Dear David Parker,

The search and surveillance act defines an issuing officer under section 3 and section 108 in particular "The Attorney-General may authorise any Justice of the Peace, Community Magistrate, Registrar, Deputy Registrar, or other person to act as an issuing officer for a term, not exceeding 3 years, specified in the notice of authorisation."

By way of OIA please advise how the issuing officers can be identified as being legitimately appointed , is there a register which we can refer to ?
what requirement there is for them to identify them selves on warrants which they issue
and how are the numbers assigned. Please provide the documentation which provides for the use of numbers on warrants and gives explanation as to their use.

Please advise the identity and designation of the following of issuing officers and the date on which they were approved as issuing officers
4595 Manukau February 2019
3407 March 2017 Manukau
4849 August 2020 Napier
7774 Sept 2019 Napier

Yours faithfully,

Grace Haden

Dear D Parker (MIN),
thank you for your reply this does not address the question as to how some one can identify a legitimate search warrant when people turn up at their door

on 10 December we were told by Rebecca Todd
Manager Operations Support (Seconded), Courts and Tribunals, Regional Service Delivery
Ref: 84605 that " the Search and
Surveillance Act 2012 (the Act) determines what must be included in a search warrant. It requires
that either the name or individual designation (a number) of the issuing officer must be present on
the warrant; it does not require both."

The legislation does not make any reference to number and does not define designation ,The ordinary definition of designation does not include "number"

The search warrants I am referred to were issued by a private organisation and the documents only had a number but did not have a designation or a name .They were the kind of documents that any one could run off on a home computer

While I appreciate that eventually a copy of the application can be obtained ( if made legally via a judge of the district or high court) but at the time when the warrant is executed and property taken
those subject to the invasion of the warrant have no idea if the search is legal or not or if the warrant was issued by some one with the power to issue the warrant .

By way of OIA Please provide the documents which set out the process for the issuing of warrants which allows the use of numbers as " designation to comply with the requirement of section 103 search and surveillance act ....
Every search warrant must contain, in reasonable detail, the following particulars:
(a)the name or other individual designation of the issuing officer and the date of issue:

And where is the definition of "designation"interpreted as a number and how is a number which cannot be interpreted deemed to be " reasonable detail "

Yours sincerely,

Grace Haden