Records and communications related to misconduct by American personnel
Andrew Li made this Official Information request to New Zealand Defence Force
The request was refused by New Zealand Defence Force.
From: Andrew Li
Dear New Zealand Defence Force,
I am requesting all records, communications, and notes, regarding misconduct by American military personnel
1) where it involves harm to NZDF personnel, i.e. sexual harassment of NZ Army soldiers
2) and/or where conducted on New Zealand soil or New Zealand bases overseas, i.e. dangerous actions conducted on joint exercises at the Waiouru Military Training Area
This should include cases where the American military was left to deal with discipline or prosecution of those involved.
Yours faithfully,
Andrew Li
From: Ministerial Services
New Zealand Defence Force
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Good morning
Please see attached a response to your request of 3 May 2022:
Regards
Corporate and Ministerial Services
OCDF, Office of Chief of Defence Force
New Zealand Defence Force
[1]www.nzdf.mil.nz
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From: Andrew Li
Dear Commodore Woods,
> The nationality of an alleged offender is not readily retrievable from New Zealand Defence Force... data
How is said data held? Sharepoint? Custom database? Paper files? Is there no facility for searching documents within said document library for keywords?
Regards,
Andrew
From: Ministerial Services
New Zealand Defence Force
Link: [1]File-List
Link: [2]Edit-Time-Data
Good morning Andrew,
All records, communications and notes on any subject held by the NZDF are
stored across different parts of the New Zealand Defence Force in various
forms. Email communications are stored in a central digital archive;
however, searches only using keywords with no time parameters, produce so
many results that review to identify any relevant information requires
substantial collation and research efforts.
With respect to complaints concerning misconduct, and particularly those
related to sexual harassment, these may be raised across numerous avenues
within the NZDF including, but not limited to, their command or
management, chaplains, social workers, anti-harassment advisors, and Human
Resources Advisors and Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Advisors.
This information is not comprehensively captured in a centralised manner.
Again, if you can provide more particular details then a more targeted
search may be possible.
Regards
Corporate and Ministerial Services
OCDF, Office of Chief of Defence Force
New Zealand Defence Force
[3]www.nzdf.mil.nz
show quoted sections
From: Andrew Li
Dear Commodore Woods,
It is unfortunate to learn that there is no centralized tracking of sexual assault/sexual harassment events that can be queried in reference to this.
I appreciate the issue in regards the general email archive, and can imagine that a large portion of the emails that would be returned for a query like
"sexually harassed"
would be policy documents being circulated, discussions of ongoing trainings/meetings, etc.
Talking to my colleagues about this- does the email archive in question allow for boolean operators on searches- i.e.
+"sexually harassed" +"us marines"
and, if there are particular policy documents, frequently circulated guidelines, etc that happen to be returned repeatedly when such a search is made but which are not relevant:
+"sexually harassed" +"us marines" -"a common phrase in spuriously returned document that is unlikely to appear elsewhere"
?
Thanks,
Andrew
From: Ministerial Services
New Zealand Defence Force
Link: [1]File-List
Link: [2]Edit-Time-Data
Good morning Andrew,
A search was undertaken using the terms you had provided (+"sexually
harassed" +"us marines"), this produced no information within the scope of
your request. The 200+ results related to open source media pieces for
news feeds that NZDF personnel subscribe to.
Regards
Corporate and Ministerial Services
OCDF, Office of Chief of Defence Force
New Zealand Defence Force
[3]www.nzdf.mil.nz
show quoted sections
From: Andrew Li
Thanks folks, appreciate your effort.
You mention that "The 200+ results related to open source media pieces for news feeds that NZDF personnel subscribe to."
I don't want to suggest that you should go through the effort of excluding such yourselves, but I would assume you can answer questions regarding:
1) Are these emails delivered to NZDF personnel, as part of subscriptions to a service the NZDF subscribes to? If so, how would one exclude such emails?
2) Are these emails delivered to NZDF personnel, as part of subscriptions to a variety of news sites individually (NZ Herald, Stuff, etc)?
2) a) If so, how would one exclude such emails on a per-domain basis (i.e. "-from:stuff.co.nz AND -from:nzherald.co.nz" ) and what is the maximum query length for such queries?
2) b) If so, how would one include only emails received from domains belonging to the NZDF?
Yours sincerely,
Andrew Li
From: Ministerial Services
New Zealand Defence Force
Link: [1]File-List
Link: [2]Edit-Time-Data
Good morning Andrew,
Yes, the emails are delivered to subscribing NZDF personnel. The only way
to exclude such emails is to carry out a manual search of the results as a
further digital search of the results is not possible given the file type
of the archive. This is the reason why your request has been refused in
accordance with section 18(f) of the OIA.
Regards
Corporate and Ministerial Services
OCDF, Office of Chief of Defence Force
New Zealand Defence Force
[3]www.nzdf.mil.nz
show quoted sections
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