Slashdot Mirror
Kim Dotcom Wins Case Against NZ Police To Get Seized Material Back
New submitter Mistakill writes "It seems the case against Kim Dotcom for the NZ Police isn't going well, with Kim Dotcom scoring another victory in his legal battles. Police have been told they must search everything they seized from Dotcom and hand back what is not relevant to the U.S. extradition claims. Justice Helen Winkelmann told police their complaints about the cost and time of the exercise were effectively their own fault for indiscriminately seizing material in the first place. She wrote, 'The warrants could not authorize the permanent seizure of hard drives and digital materials against the possibility that they might contain relevant material, with no obligation to check them for relevance. They could not authorize the shipping offshore of those hard drives with no check to see if they contained relevant material. Nor could they authorize keeping the plaintiffs out of their own information, including information irrelevant to the offenses.'"
Kim Dotcom really comes across as an amazing douche.
The thing is that in this everyone else in this whole saga is SO douchey that he actually manages to come across as a sympathetic character.
It's really quite incredible if you think about it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
An overzealous police force being made to face the consequences of its own misconduct?
What a country!
it will still be years to search all that data to see if it incriminating, you'll never see it again
All that they have to do is say that everything that they seized is relevant to the US extradition claims.
Winkelmann told police their complaints about the cost and time of the exercise were effectively their own fault for indiscriminately seizing material in the first place.
- wouldn't it be something if the pigs sued Kim for them spending too much time and money in his case?
It would be a perfect trifecta, not only was he violated, his rights, his private property, not only was he threatened with deadly force for ... nothing at all, they should add this one more thing: suing him for wasting THEIR time and resources.
You can't handle the truth.
Granted, considering the volume of information would be problematic to sift through, but is it fair to say
"since there's so much, let's just seize the lot, including every person's legitimate files stored there and keep them to ourselves"?
Like that wouldn't backfire..
He couldn't make his mind between the British 's' and American 'z' spellings, and in the end he traded the 'e' to make room for both letters. (:
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Definitely not Authorisz.....
We don't use an SZ in spelling here.
Its the rights of assholes and attention whores you have to stand up for. Once those are violated, you get a precedent. Don't let it happen.
Can we have a month hiatus on Kim Dotcom stories? Please??
Never mind, make it a permanent hiatus. He's now just a grandstanding figure and I think he is beyond the "news for nerds" scope that /. was supposed to have.
Seconded. Then we can focus more on John McAfee.
Innocent motorists are routinely relieved of their cash and belongings by police, without ever being charged with a crime, and with no recourse to recover their stolen property.
They should just extradite him to the US along with all of his seized property, and then the US government can just keep it forever under its insane civil forfeiture laws.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's less about Kim and more about the elements that come into play in a seizure of tech/files. If Slashdot uses any cloud services or other tech that accesses/points to files then this is relevant to our issues. This also deals with international laws and how they are enforced between jurisdictions. Not many people like Larry Flynt but there is value in seeing how his story played out, the same goes for Kim.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
2nd sentence should read "If Slashdotters use"
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
or find some child porn any where on the site and then he will be better off doing time in NZ.
While I sure don't agree with the way the U.S handled this entire thing, I hate to see people like Dotcom get away with blatant piracy..
Kim Dotcom sold me a 3D printed Raspberry Pi for 20 Bitcoins you insensitive clod!
I used it to program an Arduino based robot that will deliver GMO wheat to Julian Assange.
Pain and suffering...
Lost profits...
Lost business...
and then there is always the lawsuits from all of the customers that lost as well...
Do we really need any more info about this attention whore?
Is he the attention whore, or are the authorities? It seems to me he's just defending himself, while the Keystone Cops are going out of their way to maximize any and all bad press that can possibly be brought against them. Whether we know all the intricasies in the law is one thing, but shouldn't the cops have at least some competence in wielding it? They've apparently forgotten entire swaths of related concepts such as warrant procedure, jurisdictions, evidence handling, ... How do they retain their jobs with this level of performance?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
2006 ThePirateBay.org Raided and Shut Down
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You want to see how it is really done check out washington d.c.
Douchery with the almost complete complicity and full support of the press.
You want to do this kind of stuff, you need the press.
No brain, no pain.
Oh do fuck off.
This is an important case for the boundaries of where the line between legitimate hosting and illegal file sharing is drawn.
It's about as important and relevant as any news you can get on Slashdot because the result of it has real repercussions - either the internet is safe from the authorities arbitrarily shutting down hosting companies because they feel like it, or the authorities win another battle to the point where state/law enforcement based censorship slips even further towards companies like Google also being guilty of supporting infringement to a legally culpable degree.
Can we have a permanent hiatus on you commenting instead?
Best comment of the week. lol.
Well, that's basically how the big boys start a precedent. Before they go and bust your teenage son or grandma, they'll use expanded powers to nail a few low-lifes such as drug-dealers, terrorists, pedos, etc.
Then, they come and say "see, we're doing this for the good of society"
Once it's engrained in society, then they move to something more accepted but disliked by many. For example, porn. Then "copyright infringement" etc etc.
He was being multicultural. The one with the sz was the Czech version!
we were having pretty much zero stories on megaupload or dotcom before his arrest... which made him news for nerds.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It's also important for the boundaries of where the line between legal and illegal action by the authorities is drawn. Our police forces all too often think the law doesn't apply to them. And even in this case, who in the police have any risk of seeing jail time for the many illegal actions we have seen. It makes me sick to see such blatant disregard for the law and I have no respect for these people or the laws they try to enforce.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
I would rather not. Though this does focus around 2 sets of douches, the more important piece is the battle between the US DoJ and NZ. This easily falls into YRO. Depending on what gets decided here, a precedent will be set for future cases that can and will affect people who store files remotely, fileshare, run public storage services etc. Not to mention, the rights violations in regards to search and seizure that the US and NZ police executed.
When the large, militarized 'police' force stormed his home, I'm still surprised they didn't just go ahead and kill everyone that was home and then carefully cradle his personal weapons in his cold, dead hands. Perhaps the Kiwis weren't willing to carry out that part of the MAFIAA game plan.
It still feels like living in a bizzaro simulacrum when confronted with the fact that the fucking entertainment industry can and does send out deadly paramilitary units across the face of the planet to defend their filthy middleman lucre.
In the U.S., when the Feds take your stuff, they won't give you squat, even if they have nothing on you. They'll keep your computers for years, then finally return your stuff if they don't have a case. They won't let you get copies of your data, either.
With your computer gone for so long, you will have had to bought new ones, and the old one will be obsolete by the time you get them back.
The rule really ought to be that they take your computer, mirror the hard drives, then give it back unless they have immediate proof of wrongdoing on the drive. Seriously, there's no excuse for taking your stuff for years.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Does it matter? What matters is the law. If we change our attitude towards the validity of the law because we like or dislike someone we're going down the wrong path.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
Well let's look at the consequences of your choice, shall we?
So as you say, Kim is a criminal, and everything done to him is legal and legit.
That makes you personally a criminal, both to the US government, and the government of the country you live in if different.
You posted to slashdot, and have no proof those words are yours. Any proof you DO have does not matter. The government says you pirated those words, and that is all the proof that matters.
So now you personally are in prison for life. Slashdot is down since their servers are confiscated, your family is in jail, all of your belongings are no longer yours (confiscated and given to government officials as gifts)
Since you are in prison for life for your crimes, there is prior case history proving you can continue pirating from your cell, and can even start world war three by whistling into a phone.
Thus, you are in a cell for 23.75 hours a day, no phones, no TV, no visitors, no lawyers, no family or friends, no exercise or movement, one meal a day, no blankets to stay warm in the air conditioned cells, and if you so much as speak a word that isn't "yes sir" you will be tortured.
Conclusion - If you want that type of life, GTFO of our country and move to China or Somalia or Singapore where you can already have it.
Stop trying to destroy an entire nation to turn it into what you can already have elsewhere.
NZ Was respected for standing up against USA for banning nuclear warships in their ports.
Unless NZ grows some BALLS and tells USA to fuck off, That respect it lost.
The NZ authorities may have pressed past their normal limits (they wouldn't normally attempt to enforce what the justice system normally allows as its impractical), but may have exceeded the normal bounds for KimDotCom because of external pressure from outside of New Zealand. Example: a foreign government, while claiming democracy, allows private corporations to supercede constitutional laws of the external country, creating non-democratic, draconian intellectual property laws, which the external country tries to apply to other countries (such as New Zealand) through trade threats. Someone posted about douch-baggery earlier, and K.D.C and the local law enforcement were included in the list. I would like to put (at the top of the list) the country that is applying the external pressure, and even higher on the list the multinational corporations that are buying the politicians in that country, their undermining the democratic system there (they talk about pocket dictators in 3rd world countries ruling over all, but in that country its the multinational corporations and its just as bad), and the complete lack of spine of the politicians in both countries that could stop all this.
authorisz....
Captcha (no lie): spell check
Nobody gives a fuck about your GOD-DAMNED MOTHERFUCKING CUNTING CAPTCHA.