based on information held on a computer drive he had obtained. According to texts supplied to the Herald by Rawshark that are said to have been hacked from Slater’s computer, the blogger talks of having more than 30,000 of Mr Blomfield’s emails.

After Slater complained about the hacking of his computer, Mr Blomfield went back to police to ask why there had been no action over his case.

In a letter dated August 28 2014, Mr Blomfield said: “I am mindful of the fact that I have waited over two years for my matter to be concluded and I am becoming slightly impatient. If it came to pass that Mr Slater receives preferential treatment for a complaint that very closely mirrors my complaint I would be quite annoyed.”

A spokeswoman for Waitemata police said Mr Blomfield’s case was being reviewed by a detective senior sergeant who was currently on holiday. She didn’t know how long the review had been going on, or when it was likely to be complete.

In a hearing earlier this year, Slater had sought the mantle of “journalist” in a bid to protect sources for the allegedly defamatory posts, including the source of the hard drive.

Justice Raynor Asher told Slater bloggers could be journalists and receive the protection but ruled the protection did not extend to stories about Mr Blomfield.

He said there were questions in the defamation proceeding which needed answers.

“In the ordinary course of events persons do not legitimately come by the personal hard-drive and filing cabinets of other persons. “Even if Mr Slater was not party to any illegality, it seems likely that the information was obtained illegally by the sources, and this diminishes the importance of protecting the source.”

Justice Asher said there was an even lower public interest “in encouraging persons who are in a private dispute with others from going to the media with unlawfully obtained confidential material to hurt them”.

“This material prima facie is in that category.”

On Twitter this afternoon, Slater pointed to a letter from the Independent Police Conduct Authority which reported police saying the hard drive was found to have never been stolen.

The letter, sent to Slater, made no reference to whether police had investigated the accessing of the information, which is the subject of the current review.

Source – NZ Herald

Ex-pizza boss Matt Blomfield: Whaleoil and me

David Fisher, 9th October 2014

Matt Blomfield was beaten bloody. A shotgun blast ringing in his ears. Blows from the stock of the weapon splitting skin to send blood running down his face.

It was a horrifying attack at home. His children were watching. One stood at the window as her father grappled with the intruder. The other sought shelter in the house, seeking safety from the armed man who brought violence to their home.

Blomfield had fought off the attacker, fiercely enough that police later found blood from which they took DNA. A 37-year-old man was arrested in July and is before the courts.

He struggled to think who might want him hurt, or worse. In the end, he came up with a suspect list of 285,000 people – the monthly readership of the Whaleoil blog, who he believed had been given every reason to think he was one of the worst people in New Zealand.

Blomfield had been living in relative obscurity just a few years earlier. As marketing manager for Hell Pizza, he spent his days coming up with clever campaigns to generate media coverage and drive customers to the restaurant.

It was an ordinary job for an ordinary man working for a reasonably ordinary company. Blomfield had ordinary dreams which he drove with an ordinary over-extension of investment that left him bankrupt.

But you don’t have to be famous to become a target of Cameron Slater’s Whaleoil blog. Slater, who has previously called himself a “bully” in an interview with the Herald, lives by the motto “Never Fuck With A Blogger”.

Anyone is considered fair game.

Blomfield’s departure from Hell Pizza wasn’t pleasant. There were accusations, ill-feeling and an eventual falling out with those who had been friends – former Hell Pizza director Warren Powell, his PA Amanda Easterbrook and Powell’s friend Marc Spring.

The depth of feeling is captured in emails held on a file in the Manukau District Court, where Blomfield is suing Slater for defamation. Filed in support of Blomfield’s claims, the emails show Easterbook arranging a meeting between herself, Slater, Spring and a liquidator in April 2012 for what was called “Operation Bumslide”.

In a chain of emails between them, there was a joke about Blomfield being raped and one in which Spring made disparaging sexual remarks about Blomfield’s wife Rebecca. Spring did not return calls.

Easterbrook did not want to comment beyond saying: “Just because you’re copied in on something doesn’t mean you agree with it.”

About that time, Facebook messages apparently hacked from Slater’s computer and supplied to the Herald, show him forecasting a “big story”. He told one confidante it “involves Hell pizza, a g[u]y called Matt Blomfield” and a lawyer. “I’ve got him on money laundering, cheque fraud,” wrote Slater.

Blomfield alleges Operation Bumslide began to play out in early May 2012 when he became the focus of more than 100 articles posted to the Whaleoil site in a two-month period. Slater declared the beginning of an investigation based on the contents of a hard drive he had obtained on which were 10 years of Blomfield’s communications and personal records. There was no explanation about where it came from, but court documents would later allege Blomfield’s former business associates had given it to Slater.

In the weeks that followed, those court documents allege, Blomfield was described as being involved in “drugs, fraud, bullying, corruption, collusion, compromises, perjury, deception” along with being a “psychopath” and a “pathological liar” who loved “notoriety and extortion”.

Blomfield, who sued on the basis the claims were untrue, says he was puzzled over Slater’s interest: “I’d never heard of Whaleoil.” He says he wasn’t contacted before any post ran on the site but watched, initially incredulous then frustrated and finally strained, as the blog painted a picture of someone he says has no resemblance to himself.

“There were stories of me committing every crime you can imagine. I felt like the only thing Cameron Slater hadn’t accused me of is killing someone. The time and energy it takes from someone is very hard to deal with.

“There were only so many people I could sit down with and walk them through the story and say what had actually happened. You’re never going to match the reach of Cameron Slater.”The apparently hacked Facebook messages show the blogger appealed to media interest in his Blomfield posts. In May, after the campaign began, one Facebook correspondent asked Slater: “Any journos taken you up on your offer?”

“Not yet,” the blogger replied. Journalists were “lazy”, he said.

Regular readers were puzzled by the campaign. A month after it began , a regular Facebook chat companion asked Slater: “Why are you going after blomfield”?

Slater: “Have you not been reading those posts?”

Correspondent: “Yeah maybe I need to go back a bit. But I have skimmed over them a little as it seems Bloomfield is a cunt but there are plenty of them in business.”

Slater: “Yep but I can stop this one.”

Correspondent: “And not every cunt gets this attention from you. Has he (e)ver done anything to you or a good mate?”

Blomfield says he felt his life had been unbundled for the world to pick over. Lawyers counselled him against defamation action because of the cost and time involved so he decided to file the papers himself.

“Eventually somebody has got to stand up to the bully. I was the perfect candidate to have a go at him. I’ve got nothing to lose, I’ve got plenty of time, I can write and I have access to the internet. And if I didn’t, it appeared no one else was going to.”

The next 18 months involved a painful drudge through the court system for Blomfield and Slater. (Read the court documents embedded below; mobile readers click here). The former found himself under investigation by a number of authorities following the blog posts, including the Serious Fraud Office, police, Companies Office, Official Assignee and Inland Revenue.

He alleged, in documents filed in court, that the complaints came from Slater or others named in Operation Bumslide – he has documents from each agency showing he was either cleared or no action was taken.

Meanwhile, Slater was bumptious about his prospects in the case, according to the hacked correspondence. He told a lawyer friend defamation actions were controlled by the defendant. He said “blomfield is just starting to realise this… and when I hold 34000 emails he is realising how much hurt he is in… I have them all from 2000 to 2010”.

By October last year he was less bullish. Slater had lost a key hearing in which he claimed a journalist’s source protection. District Court Judge Charles Blackie ruled the blogger was not media and would have to give up his sources (read the court documents embedded below; mobile readers click here).

The right to appeal was granted. Ahead of the April hearing, Slater’s newly appointed website administrator Pete Belt summarised the Whaleoil side of the case. Supporters rallied to Slater’s cause in the comments section of the blog, raising questions about Blomfield’s source of income and praising Slater. Belt contributed, saying: “I wouldn’t want to be Mr Blomfield for the next 10 years. The other side of Karma is coming.”

In another post that day, Belt pointed to new figures showing Whaleoil maintained its lead as New Zealand’s most popular blog, with 1.4 million visits a month.

Ten days later, a man with a gun walked up Blomfield’s front lawn.

Blomfield says he believes the attack is somehow connected to the Whaleoil posts, although is definite in saying police collected no evidence linking the blogger to it. Slater too denies any role. After questions were raised on other blogs, he rejected any involvement in a post on Whaleoil. He did not return requests for comment on this article.

“The Whaleoil fight is my one and only fight,” Blomfield said. If you asked me to write a list of people I don’t get on with Slater would be near or at the top of the list.

“The extension of that is Slater has a quarter of a million people who worship his blog site and would crawl over broken glass for him. You can’t exclude anyone.”

He has received strange and threatening emails and text messages since he filed the defamation case in 2012. Maybe someone took it further, he says. “Who knows?”

By the time the injuries had healed, Justice Raynor Asher came back with a verdict on the appeal (read the court documents embedded below; mobile readers click here).

It was a Pyrrhic victory for Slater. Yes, said Justice Asher, bloggers can be journalists – but the journalistic protection Slater sought also came with responsibilities.

The blogger had to show there was a “public interest” in keeping his sources secret and in the Blomfield case, there was none.

Instead, he found the opposite – the sources had to be revealed to serve the public interest. He said the “extreme and vitriolic statements” made publicly about Blomfield had to be studied. If Slater was to rely on the defence his blog posts were honest opinion, then the motivations of his sources were likely to be relevant, he said.

“Some of the exchanges between the alleged informants and Mr Slater show a gleeful attitude towards his shaming Mr Blomfield,” said Justice Asher. There was also no interest in “protecting informants intent on pursuing personal vendettas or when conducting personal or commercial attacks”. It was a case where “there is a public interest in a full airing of all matters relating to this claim”.

Justice Asher said there had been and was no public interest in Blomfield. “This is not a whistleblower case. There are no political issues, or matters of public importance at stake. Mr Blomfield is not a public figure. There is no evidence that his company, now in liquidation, is the subject of ongoing public interest.”

Justice Asher also dismissed Slater’s argument his sources needed anonymity as protection from Blomfield. There was no evidence to support the claim: “I do not accept Mr Slater’s suggestion that [Blomfield] is a person to be feared.”

Slater claimed the finding as a victory. Blomfield went back to the district court to get what he always wanted – the identities of the sources Slater once said he would risk contempt of court to protect. He has yet to get the information Slater was bound by judicial order to leave in a sealed envelope at the Manukau District Court.

Blomfield says he believes his case against Slater has changed the Whaleoil blog. This year it has banned death threats, such as those made against a public servant singled out on Whaleoil with help from Slater’s close friend, National MP Judith Collins.

Ms Collins championed the Harmful Digital Communications Bill which is intended to stop online abuse. The legislation is still working its way through Parliament.

The blog has also dropped a regular feature in which the deaths of children with unusual first names were mocked, with the suggestion the names were linked to poverty and uncaring parents.

There are also fewer attacks on Joe Average, says Blomfield. New people around Slater, like Belt, appear to have found a way to “assist him to focus on matters that a more of public interest”, he says.

“I don’t think he’s quite there yet,” says Blomfield. “There’s a place for people like Cameron Slater in the world. There has to be someone who is that antagonist in the media. (Justice) Asher was right – bloggers can be journalists.

“But there need to be some sort of controls.”

Blomfield has sunk 3000 hours of his life into the defamation case, which still has a long way to go. It is far harder, more complex and draining than he ever expected and he’d been warned it was going to be bad.

“Maybe the justice system is the control. I believe there needs to be some sort of body for dealing with bloggers which cross the line.”

Source – NZ Herald

As briefly noted earlier, some time ago LF obtained complete copies of the New Zealand police force’s records on the Blomfield v Slater case, among other now interconnected matters; documents including emails, briefs of evidence, police job sheets, reports and analysis to name but some of the material.

Amongst that tranche of documents is irrifutable evidence that David Fisher’s Herald articles (above) contain substantial contradictions, falsehood and outright lies, all designed to mask the truth surrounding the police investigation into Matthew Blomfield’s spurious allegation that the now infamous hard drive, the electronic storage device, had in fact been stolen and that a criminal offence had thus been committed by Cameron Slater.

Blomfield himself has repeatedly used the media to promulgate these falsehoods, the most prominent being that the police had completely and repeatedly failed to investigate Blomfields many complaints. The New Zealand Herald in turn used Blomfield’s false allegations to further the injustice against Slater and his sources with the objective of reducing their own liability around the earlier material the paper had published.

Prentice forst entered the fray back in December 2013, when he allowed Matthew Blomfield to use the Standard to publish a complete litany of lies. That particular article is worth readers revisiting, especially now:

When the wolf cries boy
Written By: LPRENT – Date published: 7:10 pm, December 6th, 2013 – 126 comments

Matthew Blomfield, the defamation plaintiff against Cameron Slater who has been exciting the journalistic and blogging communities this week asked to make a statement to clear up some issues that have arisen in the blog space.

There was a lot of stupidity and outright bullshit (like allegations that Mr Blomfield was an undischarged bankrupt) in the comments in an earlier post that put this site at a legal risk (including comments from Cameron Slater). So I agreed to do it only if the post was fully moderated. Rational discussion without unsupported assertions of fact will be let through where they do not impede the case currently in front of the courts.

Mr Blomfield’s statement is as follows.. (continue reading here)

Source – The Standard

Prentice continued with a number of follow up articles wherein he attempted to convince his readers that bloggers were not journalists and that Slater stood a snow balls chance in hell, that Slater would inevitably loose his appeal to the High Court. Of courese as aforesaid Prentice, the prodigeous legal mind, was, yet again, proven wrong.

Of course as we here at LF have pointed out before the New Zealand Herald, in particular, had and continues to have a clear motive for following that particular game plan supporting Blomfield. At least three of the newspapers journalists, it can be proven, had earlier written and published material at Blomfield’s instigation. Those articles and the blatant falsehoods they contained undoubtedly exposed the New Zealand Herald and it’s insurance underwriters to seriously large damages claims from a number of parties who were later adversely affected. Those injured parties include at least one large corporate entity, the former owners of the Hell Pizza master franchise, Tasman Pacific Foods Limited and its shareholders

So David Fisher and the New Zealand Herald had and continue to have a good commercial reason for their ongoing support of Blomfield and his action plan, and make no mistake it was indeed planned.

David Fisher clearly had no intention of publishing anything even remotely resembling the truth. We know this because of two documents that LF managed to find in the tranche of police files we obtained. The first is an email sent by David Fisher to the police, a formal media official information request or OIA:

The second is the New Zealand police response to Fishers OIA, sent exactly a month later, dated the 7th November 2014:

What both Fisher and Prentice fail to have grasped, be it intentional or otherwise, is that unlike the search of Nicky Hager’s home, as unconstitutional as it may have been seen, especially by his political supporters, the fact is that Slater’s home did not need to be raided and searched, his cooperation and admissions were immediate.

Both Slater and his sources fully co-operated with police to the extent that they were obliged to, such extent being more than sufficient for the police to determine whether in fact any criminal offences had been committed, such as the alleged theft of the “hard Drive”, as had been repeatedly and falsely claimed by Blomfield.

Blomfield knew full well that police had investigated every single one of his bullshit complaints. The police had after all written to Blomfield on numerous occasions advising him of the outcomes of their investigations, the last of those letters being sent on the 23 December 2014, following the police’s review of their two prior investigations.

 

So there you have it, no offence had been ever been committed. The result of the polices second revision absolutely no different to the earlier outcomes, which David Fisher was well aware of.

Now whilst the police, at least for appearances sake, had left the file open, they had also taken the precaution of seeking a legal opinion on whether or not several third parties involved could have committed an offence in any event.

The advice the police received was that any third person on this ocasion, on the available facts, would not have committed an offence in any event as they too had lawfully received and dealt with the hard drive. In short Blomfield’s continued assertion that the hard drive had been stolen was little more than an outright lie, a lie that was designed to obfuscate, a deliberate lie which Blomfield persisted with throughout the High Court proceeding before Asher J and of course in the media, namely both the Standard and the New Zealand Herald, despite knowing the allegation to have been wholly false.

Blomfield had even attempted to con the police into re-investigating his original complaints,  based only on the findings of High Court Justice Asher J, who had in fact in any event been misled by non other than Blomfield’s lawyer Matt Karam, acting on instructions from Matthew Blomfield himself. Round and around in circles, Blomfield had led the authorities on a merry dance.

David Fisher also later tried this stunt with police, having included the, ‘but the judge said it was stolen’ ruse among his questions to police in his email of the 7th October 2014 (above).

In fact, LF are at a loss to establish the exact point when Justice Raynor Asher actually shifted his own opinion on the legal status of the hard drive, exactly how it had been obtained by Slater, god knows Blomfield never actually provided any evidence that he even owned or when he in fact last possessed the hard drive. What was it that had changed Ashers mind, between having heard the evidence and handing down of his decision?

Nearing the closing of the 2014 hearing Judge Raynor Asher is heard clearly questioning Matt Karam’s continued assertion that the hard Drive had been stolen;

Whats more Asher questioned Karam on whether Blomfield even owned the items at any point, “maybe Hell Pizza or John Price owned them” said Asher. At which point Karam searched but failed to locate the documents he claimed proved otherwise. Funnily enough no mention of any of this from Prentice in his later online commentary…..WHY?

Source – BLOMFIELD v CAMERON SLATER – POT, KETTLE, BLACK – LABOUR RAG, THE STANDARD & LYNN PRENTICE, AT IT AGAIN

Yet despite Justice Asher’s doubts around Blomfield’s ongoing claims of theft judge Asher’s judgement contained one paragraph that Blomfield, Prentice and Fisher have clung desperately to ever since:

“In the ordinary course of events persons do not legitimately come by the personal hard drive and filing cabinets of other persons. Even if Mr Slater was not a party to any illegality, it seems likely that the information was obtained illegally by the sources, and this diminishes the importance of protecting the source” – Justice Raynor Asher, NZ High Court

Now we here at LF cannot be sure why it was that Asher was persuaded to shift from the position he had clearly held during the trial, perhaps he had obtained advice from another source following the open hearing, but of course that could not have happened as it’s completely unlawful……of course in New Zealand you can never be sure!

The New Zealand police had in fact held very similar views to those LF held as far back as July 2012 when the police themselves first determined that there had been no criminal offending:

Justice Asher’s findings, as with those found in almost all judgements, are in fact a double-edged sword. There is almost a delicious irony in Lynn Prentice’s pitifull whingeing (above). That irony lies in the fact that Justice Asher’s “findings”, as in his judgement related to the Hard drive, could well have been used by the New Zealand police legal section whilst assessing their approach to the collection of evidence in the Nicky Hager case; ie whether or not they could get away with searching his home, would a defence based loosely on Ashers determination in Blomfield v Slater succeed in Hager v Police?

After all, Justice Asher J did basically find, and we paraphrase, no journalist has the right to the protection of his or her sources if the material supplied to them was obtained illegally or unlawfully.

Now if one is to apply the law, and that also now means Asher’s finding, now a precedent, across all such cases then of course the police could now argue that they had every right to search Nicky Hager’s home and seize his computers and documents, whether he was a journalist or not. That argument and the now infamous decision Kim Dotcom v Attorney General, involving David Fishers book, may well result in doubt that even Hagers status as a journo, under very similar circumstance, is questionable.

See: Journalist’s book on Kim Dotcom not ‘news activity’

See also: Kim Dotcm v Attorney General [CIV 2013-404-2168 [2014] NZHC 1343]

After all, unlike Slater, Hager had knowingly used material that had, without any doubt, been stolen, namely the contents of Slater’s computor and the files from his various cloud accounts which had been hacked by the now infamous “Rawskark”, to compose his book, and on that occasion Hagers actions certainly did NOT result in the exposing of any “criminal” wrong doing, whereas in the Blomfield case we here at LF would argue that the opposite HAD in fact occurred – there being at least three criminal complaints subsequently laid and currently with police.

Of course the police files on Blomfield make for very interesting reading in many other respects. They certainly give the reader a better understanding of how police conducted the investigation and moreover how they came to view Blomfield, his many false complaints, the litany of lies and use of the New Zealand Herald Journo’s and of course our mate Lynn Prentice.

In fact. LF located one particular document that paints a very vivid picture of Blomfield’s fast withering credibility among the police officers investigating. An opinion not at all dissimilar to the views that we here at LF have held since the story first hit the news in 2012.

Somewhat strangely, one senior police officer acknowledged LF’s investigative journalism, whilst also using the evidence LF had collected to raise the prospect of shifting of Blomfield’s complaints to “West Auckland” allegedly a police euphemism for a discrete police CIB division actually located in West Auckland, established some time ago principally to deal with politically sensitive  caes, hot potatoes, investigations that are of more than passing interest to the media and the public:

So, it would seem, at least as far as the New Zealand police were concerned, that the Blomfield v Slater case was indeed a hot potato, one that certainly appears, in the police’s estimation at least, to have been of public interest and a case that once investigated they had no intention of being drawn into with what they too had assessed as Blomfield’s clever manipulation of the media, Blogger, citizen journalist and MSM alike.

The fact is the police foresaw that distinct possibility and its inherent risks for police as far back as 2012, two full years before police had received Fishers bullshit OIA. So thorough was the police’s investigation they were well and truly prepared for the IPCA complaint that was later laid in 2013 by Blomfield.

It’s just a crying shame that Justice Raynor Asher did not get to see the entire police file. In fact its a crying shame that neither David Fisher nor Lynn Prentice got to see the file LF have either. Perhaps fisher might have been a little more circumspect with his approach, instead of writing the complete crap that’s been published by the New Zealand Herald over the past 3 years.

The fact that Cameron Slater has never ever resided in “West Auckland” is also of concern and only serves to lend support to the intel LF have received, the allegation that a specialist New Zealand police coverup squad exists, located in the West Auckland command.

We will discuss the contents of the police file and the issue of David Fisher’s prior knowledge, what was true and what wasn’t, his guilty mind so to speak, in future posts.

As aforesaid immediately upon the New Zealand Herald article being published, the Standards Lynn Prentice published his own commentary, undoubtedly, as the police determined and LF have long alleged, at the instigation of Matthew Blomfield, entitled “Even the police sense the hypocrisy”.

Indeed Prentice was right, the police had smelt “hypocrisy”, but it was not coming from Stkaters camp, more importantly, with regard to just how thoroughly the police had investigated Blomfield’s many complaints, they too could smell a very large fucking Rat.

Prentice opined:

Even the police sense the hypocrisy

Lynn Prentice, 9th October 2014

In an interesting (but entirely predicable) turn of events the David Fisher at the Herald is reporting

Police are reviewing a two-year-old criminal complaint against Whaleoil blogger Cameron Slater over material he used on his website.

The review is studying how Slater obtained a vast quantity of private emails which were used as the basis of posts on his blog.

It comes as police investigate a complaint from Slater over the hacking of his computer. Detectives investigating Slater’s complaint this week executed a search warrant on the home of author Nicky Hager, who used material obtained by the hacker known as Rawshark to write Dirty Politics.

The police review stems from a complaint laid in May 2012 by businessman Matt Blomfield, who has taken a defamation case against Slater over articles on the Whaleoil blog.

To be precise, as I was pointing out the other day in “John Key’s police poodles“, it is completely ridiculous to go in and seize a journalist entire work systems and outputs because one of John Key’s friends lays a complaint. To do so while pretty well ignoring a previous complaint against Cameron Slater that has almost exactly the same legal facts just begs a label of total hypocrisy.

Now hopefully when the police finally stop having a rather long holiday on this we can we expect a rapid raid on Cameron Slater, his blog, and the taking away of ALL computers. Well I don’t think that the police are going to anything more than plaster the limp “it is too old” sticker over this.

Of course the reason why it is too old is because the bloody police didn’t move against a mate of John Key…

Updated: David Fisher at the Herald is also reporting on the household attack on Matthew Blomfield by a shotgun wielding attacker.

Blomfield had fought off the attacker, fiercely enough that police later found blood from which they took DNA.

He struggled to think who might want him hurt, or worse. In the end, he came up with a suspect list of 285,000 people – the monthly readership of the Whaleoil blog, who he believed had been given every reason to think he was one of the worst people in New Zealand.

That’s Cameron Slater – New Zealand’s hero of the crazy loons and homicidal nutters. But this particular incident always looked to me to be somewhat more sinister than that. After all with a big defamation loss looming against him? What depths could the chief raving lunatic get down to? Especially bearing in mind his previous contacts in the ‘security’ business.

Source – The Standard

So many senior police officers investigating, yet they still did not manage to get the result Blomfield desparately wanted. The “Rat” that the cops had spotted, “ducking and diving” at police interviews, would probably have gone completely unnoticed by the many investigating police officers had it not been for three factors. The first being the degree to which Blomfield had tried to “steer” the various police investigations, often by attempting to manipulate police officers and witnesses, threatening and cajoling the investigating officers, including on occasions listening in on conversations between police investigators and witnesses who had been “schooled” in what to say and write, those willing to lie for Blomfield; Blomfield undoubtedly believing, wrongly, that he had also managed to con the cops. But needless to say he hadn’t

Detective Sergeant Gary Brand notes in one of his reports to Detective Senior Sergeant Stan Brown that Blomfield had in fact been misleading police for months on the true whereabouts of the hard drive;

In yet another police report, postdating Blomfield’s 2013 complaint to the IPCA another senior police officer includes in his report extraordinary but extremely accurate observations and conclusions:

Police had of course taped all of their interviews, including almost every impromptu telephone call made to police by Blomfield and or his associates (LF now having the transcripts). Police Knew exactly what Blomfield had been up to, including the likely extortion or blackmailing of a number of individuals, so as to obtain affidavits in support of his false assertians and allegations.

The very same false affidavits and unsworn will say documents were then used by Blomfield, his solicitors and his barrister Matt Karam during the High Court appeal before Justice Asher, the attempt to obtain the identities of Slater’s sources. Police also noted their concerns in this area in a number of the police reports;

The second reason is to be found in the fact that the police had figured out, very early on, that Blomfields complaints, especially as in they related to the theft of the hard drive, were completely false. That the Statements Blomfield had given were intentionally duplicitous, designed to mislead both the police investigators and the court. Police finally forming the view that Blomfield had been using them with little other purpose than to secure the return of the hard drive and prevent any further investigation of the allegations Slater had published in 2012.

Of course these police assessments ring true, despite the Official Assignees earlier disinterest, their failure to properly investigate the allegations. The OA and the SFO were both in possession of exactly the same material that has now been used by the liquidator of Plan Z Limited to file a complaint of theft with the Police fraud squad. Material that may well be used in the near future to bring private prosecutions if the police fail to prosecute Blomfield and other members of his cabal. Obviously this leaves serious questions remaining about the competence of the authorities, especially the SFO and the OA

Now it is important to reiterate the fact that from the outset there never really was an issue with Slater being considered a journalist, after all the police had figured that much out for themselves in 2012. Team LF had also pointed out the errors contained in Judge Charles Blackie’s errant 2012 judgement very early on in the piece, arguments that were later sustained with the judgement of the High courts Justice Raynor Asher.

See: Blackies ruling against Slater “without authority, unenforceable, and void”

For the New Zealand Courts to have ultimately decided that what Slater produced did not amount to journalism would have been completely at odds, and out of step, with other Commonwealth jurisdictions and for that matter decisions elsewhere such as the United States. Any issue of Slater’s entitlement to the status of “journalist” was only ever a furphy, somewhat inconveniently born of the errant lower court decision of Blackie DCJ, which was then conveniently seized upon by Blomfield and the mainstream media,  including Slater haters such as Fisher and Prentice for the more than obvious reasons, the New Zealand Herald and its hacks of course leading that particular charge.

The real issues in the Blomfield v Slater are two-fold. The issue of who it is that has been lying, those matters going to credibility and the underlying issue of the smear campaign thats been conducted outside the New Zealand court system to influence the outcome of the case. Then theres the core issue of whether or not Blomfield had in fact been defamed by Slater, which to prove relies solely on whether or not Slater intentionally published false and defamatory material, an argument that we here at LF have long contended will be not be successful.

In that regard what must also be pointed out is the fact that whilst this case is now entering it’s fourth tumultuous year, the applicant, Matthew Blomfield has done absolutely nothing to advance his substantive claim, the tort of defamation, beyond the issue of trying to obtain the identities of Slater’s informants. Somewhat strange indeed, especially given the fact that the crux of Blomfields case is an alleged defamation by Slater alone and NOT Slater’s informants.

Moreover, Prentice and Fisher, both Blomfield supporters and arguably foundation members of the “Slater Hater Society Inc”, and not being independent observers since 2014 have been intent on trying to damage Slater’s reputation in a very public way public. In these attempts neither Prentice or Fisher have relied on evidence, nor have they relied on any established facts that they could point to in their published material. Instead they have both been complicit in using smear, innuendo and at best extremely tenuous and completely unrelated coincidence, circumstance and happenstance to assist their malicious behaviour and agenda.

In Fishers case he has drawn heavily on a completely unrelated assault on Matthew Blomfield in 2014. In Fishers second article above he endeavours to connect Slater to that assault, whilst painting Blomfield as the completely helpless victim of circumstances beyond his control. However the facts are completely at odds with Fishers use of innuendo and smear, the known facts do not even come even remotely close to supporting David Fishers “colouring” of the events.

It should also be noted that during the defamation proceedings matters involving Blomfield’s connection to organised criminal groups were raised by Cameron Slater whilst endeavouring to establish that Blomfield was indeed a threat to the welfare of his sources.

Evidence was submitted that in fact pointed to Blomfield’s own actions, likely substantial debts, and those of his brother Daniel, again an indebtedness, having been causal in the assault at 7 Rame Road Greenhith, and that Blomfield and his Brother had on occasion intimidated witnesses using their much touted “gang” conections to intimidate.

With that in mind, and of course Fishers colourful use of smear, it should also now be noted that Blomfield’s brother himself has only recently suffered a similar assault, again allegedly at the hands of two gang related assailants, whilst they were purportedly in the process of  a “repossession”.

The evidence, if it could be considered evidence, far from pointing to Slater as the likely culprit behind the assault on Blomfield actually points to both Blomfield brothers owing a so-called gang, an organised criminal group, a considerable amounts of money, unpaid debts which very likely prompted both assaults.

Interestingly neither Fisher nor Prentice reported on the second more recent assault on Dan Blomfield, an assault so serious that it led to Blomfield’s prolonged hospitalization. Obviously, to have noted the more recent event both Prentice and Fisher would have been supporting Slater’s earlier legal arguments and evidence, advanced during court hearings, that the Blomfield brothers had associations with organised criminal groups and that they had in fact used those “Gang” associations to intimidate the victims of their frauds. All of this would of course have been a rather inconvenient reality that would clearly not have suited the agendas of either Prentice or Fisher.

The fact is we now know that Fisher had at his disposal the complete police file on the Blomfield v Slater case, its claims and counter claims, in fact Fisher had all of the same evidence that the police had been able to collect, the very same evidence that had led police, after many hours of investigation to conclude that Blomfield’s hard drive had in fact not been stolen, that the actions of those involved had not been criminal.

Whats more the police file that Fisher had requested and subsequently received contained evidence that is completely at odds with the spurious claims advanced by both Fisher and Prentice in their respective articles over the period 2012 to 2015. Fisher in his articles, funnily enough, whilst having the police position clearly spelt out, prefers to rely on the judgement of Asher J to again advance his spurious account. Of course, as aforesaid Raynor Asher himself was torn when it came to the issue of whether or not the hard drive had been unlawfully obtained, but then again he didn’t have the LF advantage, Asher J had not seen the police reports, or for that matter the polices substantial file and that of the SFO record of interviews in their entirety.

Prentice in his latest post (above) points to the Rachinger allegations, another complete furphy if ever there was one. As we have already stated in earlier posts the sudden appearance and then rapid disappearance of Rachinger and his spurious allegations more than likely owed their existence to an employee/employer relationship turned sour, a nastier than need be predicament that Rachinger sought to gain from by approaching Blomfield. Then once that facts had been completely reconfigured by Blomfield employed to attack Slater by rearranging the furniture to create the illusion that he desired for consumption by the mainstream media.

Rachinger’s claims were at first more than obviously rejected by Prentice and his mate at the Standard lawyer Greg Presland, who undoubtedly smelt another Rat, if only because of the timing and Blomfield’s involvement, that much was clear back in February this year;

Interesting story coming up in The Herald
Written By: NOTICES AND FEATURES – Date published: 12:10 am, February 20th, 2015
There will probably be a story soonish in The Herald that will be of particular interest to The Standard community.
We have had nothing to do with the coverage. We’ve just been watching events unfold on Twitter, and we’re happy to see it come out (thanks to a brave individual) via The Herald.
Source: http://thestandard.org.nz/interesting-story-coming-up-in-the-herald/

So if the boys at the Standard had nothing to do with it, allegedly just watching it unfold on twitter, how then was it that they knew all about the intended Herald article? Back then no one appeared brave enough to have their name associated with the allegations that Rachinger was about to have promoted by the New Zealand Herald. In fact even the New Zealand Herald seems to have backed out of publishing anything at the last-minute, that very smart decision probably taken by Shayne Curry after he had read the crap produced by Matt Nippert. Although Curry has not always been quite so smart, perhaps he was mindful of various other related matters that were about to turn into a shit sandwich for his beloved establishment newspaper turned arsewipe? Who knows.

Now regular readers of LF will know that we don’t often say nice things about the New Zealand police. We won’t be on this occasion either, sure the police did get the right result in this case, the hard drive had never been stolen, police established that fact very early on in 2012 investigation. Blomfield was and has continued lying, but despite those lies now beginning to catch up with him the police have failed to curtail his wasting of police resources as the law provides for.

Whats more, our additional concern is that the police seem to be fudging completely legitimate complaints against Blomfield and his associates, all because they just don’t want to again get bogged down.

Lynn Prentice and several other leftist bloggers on the other hand foolishly believe that the police have somehow favoured Cameron Slater over Blomfield with their investigations, all on the basis that they did not ransack Slater’s home, search warrant in hand, as they had Nicky Hagers.

The reality however is that Slater and the others named by Blomfield co-operated with police. Slater, wisely or not, trusted police to keep the identities of his sources confidential which they so far have.

We suspect that Slater is continuing to co-operate with respect to Rachinger’s bullshit allegations. They too, in our view, will amount to little more than another waste of tax payers hard earned cash. As for Prentice’s implied threat to take a private criminal prosecution against Slater over the seriously dodgy claim that the Standard was to be “hacked” by Benjamin Rachinger – based on what we have seen of what Rachinger has presented to date, such a prosecution would be foolhardy at best and would likely fail, with the court refusing to entertain the allegation. Frankly, we don’t belive that Rachinger is capable of hacking his way out of a fucking paper bag.

Any attempted prosecution would certainly fail at a substantive hearing, if by fluke, Prentice managed to get it past the district courts gate-keeper, with the additional evidence we here at LF have now obtained, the district court would quickly throw out any charges, as they have many of Graeme McCready’s less well thought-out prosecutions.

This Witch-hunt, now being driven by Prentice, the Standard and the New Zealand Herald, is destined to turn ugly, a far more expansive war looms, arguably with both Prentice and the New Zealnd Herald being the most seriously injured casualties.

As for charging Slater with anything, the notion is complete and fanciful bullshit, nut-job territory, from where we here at team LF are standing Prentice and the boys and girls at the Standard have absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing on Slater’s part, just the strangest self incriminating admission by Rachinger that he intended to hack Prentice’s computer.

On the other hand a prima facie case against Lynn Prentice for his criminal behaviour does exist, the evidence to be found in articles and comments Prentice and others have posted at the Standard.

Prentice is a shonk, a complete and utter co-artist, a one-eyed git, a man that has little if any interest in the truth or for that matter seeing justice done.

Prentice’s single focus throughout the Blomfield v Slater affair has been his almost infantile pursuit of Slater. Whilst both Slater and Prentice are arguably political animals and deserve each other, that fact alone in no way mitigates Prentice’s wanton disregard for the truth and justice, a disregard that is often so irrational that it has completely ignored the irrefutable evidence that Blomfield’s hard drive was never stolen, that the police had in fact thoroughly investigated Blomfield complaints on three separate occasions, unfortunately for Blomfield concluding only that he was a complete fucking liar, a fraudster with the hidden agenda of avoiding a criminal prosecution himself.

It seems plausible in fact that at least one senior police officer at one point was of a mind that Blomfield be re-interviewed and investigated, with a view to criminal prosecution should they find any evidence of offending on the hard drive, its just a shame that the New Zealand police obviously lack the skill-sets required to investigate white collar crime, especially complex fraud:

Probably most importantly, Lynn Prentice has absolutely no excuse for his preparedness to throw the many victims of Blomfield’s frauds, both past and present, under a bus in his pursuit of Cameron Slater.

Prentice should be very careful with what he dishes out to others, more than such is the extent of Prentice’s egregious and obviously malicious behaviour we here at LF would recommend Prentice start praying that the law doesn’t catch up with him first, before he even gets another opportunity to lash out at Cameron Slater and anyone else who he happens to believe is standing in the way of his devine right to do so.

Footnote:

At the start of the Blomfield v Slater case matter many other leftist bloggers were getting stuck into Slater and his sources, in the process backing Blomfield. Of course they had no real knowledge of the detail, it was good enough for them that Slater was the target of the litigation. In the process those bloggers did untold damage to the civil, legal and human rights of the victims of white collar crime. That however did not appear to be of concern to those individuals.

It should also be noted that many of those same political bloggers, over the duration, have decided to walk away, ever so quietly, no doubt hoping they’d not be noticed. This fact has clearly gone unnoticed by Prentice. It has however not been missed by team LF. Everyone of the political bloggers is in our view deserving of ridicule. They have not acted in the best interests of justice nor have they endeavoured to seek the truth.

In the midst of the media scum surrounding Blomfields IPCA complaint well known political blogger Martyn Bradbury was one amongst many idiots, most from the left of the politcal spectrum, that had a go at Slater. Bradbury had absolutely no knowledge of what had really occurred, historically or behind the scenes, of the crimes that had been committed and yet he had the self serving temerity to comment without first ensuring he had the whole story and that his understanfing of the facts were correct. It was just another band wagon that the free-loading Bradbury sought to benifit from.

We here at LF have a far more extensive record of critising both the New Zealand police and the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) by comparison to Martyn Bradbury. In this case the police had in fact done their job, at least to the extent that they had investigated the complaints, rightly determining that the hard drive had never been stolen, and that the data it contained had never been dealt with improperly.

The IPCA on the other hand had been caught completely off guard by little more than the incompetence of their own senior investigator, Pieter Roozendaal. Embarrassed the IPCA had sunsequently sought to shift the blame for that literary bungle from Roozendaal to Cameron Slater, a tactic again enabled by the likes of Fisher, Bradbury and Prentice.

Slater was 100% right with his accusation that Blomfield had in fact committed perjury. The only thing inaccurate in Slaters commentary was the extent and scale of offending in which Blomfield had engaged, intentionally misleading both the police and importantly the High Court of New Zealand,  Justice Raynor Asher included.

The only “dirty Politics” on display on this occasion was that committed by Martyn Bradbury and his left leaning blogging clones, lazy cunts who simply couldn’t be bothered getting up off their big fat arses and taking a closer look at the evidence. The rony is that these same people are often the first to criticise police for getting it wrong. Bradbury opined

Has dirty politics leaked into the Police Force

October 16, 2014

Maryn Bradbury

It’s difficult to know what to make of the IPCA letter to Matthew Blomfield over Slater’s continued insistence that the hard drive taken from Matthew wasn’t stolen. Slater has selectively cherry picked the Police referring back to his claim that Blomfeild perjured himself because it was a different person who had reported the theft.
It’s infantile at best for Slater to claim the Police quoting back to him his perjury accusation is proof Blomfield’s hard drive wasn’t stolen.
Here is IPCA’s letter to Blomfield…

…what is most fascinating is the mention in there that the Police had initially made the conclusion that the hard drive wasn’t stolen but now were reviewing that investigation. Which begs the question, did a friendly cop who likes Slater decide the hard drive wasn’t stolen or was there a mistake?

Based on the sudden rush of corruption cases against cops, is this an example of Dirty Politics seeping into the Police force?
While we are on that, could we ask again why Cameron Slater had his complaint against Hager actioned within 36 days when Don Brash couldn’t get his actioned after a year.
Source –http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/10/16/the-blomfield-ipca-letter-has-dirty-politics-leaked-into-the-nz-police-force/#!prettyPhoto

Of course Bradbury was 100% wrong with every statement in his post. Again the various police reports (excerpts provided), and an email from Matthew Blomfield himself, more than adequately illustrate this reality; the fact that Slater was right to believe that Blomfield had indeed committed perjury;