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NZ Broke the Law Spying On Kim Dotcom, PM Apologizes
Mad Hamster writes "In the latest installment of the megaupload saga, an official study has determined that New Zealand's Government Communications and Security Bureau broke NZ law by spying on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. NZ Prime Minister John Key has apologised to Dotcom and all New Zealanders for this, saying they were entitled to be protected by the law but it had failed them. Link is to writeup in The Guardian."
Lots of outlets are reporting this, based on TorrentFreak's report.
Don't do wrong, especially to bad people, since in the latter case you have to apologize to bad people, and it sucks.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
A politician and government owning their mistake? Color me impressed.
Since government broke their side of the "social contract", I expect that citizens should be able to do so with no recourse.
(If you look close enough, you will find that government routinely breaks their side of the "contract".)
Awesome. Thanks.
Now, how about handing out some punishments to the people responsible, so they don't try this sort of bullshit again?
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
Come back when you've prosecuted those guilty of breaking the law during this process, all the way up to your own staff. I'd also say that he should be compensated for losses, but it would be paid with tax payer money, and ultimately it's not the tax payers who threw him to the wolves.
FWIW, Kim Dotcom is a scheister with a history of extremely shady business dealings, but even criminals deserve justice.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Kudos and well done John Key you have earned my respect, New Zealand sounds like a awesome place.
Here in America we are still waiting for Obama to apologize for murdering American citizens, and putting us in concentration camps.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
This report shows that officials broke the law. People that break the law should be investigated, if they did it willfully or worse, for profit, then they should go to jail.
Fairly sure that won't happen.
Hope Kim DotCom has the balls to sue the hell out of the New Zealand government, basically they are now responsible for disrupting his business and the service to millions of users with no cause. No point in sueing the US, Americans have no honor but if the New Zealand government has to cough up several hundred millions, other governments might grow a backbone. Human rights matter little but no politician like to be held accountable for such a visible waste of tax payers money. HAHA, yeah, I know.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Talk is cheap. Sending the people who actually broke the law to jail and paying Kim for lost revenue would be a step in the right direction. Even then, his company has been irreparably damaged by these actions.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Now the PM needs to follow up by tasking their equivalent of the US Attorney General to investigate and prosecute. If that equivalent is implicated, the PM needs to appoint a special prosecutor to carry out the investigation and file charges where appropriate. As a conservative American, I gladly include our representatives to New Zealand in that mix if legally possible and they conspired to break the laws (meaning were briefed and involved in the strategy for taking down Dotcom). If the roles were reversed, I'd want to see New Zealand's people taken away in dark SUVs by G-Men on charge of violating civil liberties under color of authority (a felony in the US).
This business is amazingly stupid on the part of the US and New Zealand governments. MegaUpload really was a criminal enterprise: their entire business model was facilitated on fake takedowns, incentives for copyright violations, and other games. That it is gone is good riddance.
But they didn't need to create a massive violation of the law like this and create a huge circus about it: They had enough evidence to get plenty of legal wiretaps. They didn't need to come in with the SWAT team. If they played it by the book, Mr Dotcom would probably already have been extradited to the US.
But instead it is horribly misplayed, and as a result there is a non-trivial chance that Dotcom will slip free with his millions intact.
This is why law enforcement needs to actually follow the law.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Look, if you're going to be the United States of MPAA's bitch, these things are bound to happen. Just don't let it happen again without modifying your laws to comply with MPAA guidelines, or your units^H^H^H^H^Hcitizens will start to get uppity.
That's what happens when you allow yourself to be pressured, harassed and bullied by Hollywood. Hastily comply with their demands before checking to see if it is legal.
"Megaupload's Kim Dotcom, a willfully tacky fat guy with a baby face and a vanity license plate that says "guilty," has styled himself as a kind of comic villain, a composite of everything people love to hate. He effectively serves as empire's face of piracy: an overweight nouveau-riche wannabe hacker who finally gets his comeuppance through the macho justice of Uncle Sam. It's so easy to hate Kim Dotcom that you almost forget that the US convinced the New Zealand government to send in an assault brigade, bereft of a valid warrant but outfitted with automatic weapons and helicopters, to arrest a Finnish citizen at the demand of Hollywood studios. If Kim Dotcom didn't exist, the FBI, with the help of the MPAA, would have invented him."
http://jacobinmag.com/2012/08/gimme-the-loot/
A government admitting and apologizing for its illegal/immoral actions!? I'm in shock and awe..... Surely a model for the rest of the "democratic" nations of the world which upon noticing their own errors tend to first attempt to cover them up, and if they do come to light then proceed to claim that they're not failures, but "features" of government enabling them to get "the bad people".
Does this mean you're not about to grab me, throw me handcuffed onto a plane, and send me to the U.S. to rot in a prison for pissing off the RIAA/MPAA?
What, no?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Opponents, adversaries, etc. Anyone you're in conflict with. If you're trying to beat someone, and if it's going to end up in public (i.e. you can't just have a quick stab in a dark alley) then don't go out of your way to put yourself in a situation where you are the one who must crawl on your belly before them.
Take the high road and then when they make the first mistake, you can righteously sit there on your horse, looking down with disgust at them and their shocking behavior. You are clearly the good guy, and your shit doesn't stink. And if you're the good guy, the other guy must be the bad one.
In this case, the government(s) didn't even try to do things right, which is funny because it would have been so easy. Making Dotcom end up being the bad guy, would have been trivial. Instead, overwhelming incompetence and a complete disregard for both law and appearance took over, and government tripped over itself to make sure that if there's ever a question of "who is the criminal?" nearly every single member of the public, and likely any judges and juries, would know the answer is "the government, of course."
They made Dotcom the victim of vigilante force, and if there's a court case it's going to be about how much we owe him in compensation.
Well, The next time I break the law, I will issue a sincere apology. This apparently makes everything all right and obviates the need for punishment, prosecution, or any such things. Or, are politicians simply a different class of people with different rules and consequences than the rest of us? Orwell said: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. Oh yeah.
here although it only goes through 2003...but yes it has happened..perhaps 2003 was the last time...
#include bier;
Kim Dotcom is unlikely to even have to go to court with this many screw ups, let alone do any time.
And he already has backing for a new megaupload, this time better setup to not be so easily taken down. And you got to be really stupid as a foreign prosecutor to go after this guy a second time when the first time was such a disaster.
Kim Dotcom is back, with more resources, more experience and now untouchable.
I doubt this is what the content mafia wanted.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410257,00.asp
The law was broken. Those responsible should be charged and punished for breaking the law.
Is that happening? Or are our efforts at justice just mere words?
http://publicaddress.net/legalbeagle/kim-dotcom-questions-and-answers/
Government Communications Security Bureau ensured Dotcom was a "foreign national" before beginning surveillance, but that's not he definition they should have been working with. Dotcom is not a "foreign person" by New Zealand law, as he is a permanent resident.
Meanwhile, in America, the NZ Prime Minister is declared a terrorist and an enemy of the state.
Let's see you and me get away with major organized crime, by simply apologizing!
I wanna see that!
So if you break the law in NZ, all you need to do is apologize?
PM Shocked (Shocked!) to Hear There is Gambling in Casa Blanca.
Where is the party opposite (or even an alternative such as a Pirate party) that should be shouting to the televised heavens: "They broke the law but claim to be above the law!"?? Seriously; the copy writes itself!
"I will not apologize for my palmed struggle against moisturizer."
FTFY
They were rented, and he hasn't paid the rent in quite a while. So the servers are the property of the hosting company. There's nothing to "give back".
So, since the Government Communications and Security Bureau broke the law, are they going to go in with a swat team, take all of their computers, and shut them down for six months?
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
No, Dotcom is as evil as any other dotcom millionaire. Getting rich from basically selling nothing has to be a scam. This goes for the guys running Facebook, Google, or even pre-dotcom Microsoft. None of them has been threatened with serious jail time or had their assets "frozen" or confiscated.
NZ Prime Minister: "I apologize."
US President: "Bush did it."
Uncircumcised for the win!
How do you know this? - If he didn't get caught he wasn't convicted and then it basically didn't happen.
Oh! OK, then.
How about I come over to your house, steal absolutely everything of value in it, and clean out your bank account, and leave you a note so you know I did it—but I never get arrested because I've got plenty of money to bribe the cops and the DAs? You'll still think I'm a great guy, right? Because if I don't get convicted, "then it basically didn't happen."
Seriously, though, that's some of the dumbest logic I've seen in a good long while.
It's perfectly possible to know someone has committed crimes, even though he's not legally guilty of them. And saying that it "basically didn't happen..." Well (assuming you're from the US and at least 20-odd years old), do you think Nicole Brown Simpson came back to life when OJ was acquitted of her murder?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.