7 November 2024
IR-01-24-10600
New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties
Tēnā koe
Request for information – Preliminary Inquiry from the Ombudsman.
On 22 April 2024, Police responded to an Official Information Act request from
you through fyi ([FYI request #26223 email]) seeking the
“Social Networking, Open Source Information and Online Practitioner” Police
Manual chapter, and previous editions.
You requested a searchable copy. Police intended to send a searchable copy
and had thought that one had been sent to you. It has now been identified that
several of the pages within that document were not searchable. Accordingly, an
updated version is attached now, which should address this issue.
I understand that you would like further information about the reasons for
withholding parts of the chapter under s 6(c) and the grounds in support. It is not
possible to give you much further information (for example, about the tenor or
nature of specific contents) without identifying the subject matter being withheld
and thus prejudicing the interests protected by section 6.
The 22 April 2024 response letter explained that some information had been
withheld pursuant to section 6(c) of the OIA:
as making available of the information is likely to prejudice the
maintenance of the law, including the prevention, investigation, and
detection of offences and right to a fair trial; and that
the redactions made relate to tradecraft and processes around managing
online practitioner roles and it is not in the public interest to release that
detail.
By way of further clarification and explanation:
When releasing these chapters to you, Police has endeavoured to give as much
information as possible. However, as you can appreciate, some specific
information about how Police use online personas could be used by criminals to
work out when such techniques are likely to be used or not, and how to evade
detection.
It is important that Police, on behalf of the community, protect their tradecraft
methods as much as possible to ensure that criminals do not use publicly
released information to hinder police investigations. Providing criminals with
Police National Headquarters
180 Molesworth Street. PO Box 3017, Wellington 6140, New Zealand.
Telephone: 04 474 9499. 04 498 7400. www.police.govt.nz
information as to whether police use a particular methodology, technique, tool, or
items of equipment would only harm the community and the public interest.
Some contact details for specific units and groups have also been redacted on
the basis of section 6(c). This is so that those contact details cannot be misused
or targeted which would detrimentally impact the ability of Police staff to use of
them for law enforcement purposes.
Under section 28(3) of the OIA, you have the right to ask the Ombudsman to
review this decision if you are not satisfied with Police’s response to your request.
Nāku iti noa, nā
Greg Dalziel
Detective Senior Sergeant
High Tech Crime Group
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