The search for the elusive Rawshark

Five cops spent ten hours turning over Nicky Hager’s place looking for the identity of the person who gave him the emails that were published in “Dirty Politics“. They took away all of his paperwork and electronics. They won’t find Rawshark in amongst all of that. But they knew that anyway, before they turned his place over.

They were actually achieving three things:

• Showing their political masters that they were doing something to try to track down the elusive Rawshark;
• Using it as an excuse to gain a treasure trove of unrelated but interesting information for Police Intelligence to pour over, cross reference and store away in their database for future reference under the new Intelligence mantra “Collect Everything”; and
• Making a very public and somewhat intimidating statement to all would-be investigative journalists and writers.

Given that Police Intelligence are into both criminal intelligence and political intelligence that must have wet themselves when they dreamed up the excuse to spend ten hours trawling through his stuff and to cart it all off. Be interesting to know the names and designations of the five police officers involved.

For the moment Nicky’s stuff is sealed by court order until the courts finally decide on the legality of the search and seizure.

In the meantime Cameron Slater has blamed someone for being behind the hacking of his emails. And we believe that he has named someone he thought was Rawshark.

And John Key says someone told him who Rawshark is but he ain’t telling who that someone was and who he thinks Rawshark is. Was that someone his mate Whaleoil?

This tweet might be pretty near the mark:

Alastair Thompson @althecat – “Reasons @johnkeypm isn’t ratting out rawshark to the feds. (1) He doesn’t really know, but wants Raw Shark to think [he] does”

So is John Key just trying to play mind games with Rawshark? Emphasis on the “trying”.

Others are speculating all over the Twitterverse – see some online speculation – and I hear that @patrickgowernz thinks he knows too.

They seek him here
They seek him there
Those DirtyPolitics seek him everywhere
Is he Maori
Or Pakeha
That damned elusive Rawshark.

Who has long gone, folded her tent and stolen away into the night.

None of them really has a clue about Rawshark‘s identity. Give you a hint fellas. She’s Pakeha.

UPDATE 2 November 2014:

Cameron Slater is now talking up a big conspiracy to take him down, a conspiracy that includes Nicky Hager, Rawshark and a cast of many others. He claims to know who they are. See here. He’s also asking for donations to fund his legal battle.

There are others who claim to know the name given to John Key. And many others in the Twitterverse who are speculating about the same person.

They’re all wrong. None of them has come close yet.

This is what Rawshark herself said:

“I’m not your run-of-the-mill hacker,” Rawshark insisted last week. “Which means there aren’t many like me out there. Which means that as soon as people understand my motivations, the list of suspects narrows down to one.”

Update 4 December 2014

It seems now that Matt McCarten has been accused of organising the hack, funded by Kim Dotcom, paid through an intermediary and friend of Rawshark known as @endarken, and Slater still claims to know the identity of Rawshark. It’s probably the same person that John Key thinks is Rawshark. I can categorically say they’ve got the wrong person and that the whole chain from Rawshark to McCarten is pure fantasy.