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Kim Dotcom Raid - What Really Happened
chill writes "People have been discussing the raid on the Dotcom mansion for months, but now more details and video footage of that morning have begun to emerge from the trial. From the article: 'At 6.46am on January 20, the raid was underway. The helicopter carrying members of the elite special tactics group flew into the Coatesville home of Dotcom.
"Ground units, Gates are open," someone says into the radio.
Dotcom's pregnant wife their three children, some guests and about a dozen staff were also there.
All is quiet below.
Within seconds four armed members of the special tactics group ran towards the main door.
The helicopter immediately took off. The main justification for using it at all was that Dotcom's security staff could have stopped police vehicles at the gates. But as the chopper flew out, ground forces were already arriving just seconds behind.'"
On Bernie Madoff.
But who really robbed people for tens of millions?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I mean, such a violent guy.... he's like a terrorist. His children could have been at the windows with their ak-47s.
If it would not have been to capture an armed and dangerous mafia boss..
Oh, wait...
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
...to stage a raid on a high-profile target like this...
First, shock-and-awe factor, in the real terms of cowing the target of the raid and ancillary subjects so that they don't do something dangerous to the authorities, like grab weapons. This can be especially important for security staff that might not be wired quite the same as everyone else.
Second, disruption of other elements of critical thinking. If there are things to be destroyed, from the perspective of the target of the raid, this might disrupt that plan.
Third, and in my opinion, most likely, to make a show of force for others. My guess is that this raid didn't require air support, a number of practiced officers could have detained or arrested people on the ground, even security, quickly enough, if enough people were involved in the raid in the first place. It is possible that this was more cost effective in not requiring as many officers to breach and secure, but helicopters aren't cheap either.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Firstly, the NZ Police for being such a nice lapdog. Pretty funny when NZ stands up over something as silly as a nuclear free zone, but then does this.
Secondly, this is the time of when the government needs to smack the government, HARD, and award Kim damages. Nothing else is really acceptable.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Is it me or that was the type of raid that could/might have been used to capture Osama Bin Laden ?
Wer war der Thor, wer Weiser, Bettler oder Kaiser? Ob Arm, ob Reich, im Tode gleich
As a New Zealander, I'm frankly outraged that the US has this kind of influence down here. It's about to get a LOT worse as the Trans-Pacific Partnership gets finished off and pushed through... Most people won't have even heard of it until the deal is done. Dodgy, dodgy secret deals with US corporations, and my country stands to gain absolutely nothing but the unjust legislative offspring off the MAFIAA.
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
This whole thing is just a huge dog & pony show by Hollywood and the FBI. Its the exact same tactics they use when they catch someone downloading illegal content.
Early on, they made a huge "example" out of the first offenders. Huge fines, drag them into court, media everywhere, blah blah blah. Now, the majority of the cases settle for a few thousand bucks and everyone moves on.
Well, this is their first hosting provider that they (HollywoodFBI) have gone after, and they want to put on a big show so that everyone else knows they mean business. They'll bring in helicopters & troops & go after your kids and pregnant wife if you don't play by their rules.
No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them together, they make a pretty good raft.
It's not too far from Australia. Australia is the place full of dust, dangerous creepy-crawlies, passed-out drunk men, and aged, leathery women with voices capable of shattering crystal. On second thoughts, New Zealand is in fact not far enough away from Australia.
Guess what, Slashdot hosts stolen content too. Sometimes submitters copy paste articles into Slashdot. Would you fault Slashdot for hosting stolen content? And would you justify Rob Malda's house being raided with a fucking SWAT teams and helicopters?
And unfortunately I dont live in US or NZ. The only way I can hope to fix these is to get my country to go to war with one of these. For some reason I dont like that option.
An interesting point of view. Here's one to counter it. I've been following Robert Fripp's struggles to get UMG to give him a simple accounting of how many King Crimson and related releases have been sold, for several years now. What I'd more, in violation of contract, KC music has got on to online stores like iTunes. Will you support SWAT teams raiding UMG at gunpoint to seize those records, and if not, why not?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think I went to New Zealand once, it's right beside Florida at the edge of the World..... right?
New Zealand is like Australia's Canada.
This is like religion in the 1600's and earlier controlling the government to take out those who didn't play by their rules. We are better off with the separation of church and state and will be better off with a massive reduction in the breadth and depth of copyright/patent rules. I agree that it is good that if someone writes a book that the publishing industry can't just rip them off. But I disagree that the writer of Happy Birthday is still able to control who sings his song all these years later. Even the same with the Beatles. By this point people should be at least able to rework them into something modern and potentially more interesting. I suspect that much of the lack of variety in pop music is that they don't dare do something interesting that might be similar to something done
Copyright rules at this point would be like a guy who you hired 50 years ago to paint one of your apartments is somehow able to demand 30% of the rent from that unit. He may have done a really really nice job but when you look at copyright as where the public good lay it would be better for all if these things came available way faster. Also the restrictions should be more relaxed. A song is the majority of a composition. Any copyright on a few riffs should be done in a year or two.
The same with a story. The whole composition might have a decade or two of protection but the characters and storyline should lose out in a few years. It is definitely time for new blood in the Star Wars series but even Harry Potter characters should be fair game soon if JK can't be bothered with continuing their journey.
Can't believe I just spent 10 mins reading this guy's wikipedia entry yet this is the most important piece:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jun/28/kim-dotcom-judge-raid-illegal
It's clear that the FBI acting on behalf of the MPAA/RIAA had an overzealous NZ police force keen to impress.
The really interesting item for me was how UMG submitted an invalid takedown notice on a video on Youtube on baseless grounds. I'm surprised that some of the artists didn 't sue the record company.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Or Belgium's Netherlands? Or Venezuela's Cuba? Or Phillipine's Brazil?
Typically Aussie's get along quite well with Canadians. Just don't offer them a Fosters. They don't drink that crap.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
It's more like we're the 52nd state. What that makes NZ in that context I couldn't say. :)
Heh. Yeah, if there's one group that stands their ground against entities with deep pockets, it's the Republicans.
Corzine. Hundreds of millions in 'segregated' funds. Currently enjoying new multi-million dollar offices on Wall St.
It helps to be a friend of the President of the United States and a leading member of the Democratic party.
“Jon Corzine one of the best colleagues I had in the Senate and one of the best partners I have in the White House.”
President Barack Obama, Oct 21, 2009.
Just wanted to point this out to the 2-3 non-americans who might not already know, but in the USA 'lightly armed', IE with a service handgun, is pretty much the default for Law Enforcement personnel.
You see an officer, he's going to have a handgun unless there's something special going on. 'Special' being it's somehow specifically dangerous to be wearing one(sometimes happens during crowd control duty), or 'special' in that an elevated danger situation is going on, where they'd be breaking out the shotguns/rifles and heavier body armor.
I don't read AC A human right
Kim Dotcom was on the way to launch Megabox which would flip the ratio of money the artists get versus what is held on to by the labels. Color my cynical but this upcoming service seems to be the only major difference between Mega Upload and the other file storage services. He claims to be planning on still going through with the launch. If so it will cut the labels out of the loop by allowing artists to sell more or less directly to the public. Good riddance I say.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Voting for Obama means voting to be raped up the ass.
Voting for Romney means voting to be raped up the ass with a sandpaper covered telephone pole while having to pay your raper.
Welcome to American democracy. Your choice between bad and really goddamn awful fucking bad.
Obama bows to his friends in business.
Romney IS business.
Obama at least has to pretend to listen to the voter, Romney openly states that business is not just his first priority but his ONLY priority.
When you are a lamb let to be slaughtered, pick the butcher who least enjoys torturing small furry creatures. That is what I do.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
No one on Wall Street goes to prison, drnb. Obama didn't make that happen. Wall Street did. They run the country. Don't like it? So vote Republican. Oh, wait...
We had a chance to stop this takeover back in the eighties and nineties. We needed to provide taxpayer money to fund elections, remove all contributions WHATSOEVER, and restrict candidates to single points of communications. Running for office should require three staffers and a camera, not a billion dollars for media buys.
But now, candidates must, truly must, do what money tells them to do, not because they want to get rich, but because they know that if they buck Wall Street, a billion dollars will rain down in opposition to them and kick them out of office. This is the death of democracy you're seeing, not "Obama", who somehow you've noticed has just invented kowtowing to Wall Street. Bush and Reagan utterly caved and let them take over, for Godzakes. This isn't about Democrats, it's about money and how our collective distaste for funding elections by taxes has let infinite amounts of money shut down democracy here, and soon around the world. We did this to ourselves with our own ideology and distaste for politicians and the political process. Democracy has never been popular with Americans. They prefer wealthy landlords, more or less, as long as they are entertained.