How Gilchrist was found out

Computer programmer Rochelle Rees.

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Twenty-two-year-old Rochelle Rees got involved in politics as a schoolgirl, determined to do something about issues such as cruelty in battery hen farms.

Since then she has handed out leaflets, been arrested for locking herself to a shop selling clothing made with animal fur from China and made the news during this year's election campaign for a cheeky "Google bomb" calling John Key "clueless". In the past week she was filming, with permission, inside a meatworks to check for inhumane treatment of the cows and bulls.

A year ago Rees started a relationship with another animal welfare campaigner she'd known since she was at school. It was Rob Gilchrist. She moved to Christchurch to live with him. But something felt wrong. A few weeks ago, when he asked for help fixing his computer, she found out why.

The computer was slow and erratic. Rees, who works as a computer programmer, reinstalled his email programme and then made a routine check that his old emails hadn't been corrupted. She was puzzled to see hundreds of emails with the "sender" and "subject" lines blank. Checking them, she found they were all private political emails and all being forwarded to the same anonymous address. Something was very wrong. But she didn't know what.

She and a friend looked through the emails and found documents with titles such as "Intel Request". From that first clue a picture gradually emerged of 10 years of police surveillance.

The final breakthrough was tracing the identity of Gilchrist's mysterious "Uncles". This search led first to the Christchurch central police station and eventually to the highly secret Special Investigations Group. These special police detectives are funded each year under a police budget category called "increase national security".

National security is about wars, terrorists and foreign spies. Rees asks how these police can justify targeting peaceful protesters and even their personal lives.

"Protests are part of a healthy democracy," she said.

"The police are supposed to be protecting that but instead they are inhibiting it. It's foolish of them since stomping on peaceful protest is the best way to make people more extreme and push them underground." 

- © Fairfax NZ News