Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Kim Dotcom Wins Case Against NZ Police To Get Seized Material Back

Posted by Soulskill on from the seize-first-and-ask-questions-later dept.

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.'"

5 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Escape clause included for police by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    If they do that, the judge will *know* they are lying, and will hit them even harder. There were *plenty* of perfectly legitimate files on those servers. People have tried suing to get access to their files. All of that is on the record.

  2. Re:Escape clause included for police by Bitsy+Boffin · · Score: 3, Informative

    They also were ordered to give Kim a copy of everything that they are keeping.

    --
    NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
  3. Meanwhile, in America by EmagGeek · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Meanwhile, in America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      If the FBI could get him to the US, they'd put him in a room with a single agent with no camera or recording device. He'd decide to sign a confession, but just before he did he'd try to attack the agent and he'd have to be shot dead with an entire magazine's worth of bullets.

  4. Re:A fair conclusion by CanHasDIY · · Score: 4, Informative

    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..

    That's what they get for using American-style strongarm tactics, without an American-style kangaroo court system to back them up.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese