Mr. Cameron Slater
Whale Oil Website
Over the past ten days you have posted a number of documents on your website www.whaleoil.co.nz. By your own admission you have in your possession a number of large boxes containing my personal files, email, hard drives and databases.
You have stated on your website the following “I have the documents, I have the emails, I have the files and I have the hard drives and I have the databases.”
The items which you have in your possession were stolen from my offices in a Burglary which took place in 2010. The Burglary was reported to the Police at the time.
I have now reported this matter to the New Zealand Police as these items are stolen and you have no authorization to access my computer system including my hard drive containing my personal emails.
You did not seek permission to publish from myself or any of the recipients or authors of the documents.
The posts that you have made demonstrate that you have opened the hard drive and accessed strings of correspondence. That can only have been a deliberate action on your part.
I believe that you have been quite aware that the items and documents were stolen from me. Further, any reasonable person looking at the documents would be aware that the access was unauthorised, as the emails all contain a confidentiality and privacy footer warning against the unauthorised possession or use of the documents. You have completely ignored the Legal Notices. Indeed you have published them!
I would like to bring to you attention the following sections of the Crimes Act 1961.
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.
Currently you are accessing my personal emails and other documents without my permission or authorization. I bring to your attention that this is a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment.
246. Receiving
(1)Every one is guilty of receiving who receives any property stolen or obtained by any other crime, knowing that property to have been stolen or so obtained, or being reckless as to whether or not the property had been stolen or so obtained.
(2)For the purposes of this section, property that was obtained by any act committed outside New Zealand that, if it had been committed in New Zealand, would have constituted a crime is, subject to subsection (5), to be regarded as having been obtained by a crime.
(3)The act of receiving any property stolen or obtained by any other crime is complete as soon as the offender has, either exclusively or jointly with the thief or any other person, possession of, or control over, the property or helps in concealing or disposing of the property.
(4)If—
(a)any property stolen or obtained by any other crime has been returned to the owner; or
(b) legal title to any such property has been acquired by any person,—
a subsequent receiving of it is not an offence, even though the receiver may know that the property had previously been stolen or obtained by any other crime.
(5)If a person is charged with an offence under this section and the property was obtained by an act committed outside New Zealand, it is to be presumed, unless the person charged puts the matter at issue, that the doing of the act by which the property was obtained was an offence under the law of the place where the act was done.
247. Punishment of receiving:
Every person who is guilty of receiving is liable as follows:
(a)if the value of the property received exceeds $1,000, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years:
(b)if the value of the property received exceeds $500 but does not exceed the sum of $1,000, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 1 year:
(c)if the value of the property received does not exceed $500, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months.
The Police Diversion Agreement, which you have posted on your website, is a confidential document stolen from me. The Police Diversion process is available to people without prior convictions who have committed minor offences. In my case, it was pushing a person’s hand. Although I believed I had a defence, I was offered Diversion and took it. In doing so, I had an expectation that I would not hear of the matter again. If I had known that you would take a document, that you knew was stolen, and post it on the Worldwide Web, I would have defended the charge. I believe your action was both deliberate and malicious.
Significantly for you, the Diversion process involves the application of name suppression to the person who has completed the Diversion.
I realise that you have a history of breaching Court Orders of this sort, but if you have again transgressed, particularly in posting a document which you must have realised was dishonestly obtained, I trust you will be held to account for your actions.
The balance of the documents disclose no criminal offending whatsoever. Your one sided and highly inaccurate commentaries suggest that I am guilty of Criminal behaviour when that is not so, and the documents themselves do not suggest anything of the sort.
The worst aspect of your behaviour is that a number of people, who have corresponded with me in the expectation of privacy, have had their correspondence published. These people may well have used language that they only use when talking to a friend, and may well have said very frank things about other people, that they would only say to someone they trusted. Their trust has been totally abused by your decision to take stolen documents and not only publish the contents, but suggest that those innocent people are guilty of Criminal acts as well.
I have had a (now well publicised) business failure. Primarily, it was some big mistakes I made, including my involvement in a certain Pizza business, which left me, and a good few others, bankrupt. Big house, car, boat – all gone, leaving me with a beautiful wife, loving family and some loyal friends to help me start all over again. I have sucked it up, met all my legal obligations and have tried being humble. I need to make a living and I am allowed to do so.
It puzzles me that I have never met you and have never had any previous interaction with you or this strange little website. It therefore puzzles me that you would be the recipient of 2 year old stolen material, itself of no real moment, and then attach such a nasty commentary to it. I do wonder what motivation is required to do that? The answer may well be found in your commentary, which attempts to re-write history in favour of one particular person.
I am sure many people find your malcontent website mildly amusing. I may well have too. However, gross breaches of Privacy and the Criminal Law are an insidious form of calculated harm. I accept that you are, in all likelihood, too lacking in any sort of conscience to halt your actions without being legally required to, however, I do ask that you publish this letter in order to provide even just a veneer of balance.
Regards
Matt Blomfield