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Supreme Court Won't Hear Kim Dotcom's Civil Forfeiture Case (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Kim Dotcom's civil forfeiture case will not be heard before the Supreme Court this term, America's highest court ruled on Monday. The civil forfeiture case was brought 18 months after 2012 American criminal charges related to alleged copyright infringement against Dotcom and his now-shuttered company, Megaupload. In the forfeiture case, prosecutors specifically outlined why the New Zealand seizure of Dotcom's assets on behalf of the American government was valid. Seized items include millions of dollars in various seized bank accounts in Hong Kong and New Zealand, the Dotcom mansion, several luxury cars, four jet skis, two 108-inch TVs, three 82-inch TVs, a $10,000 watch, and a photograph by Olaf Mueller worth over $100,000.
"We are disappointed in the denial of the cert petition -- it is a bad day for due process and international treaties," Ira Rothken, Dotcom's chief global counsel, told Ars. "Kim Dotcom has never been to the United States, is presumed innocent, and is lawfully opposing extradition under the United States-New Zealand Treaty -- yet the United States by merely labeling him as a fugitive gets a judgement to take all of his assets with no due process," Rothken said. "The New Zealand and Hong Kong courts, who have authority over the assets, will now need to weigh in on this issue and we are cautiously optimistic that they will take a dim view of the Fugitive Disentitlement Doctrine and oppose US efforts to seize such assets."
"We are disappointed in the denial of the cert petition -- it is a bad day for due process and international treaties," Ira Rothken, Dotcom's chief global counsel, told Ars. "Kim Dotcom has never been to the United States, is presumed innocent, and is lawfully opposing extradition under the United States-New Zealand Treaty -- yet the United States by merely labeling him as a fugitive gets a judgement to take all of his assets with no due process," Rothken said. "The New Zealand and Hong Kong courts, who have authority over the assets, will now need to weigh in on this issue and we are cautiously optimistic that they will take a dim view of the Fugitive Disentitlement Doctrine and oppose US efforts to seize such assets."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/forfeiture-without-due-process/2011/12/22/gIQAckn3WP_story.html?utm_term=.2bb81d9378c5
https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-still-seizure-without-proper-due-process-1453321983
That's what this country does. Want respect for the law? Then respect it yourself. Not happening.
....and yet we want to trust the government with managing Net Neutrality. For me, it is these examples that make net neutrality scary as designed. Do not mistake my opposition to current net neutrality as sign off that corporations like Combat/XFinity (err I mean comcast) should be free to do what they want with the internet. As designed, I'm concerned government managing it will good until some excuse comes along. It needs to be run by neutral entities. Like domain registration was at one time in the past.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
His worst offense, by far, is calling himself "Dotcom".
#DeleteFacebook
The U.S. only applies its legal doctrine (most of the time) to its own country. For the rest of the world, they're just fucking bullies, period. They routinely violate all their international treaties. The U.S.'s signature isn't worth the paper it's written on.
The best thing the world could do right now is to let Trump build his fucking wall, build another one up north, and let americans rot in their own filth for eternity. All countries should sever all diplomatic and commercial relations with them. Isn't that what they want, after all ?
After a period of adjusment, the world could do fine without the U.S. Could the U.S. survive without the rest of the world ? Let's find out.
Yes, I think he's guilty. However, we still have due process and I think this sets and perpetuates a horrible precedent.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
I've never once heard it mentioned on a major campaign. Nobody likes it, but when it comes time to vote the 'tough on crime' voters always seem to outnumber the civil rights voters.
Until folks start showing up at the polls and voting the Tough on Crime crowd out this is all just pissing in the wind...
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..Civil Forfeiture is an immoral and most likely Unconstitutional act.
You can't have governments just taking your shit because they THINK you have been a bad dude. If they have proof, then prosecute and confiscate.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It maybe BS but they still claimed it and got what they wanted.
That is exactly what treaties do. They are agreements to abide by each other's laws. If we're going to do business globally it's necessary. However, it's also necessary to protect individuals so that one country can't just decide to arbitrarily take someone's stuff. In this case, the dude was totally a jerk and flaunting his disregard for the law essentially daring the US to do something. I took some satisfaction in his downfall I must confess. We still need to honor due process though and not because of his citizenship but because who wants to do business with a country who can potentially just come in and wipe you out with no recourse? We do not want to set that precedent.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
It's really the only thing that makes the US government listen anymore.
I quite agree, and as horrible as civil forfeiture is that's not even the worst of it: the drone war (conducted across US administrations from US Presidents G.W. Bush, through Obama, and now Trump) kills people extrajudicially including Americans and children. Put another way: civil forfeiture typically takes people's property (including their money), the drone war typically takes people's lives. So far nobody has used the drone war as much as Pres. Obama, but there's more continuity of policy showing how (like civil forfeiture) there's an agreement across both corporate parties. The reasoning justifying the killings is almost always absent, and when pressed revealed to be horrific.
Under Obama's administration on September 30, 2011 the US killed an American named Anwar al-Awlaki said to be involved in al-Qaeda operations. There were no charges filed, no evidence offered, no trial held. Two weeks later in a separate drone strike his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was also killed. Again no charges filed, no evidence offered, no trial held. When reporters asked what Abdulrahman's crime was that justified killing him extrajudicially Robert Gibbs, Obama's press secretary, replied in a way that made it clear: the US government kills whomever it wants whenever it wants on any or no evidence while he also blamed the son for the alleged sins of his father. Lots of passers-by die in each drone strike as well; completely untargetted people who happen to live or pass within the killing zone of a missile. This is how wedding and dinner parties full of people (we don't even know their names) have died.
Obama famously made a joke of drone war at one of his press dinners where he joked about killing a boy band his daughters liked. What made that 'joke' so unfunny is precisely that when he said it he was one of the few people who could have ordered such a strike and gotten away with killing them too. I think it important in this age of replaying Pres. Trump gaffes to indicate how little he cares about the disaffected people to show how little people knew of what was going on in these drone strikes, who was being killed, and why.
Continuing the policy of unlimited extrajudicial killing Obama once feinted to be concerned about: On January 29, 2017, the Trump administration killed Anwar Al-Awlaki's 8-year-old daughter, Nawar Al-Awlaki in a drone-led Navy SEAL raid.
As other countries get killer drones, what future has the US committed its citizens to? One can only hope that other countries continue to show a restraint that the US has not shown with nuclear weapons. There's still far too much danger with nuclear weapons too, but the above are some of the reasons the world fears the US most. You won't hear many people criticizing Trump mention civil forfeiture or drone strikes because bringing this up at all runs the risk of not being uniquely anti-Trump, of pointing out the continuity of American policy that in some way hurts us all (none so much as those assassinated, of course).
Digital Citizen
The bad parts of Slashdot have always been bad. The difference is now there are a lot more forums that cater to the same audience, with less clunky interfaces, so it gets less traffic.
I know, it is absurd but the charges are brought against the assets and not the suspect....Insane mental gymnastics needed for this. How the supreme has allowed these laws to stand is beyond me. They should be ashamed.
As a US citizen, I'm not sure if I have ever wanted a foreign power to give the finger to our government quite so hard. Civil Forfeiture goes against everything the Founders stood for. IMHO, our first revolution started over matters far less concerning. The only reason we haven't burned it all down yet is because it isn't hurting enough people.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The surpreme court didn't rule on it. Whoever modded you up is a straight idiot.
The court did not rule on the case, they explicitly chose not to even hear the case. With civil forfeiture is involved, the outcome is the same as saying "You are guilty and have no right to defend yourself. We will be keeping your stuff."
I agree with all of Kim's points. This is political and has been bought and paid for by the media production and software companies. The United States strong-armed New Zealand. I think all other Countries need to take a look at what my country is doing and revoke extradition treaties and instead do things on a case by case basis.
He did nothing on American soil. Case closed. If they want to go after him for copyright then that should be through New Zealand law. Our supreme court can't contradict the lower courts since the fix was put in but at the same time don't want to get their hands dirty.
You are mixing levels. He still was unable to go to court to prevent damages. His day in court was about whether he would be able to go to court at all. The government gave him a process without the rights guaranteed him. That is a violation of due process.
What if China labelled Zuckerburg as a fugitive from Chinese justice because facebook does business there, and it violates their communist ideals. Should the USA hand him over? Let China seize his money and foreign assets? When I think of a German Finnish national living in New Zealand and doing business in Hong Kong. The first place I think he should be extradited to is... America?! WTF?
They didn't take the mansion. He was renting it.
What it ultimately comes down to is that the NZ government needs Hollywood to keep making films in NZ (it provides local jobs and economic benefit and stuff which is good for NZ) and so they need to listen when Hollywood (through their puppets in the US government) ask them to take action against a "filthy pirate" that is "costing Hollywood a lot of money in lost revenue".
Never put the whores before Descartes.
Ezekiel 23:20
It doesn't matter if he's a horrible manipulative guy. The fact that any government can assume that somebody is guilty and take ownership of their assets so they can't afford to defend themselves properly is a horrific concept.
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Isn't this the reason you have all those guns over there? Maybe I misheard, but I thought you needed all those guns to stop The Man abusing you?
That's just wrong. Denying a cert petition is a ruling. The decision to do so is entered and published as Supreme Court order.
That sounds like the punchline to a joke told at philosophers' parties. Yes I'm sure there are such things.
If a philosopher tells a joke at a party and no one laughs, is it still funny?
I think civil forfeiture is a pestilence that should be completely stamped out. Fortunately this can be done by simple legislation. What we cannot do is rely on the Constitution to save us from this plague.
In interpreting the phrase "due process of law", the Supreme Court looks at Anglo-American law as it existed at the time the Constitution was written. The British Navigation Acts had provided for civil forfeiture in smuggling cases, and the early US Congress wrote it into US customs laws. Therefore this unusual (and, IMHO, patently unjust) practice is understood to satisfy "due process of law". I don't like it, but that's the current state of US constitutional law.
yea i was thinking like "divine right", right ? god and shit which god ? doesnt matter god ! divine right THE law
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?