Tag: #dirtypolitics

Lauda Finem Redux

A quick update on the Lauda Finem issue; apparently one “Matthew Denteth” is causing them trouble, and they have evidence of him doing something shady in Hamilton. This “Matthew Denteth” they keep banging on about seems to look exactly like me, but has a last name that is almost-but-not-quite my own. You would almost think – given how consistently they misspell my name – that they had been told about me over the phone (or in person) and then told to write a blogpost about me. Certainly, if they had actually been reading my blog and researching me (as they claim), you would think they would be able spell my last name. Then again, they also call Keith Ng “David”; Lauda Finem’s research credentials are just a little suspect, aren’t they? ((As for what I might have done in Hamilton; attended a conference, taught at Waikato and given a eulogy. Dreadful dealings the lot of them.))

The Matthew Hooton Connection

Let me put on my overt political hat for a minute and say that I think Matthew Hooton is a despicable character who makes great issue out of how moral and open he is, whilst at the same time happily supplying Nicky Hager’s address to Cathy Odgers (so she can pass that on to disgruntled clients to enact vengeance). My personal opinion is that Hooton is a terrible person with no real moral centre, other than a self-aggrandising belief that he is basically a decent guy.

I put this hat on because, like many people on the Left who read “Dirty Politics”, I thought Hooton came across as a nefarious co-conspirator in Cameron Slater’s #dirtypolitics campaign. Yet Hooton has stage managed his role so well that he’s still a political commentator of some note. As such, when Ben Rachinger had a post about Hooton I thought “Oh goody!” As did Rachinger; , since in this installment he claims that he has proof Hooton lied about knowing what Rachinger and Slater were up to with regards to hacking blogs. Except that, on careful reading, the evidence does not say that at all. My “Oh goody!” moment became a “Oh noes…” instead.

It all starts with an email from Matthew Hooton to David Farrar, the primary author of KiwiBlog (the blog which epitomises the adage “Don’t read the comments!”). Hooton who had been searching The Standard, a Labour-aligned blog which you probably also shouldn’t read the comments of (for example, you’ll find a fair number of approving references to Lauda Finem there) and realised that the Standard’s search system was picking up on internal (and thus not public) discussions between moderators. Farrar then asked if these discussions could be extracted from the Standard without hacking (i.e. if they could be found legitimately). After all, what treasures which would benefit the Right might be unearthed by such an action?

Farrar’s response to Hooton was cc-ed to Slater, and Slater forwarded that email to Rachinger. Forwarded is the word we need to focus on here, because Rachinger seems to use this forwarded email as evidence that Hooton knew about Rachinger’s hacking assiciation with Cameron Slater. As he claims about Hooton:

Why send this email to a hacker? Why deny the emails existence and then defame ruthlessly the ‘hacker’? Was Mr Hooton lying when he said he didn’t know anything about me?

Well, I would day in response, it’s presumably because – unless Rachinger has further emails sent to him by Hooton – the e-mail he uses as evidence Hooton knew about him was forwarded by Slater, not sent by Hooton. As we know – and surely Rachinger knows as well – if someone forwards an email to you, there is no reason to think that the original emailer has any idea their email has been passed on. As such, there’s no reason – given the provided evidence – to think that Hooton subsequently lied when he said he knew nothing about Rachinger. Rachinger knew about Hooton because Hooton and Farrar’s correspondence was forward to him by Slater, not because Hooton or Farrar cc-ed him into said correspondence.

As to why the email was forwarded to Rachinger… Well, presumably it was because Slater wanted access to those internal communications and was ignoring Farrar’s request that this information should be extracted legally rather than via some hack. ((After all, if it turned out you could access the information on the Standard via a simple search or by accessing a unlinked but public page, then the fault would be on the hosts of the Standard for not securing their communications. However, if the information could only be accessed via a hack, then accessing that information would require criminal activity.)) As such, given that Farrar, at the very least, was saying “No hacking!”, it would make sense for Slater to forward that email along and not notify Farrar (and presumably Hooton) that he was asking a hacker how they might (illegitimately) get to such a dataset.

Unless Rachinger has further email correspondence that shows that Hooton was aware of his work with Slater, then it does not seem we have grounds to think Hooton is lying about knowing Rachinger’s role in the conspiracy. So, whilst I – with my political hat back on – would love more evidence of Hooton’s central role in the “Dirty Politics” scandal to emerge, Rachinger has not provided it here. Maybe he has other evidence to support his claim, or maybe this is just evidence that he sometimes he overstates his case or makes faulty inferences from what data he has.

Who or what is Ben Rachinger, anyway?

I am not fond of ad hominem attacks, particularly when it comes to talk of conspiracy theorists. However, there is a class of legitimate ad hominem, the class which call into question the ability for someone to be the right kind of witness. For example, it is inappropriate to say that because someone wears corduroy trousers, then they cannot contribute to a debate on economic policies. However, if someone turns out to have bad night vision, it is appropriate to call into question their ability to accurately report what they saw on some dark and stormy night. Arguments cannot be dismissed via an ad hominem, but testimony can.

I bring this up because some people are wary of Rachinger’s testimony about his exploits with Slater because Rachinger was a member of the Young Nats.

The Young Nats, for those of you unaware of such abstract entities, is – like Young Labour – a group of young people who have decided to support one of the major political parties here in Aotearoa (New Zealand), to whit the National Party. It’s like the entryway drug to becoming a politician, and most of us outside the two major parties in Aotearoa (New Zealand) look at the members of the Young Nats and Young Labourwith a mixture of suspicion and derision. So, the fact Rachinger was an admitted Young Nat and he worked with Slater makes some think that his story must be some ruse, or play, by the Whaleoil (National Party-aligned) social media machine, a distraction from some other terrible happenstance. Others think that we have grounds to suspect Rachinger’s story because Rachinger was an ally of Slater and the National Party who at some point got burnt by Slater, and thus is getting his revenge on Slater and, by extension, National.

Both versions of this story are arguments to the extent that we can ignore or dismiss Rachinger’s claims because his narrative is disinformation emanating from Slater’s camp, or from an ally-turned-enemy of Slater. There may well be something to this, because Rachinger’s narrative is a little opaque at times. Whilst Rachinger presents himself as the hero of his story – a tale of a bold hacker who decided to infiltrate the Whaleoil social media empire and find out its secrets – the evidence he presents also fits with a rival narrative, in which he happily worked for Slater until such time Slater’s corrosive company pushed him away.

For example, Rachinger appears to agree to hack the Standard (although he claims he did not actually perform such a hack) and, as evidence, he presents bank records which indicate Slater gave him a down payment for said hack. This means we have to ask whether Rachinger:

1. Attempted the hack and failed (thus accruing the wrath of Slater),
2. Succeeded in the hack but then found that Slater was unwilling to pay him more (something Rachinger presumably could not publicly admit to), or
3. Whether he really was a double-agent, working against Slater and seeing what it was Slater would be stupid enough to ask him to do?

Herein lies the issue: in his various posts Rachinger has has told stories about going to the police (and claiming they wanted to use him as part of a fishing expedition for information), seeking work from Slater’s associate Tony Lentino (and a blackhat hacker), and agreeing to hack the Standard. It’s a confusing tale, where you really aren’t sure whether he’s a noble hacker who decided to go undercover or just another of the villains in the “Dirty Politics” scandal, albeit one who ended up on the wrong side of Cameron Slater. All we have is his word, or more precisely, his version and interpretation of those events. He wants us to believe the noble hacker hypothesis is the best interpretation of the story, but he would, wouldn’t he? The fact is that if we believe he was undercover the entire time, then we are relying on the word of a good liar – since he conned Slater – which should give us reason to doubt at least some of his accounting of what really happened.

This is not me saying “Don’t trust the words of Ben Rachinger!” Rather, I am simply saying there is something to the idea that the way he tells his story opens him up to accusations that what we are getting is his interpretation of events, wherein he is the noble hero, rather than a totally honest accounting of what really happened. It seems clear that Rachinger witnessed (and maybe was complicit) in a variety of Slater’s #dirtypolitic activities. As such, Rachinger’s narrative fits in with Hager’s exposé of Slater and Company. What isn’t clear is Rachinger’s motivations. None of this detracts from the information released by Rachinger; it just raises interesting questions about what we might not be being told.

The curious thing about the Ben Rachinger posts up on Medium is that if you followed #dirtypolitics, it doesn’t seem all that remarkable that Cameron Slater and Company are continuing to try to drive the politics of Aotearoa (New Zealand) towards the kind of thing we see in the American Primaries. They tried it with the Len Brown smear campaign and they tried — with more success — in the 2014 General Election.

Which is to say that Rachinger’s allegations fit into a pre-existing narrative. This doesn’t make them automatically true; the thing about pre-existing narratives is that they are easy to copy (and not that hard to subvert). However, the amount of evidence Rachinger has amassed in support of his claims certainly lends credence to the claim there is something to his story. Either that or this is a very elaborate distraction some weeks or months in preparation.

Which is not to say we should accept everything Rachinger says uncritically. However, before we do that, we really should talk about what happened two days ago.

The Lauda Finem Attack

Depending on how closely you are following Rachinger’s Twitter feed you may or may not be aware of a quite incredible post about him over at the Lauda Finem blog. In short (and I’m not positing a link because I don’t think it would be ethical, for reasons which will become obvious), the “fine” people at Lauda Finem have produced what can only be described as a “character assassination” piece about Rachinger, claiming that the real conspiracy is not about Cam Slater and Company but, rather, the New Zealand Police Force using Rachinger to try and bring Lauda Finem down. Their evidence for this is a series of tweets from Rachinger, an inside and unnamed source and a lot of words, most of which signify nothing more than wind and fury.

The Lauda Finem blog is a curious beast. For a while now the rumour has been that they are a vassal blog of the Cameron Slater social media empire. Lauda Finem have denied this repeatedly, claiming that they are neither Left nor Right, and that their only agenda is exposing police and judicial corruption (along with revealing the pedosadists in power in our society). Yet, the attack piece on Rachinger is odd; if Lauda Finem really is independent of Slater and Company, the attack piece makes it look as if they are at least in talks with that set of ne’erdowells.

The piece is also an example of a dox; the “fine” people at Lauda Finem have revealed details of Rachinger’s schooling, the ages of his siblings (along with their names), what turns out to be a former address of his parents, and a number of other things of a personal nature. Some commentators might find this somewhat funny; after all, Rachinger has been accused of doxing others, so what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right? We actually don’t need to take sides, however, because doxing is bad no matter the victim. Even if you think Rachinger doxes others, that does not justify the doxing of his family.

But that’s not all; the Lauda Finem post is long. Very long. That’s par for the course; most of their posts tend to be lengthy disquistitions. It’s quite possible that it was written in the matter of a few hours yesterday, like my post (if you don’t care about quality you can get a two thousand word post out in under an hour; call now to learn how!). However, the suspicious mind might look at it and ask “How long have they been sitting on that for?” Because it looks designer built to be a takedown of Rachinger, a failsafe blogpost deployed to nuke a discussion. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I couldn’t help but think “There’s more going on here than meets the eye.”

Indeed, if the Lauda Finem post was designed to either stop Rachinger (by virtue of scaring him off) or stop debate about his revelations (by making us think the real conspiracy is at the level of the New Zealand Police Force), then it has failed. Whilst certain elements of the Left and Right seem to cite Lauda Finem posts approvingly (as seen in the comments on posts at, say, the Standard and Public Address), a lot of the reaction online has been outrage towards the doxing, and the voicing of suspicions that an attack post like that means Rachinger must be on to something. Certainly, if it was an attempt to shutdown the discussion, it’s failed. If it was merely an attempt to draw attention to their own particular conspiracy theory, well, that seems to have failed too.

Which, I might add, seems strange. Not to detract from Rachinger’s narrative, but as said previously, the claims he is making do not seem all that big and bold once we take into account the publication and veracity of “Dirty Politics”; his story supplements the #dirtypolitics conspiracy theory rather than subverts or replaces it. As such, I really don’t see what the point of the Lauda Finem post was, unless they either really do believe their own conspiracy theory that Rachinger is working for the Police against them, or they are afraid Rachinger has information which will damage them, and so they want the story shutdown. I suppose they might just be troublemakers who don’t like the attention being elsewhere, but whatever the case, it’s a strange move.

Slater the Fantasist

Let me restate a hypothesis I discussed in my review of “Dirty Politics”: if Slater is a fantasist who inflates or even invents a large amount of his role and importance to politics in Aotearoa, then much of what Slater says about himself, his associates and his sources needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I accused Nicky Hager, in that review, of always taking literally whatever Slater claimed, when sometimes it seemed more likely that Slater – in his correspondence – was giving himself a starring role in the work of others. I think the same complaint can be laid at the feet of Rachinger; sometimes he takes Slater at his word when really, the right response would be the classic Kiwi “Yeah, right…”

Rachinger’s stance is understandable; it seemed for several years that the entirety of Aotearoa (New Zealand) took Slater to be very, very important. He was on TV, he was on the radio (I’m surprised he wasn’t a star in some local movie), despite the fact that many people questioned why we were treating a blogger with the deference of a spokesperson for the PM. Slater’s blog, despite a supposed huge audience share, was an echo chamber when it came to actual commenters; for many of us it seemed that the stories of Slater’s power were greater than his actual power.

One reading of “Dirty Politics” seemed to suggest that Slater was as powerful as he was made out to be. Another reading (admittedly my own, but shared by a few others) was that Slater and Company were bumbling fools, but fools with so many things on the go that sometimes they had what turned out to be remarkable successes. According to that reading, Slater used those scant successes to make himself look to be a big player in local politics, and because people thought he was a player, you got the spectacle of people like Stuart Nash and Chris Trotter (amongst many on the so-called “Left”) sometimes allying themselves with someone who was on the nasty end of the Nasty Right.

Which, I guess, is why I sometimes read some of the Rachinger material and go “That interpretation? Really?” Let me give you a choice example.

At the time “Dirty Politics” was released, Slater happened to be in Israel (some people claim that was a cover story, but let’s go with it for the sake of this example). Questions where asked, mostly along the lines of “Where you say?” and “Why? Rachinger asserts that Slater’s trip to Israel was “funded by Israel”. I assume he got that impression from Slater. Yet “Israelis” — the term being tossed abou here — is ambiguous. It could refer to the nationstate (or one of its arms), it could refer to a group operating in Israel of a non-governmental nature or it could simply refer to a set of Israelis (such as some friends of Slaters who happen to be based in Israel).

Now, the Israeli thing is not a major part of Rachinger’s story, so why am I focussing on it? Well, it’s because if Rachinger believes this because Slater told him it’s the case, then we need to think carefully about which of the three definitions of “Israelis” we should be operating with. It would be easy to think that “Israelis” means “State of Israel”, but that would not be the obvious inference to draw. After all, if Slater likes to inflate his role in proceedings (which I think is a fair inference to make given the revelations of “Dirty Politics”), then its not clear that Israelis must refer to the State of Israel (or some part of it). If we assume he really was in Israel (as he claims), then we have grounds to think he associates with Israelis. However, assuming that his security advice comes from the State of Israel seems forced, especially if we think Slater is a fantasist (as I do). At best you might think that Slater has met Israeli officials and asked them “How you do encrypt your communications?” and then spun that as some privileged communication between himself and his “good friends” in the Government of Israel.

Update 1: Slater’s friends are in the Israeli Embassy in Wellington and he was paid (technically by the State of Israel) to go to Israel. So “Israeli” here does seem to be mean at least “Israeli officials”. You can read about his trip here. (Thanks, @jofromgreylynn

Update 2: Here’s another article shedding light on Slater and the Israeli connection. This one goes a little more into the details of the funding of that trip last August; Slater claims he covered most of the costs. Frankly, this blurs things even further to some extent. Yes, Slater went to Israel by invitation of the Israeli Embassy (which is an invitation by the State of Israel), because, according to the Head of Mission, Slater is a “spiritual person” (insert sarcasm here) and thus it is not beyond the bounds of possibility he got security advice from Israeli officials whilst there. Then again, if you accept the fantasist argument, you can also imagine a scenario where Slater claims his security advice comes from the Israelis because it makes him look more powerful and connected (rather than, say, talking to someone locally, or simply doing a search for “secure communications cellphone”). However, the fact he was in Israel and has communication with the Israeli Embassy at the very least means its reasonable to assume that when he says “Israelis” he’s referring to people from Israeli with some official capacity.

As I said, this is really just a minor, passing remark in Rachinger’s narrative, but it’s the kind of thing you need to be aware of when appraising evidence. Being told that Slater’s use of Threema was due to a recommendation by the eponymous “Israelis” suggests at least three possibilities. This doesn’t speak against Rachinger’s narrative as so much as question how we interprets some of the evidence. Sometimes what looks to be clear evidence of something turns out not to be; the question is whether this is a systemic issue in the narrative? More on this in a subsequent post.

Next time: Matthew Hooton, the Young Nat connection and a question as to whether Ben Rachinger is the hero, or just another villain in his own story.