Kim Dotcom Demands Access To Seized Property To Defend Himself

redletterdave writes "On Wednesday, Kim 'Dotcom' Schmitz and his legal team visited the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand, to demand access to the data stored on his computers and hard drives that were confiscated during the police raid, and also requested a judicial review of the general legality of the search warrants police used to raid his mansion. Dotcom's lawyer, Paul Davison, argued that his client needs the data for a few reasons: To mount a 'proper defense' case, to fight possibly being extradited to the U.S., and also to show that 'excessive police action' was used during the raid. Dotcom could prove this in court because the entire raid was recorded by CCTV data, which is stored on Dotcom's confiscated computers. Even though the FBI demanded Dotcom turn over the passwords for Megaupload's encrypted data, he refuses to give up any passwords until he can regain access to his seized property."

Comments

How does it taste?

[DigMarx]

What's the German word for "the boner you get from too much Schadenfreude"? Speaking as an American expat living in NZ: fuck the US government and its thuggish international corporate rent-a-cop policies.

Re:How does it taste?

[cpu6502]

>>>Because Kim Dotcom is an innocent angel, right?

As a matter of fact YES he is innocent in the eyes of the law. It is now the job of the government to demonstrate why he is not inocent (which the judge overseeing the case says is unlikely, because they did not have authority to seize the items).

Re:How does it taste?

[rtb61]

The claim is he 'sold' advertising space based upon allowing others to copy and distribute copyrighted content, not theft involved, no armed smugglers, no gang of armed criminals and, no pirates on the high seas. A straight up civil matter that was totally abused by a twisted by a demented and distorted Barack Obama/RIAA/MPAA Department of in-Justice, flooded with lawyers fresh out of the RIAA/MPAA(who dont give a crap about justice just how much money they are going to make screwing it over for as long as they can get away with it). That sucked in another country to do it's dirty work for them, a big Hollywood show. Now comes the collapsing court case and the massive civil suit not against megaupload but against the New Zealand government. New Zealand was the sheep and the US was wearing the gumboots. It is pretty obvious the current US administration does not give a crap about justice, the law courts are just something to be abused for their financial advantage. They just write up any old crap and say the most obscene abuses of justice are now legal. Barack Obama has betrayed every principle of progressive justice.

Re:How does it taste?

[Charliemopps]

They take the rights of the unscrupulous first. Then they change their definition of unscrupulous slightly to include more of the population. Once rights only belong to a limited set of people, that limited set tends to shrink until those rights apply to no one but the ruling class. The beginning of this century is being marked by the same gradual slide into totalitarianism that the last century was. Do you really think the federal government cares about pirated movies? This is about power, and control.

Hypocritical much?

[Mysteryprize]

The US government has illegally copied his data, in the hope of extraditing him of charges of illegally copying other peoples data.

NZ Police has handed them over already

[evanh]

It was on the local news last night. The FBI are confirmed to now have a copy of the personal HDDs.

It's causing a bit of a stink as it looks like the Police have done it illegally given they had previously agreed to return them first.