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US Government: There's Child Porn On the Megaupload Servers Judge!
Fluffeh writes "In the ongoing Megaupload saga, Carpathia, the company that hosted Megaupload, is in a tough pickle. The EFF wants the data to remain on the servers so that users can get legitimate data back, the MPAA doesn't want the servers back, because it will lead to piracy. Megaupload wants to buy the servers to get all the data, but isn't allowed to as that would have the servers leaving the court's jurisdiction. The U.S .Government won't pay Carpathia for the time that the servers are sitting idle and has a new song in its repertoire by announcing yesterday that the servers 'may contain child pornography,' which would render them 'contraband' and limit Carpathia's options for dealing with them."
I was talking to a relative who was a federal agent from the mid 70s through the mid 90s and saw the rise of the Department of Justice to the behemoth it is today (including the DoJ take over of the FBI from top down). His perspective comes from being a Treasury special agent and he said that the DoJ has been like this for a few decades now. It's just that ever since they began to rapidly expand, they've gotten a bigger mandate and set of resources to throw their weight around. In general, they've been a total rat's nest of corruption for several decades now in a way that makes most of the other departments look like paragons of virtue.
The fact is that if you look at some of the absolutely wicked shit that comes out of them in terms of things they want to do, it is stuff that leaves you thinking "do these people literally conspire daily against the constitution?" The DoD and CIA had their problems with rendition and torture, but the DoJ takes it to a level that goes well beyond anything that has come to light about what those two actually want to do (rather than are compelled by Congress or the President). The DoJ frequently writes briefs and memos that go the other way around, letting or justifying Congress or the President do wicked shit.
A banana republic is generally defined as a nation where the government is not subject to the rule of law.
From wikipedia: In practice, a banana republic is a country operated as a commercial enterprise for private profit, effected by the collusion between the State and favoured monopolies, whereby the profits derived from private exploitation of public lands is private property, and the debts incurred are public responsibility. Such an imbalanced economy reduces the national currency to devalued paper-money, hence, the country is ineligible for international development credit and remains limited by the uneven economic development of town and country. Kleptocracy, government by thieves, features influential government employees exploiting their posts for personal gain (embezzlement, fraud, bribery, etc.), with the resultant deficit repaid by the native working people who “earn money”, rather than “make money”. Because of foreign (corporate) manipulation, the government is unaccountable to its nation, the country’s private sector–public sector corruption operates the banana republic, thus, the national legislature usually are for sale, and function mostly as ceremonial government.