Court ruling means Kim Dotcom can sue NZ spooks Kim Dotcom has successfully applied to join New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau as a defendant in his litigation over illegal surveillance of his activities. Reg readers may recall that the Bureau tapped Dotcom's phones using powers that allow it to spy on foreigners. Dotcom, however, was a permanent …
The U.S. AG Holder has discovered that not all countries have signed on to his "laws be damned" routine that is SOP for that country these days.
And the NZ government, and in particular the judiciary, are to be congratulated on not capitulating to the illegal, heavy handed techniques of the FBI, etc.
Canadians are ong accustomed to the USA treating our country as theirs, we have even had Americans come over the border and arrest and detain people, without the benefit of Canadian court support, and inveigle them back to the USA.
Fortunately, the then Canadian government had the kidnapped party returned to Canada. Wouldn't happen these days with a Conservative government led by a wimp who makes toilet paper look like a tower of strength.
Mind you, if Dot.Com does get his free trip to the US he needn't expect anything less than their citizen Manning got.
> I salute Canada for refusing to extradite in capital cases, unless the death penalty is taken off the table.
Is that a joke?
They had the Mounties kidnap one of their own ambassadors and let the CIA bungle it so he died in their custard.
They shouldn't be letting anything go over the border to a country that is so trigger happy and shit for brains when it comes to dealing with furrrners and terrrrrrists and has no mechanism for telling the difference.
I look forward to the day that we can have a genuine nice bloke nail the spooks, as much as I support this geezer in his case he's kind of annoying. Same with julian and mcafee. It would be nice to have someone likable getting their boot in. Say, a Samsung type person, one that everyone agrees with, likes and wants to win!
It does happen - remember Dmitry Sklyarov? - but 'nice people', by definition, are not publicity whores and don't know how to milk it like Dotcom does.
Dotcom is scum, but he knows how to play the media. Oops, sorry, that should be: "Dotcom is scum, and therefore he knows how to play the media."
A head of spies that can't even check public records probably isn't much good at finding out secret things.
I suppose his excuse will be that it wasn't on Wikipedia.
Oops - it has its own heading "New Zealand's decision to grant residency"
Maybe he should try "Oh - Dotcom? I thought you said Dot Cotton"
I really hope that Dotcom does not settle, and forces the complete disclosure of everything.
I have to wonder what kind of embarrassing documents (that may point to 'MAFIAA' involvement) may surface. It would be nice to know who the MAFIAA "owns".
He might end up joining Manning as one in the ranks of those[1][2] who publish things that the US government (and, in this case, its MAFIAA overlords) would never want to see the light of day.
[1] I recall something a few decades ago about the 'Pentagon Papers', and a chap named Ellsworth.
Pentagon Papers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers
Daniel Ellsberg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg
[2] WRT politicians, and their nastys, the most (in)famous 'spectacle'embarrassing disclosure might well be Nixon and 'Watergate'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal
PS, Like the new ability for "badged" members to get additional html options.
manning revealed stuff that got innocent people killed. like the Iranian martial arts athlete.
Wikileaks revealed nothing embarrissing to US government. In fact stuff like finding WMDs in Iraq actually had people wondering whether Manning was CIA. Manning/Assange should get life.
You know the US gov is f__king up when they are making Kim Dotcom look sympathetic. The guy is even more dodgy than a porn web site king but the law applies to all equally luckily in NZ for the most part it looks like. I get tired of being told on one hand how the government is out of money and but they always seem to find money to protect their corrupt officials from lawsuits (Sheriff Joe here in AZ) or to go after enemies of their political donors.
He is getting sued by half the county since his office not only misappropriated 100 million dollars which he spent on his cronies salary but he then decided to go on a witch hunt charging those in charge of auditing him with trumped up charges and finally being sued for neglecting to investigate over 400 sex crimes. I don't mind a tough sheriff but I would prefer one that is more into law enforcement and less into being a corrupt politician.
I got to participate in the TPI survey this year, and was delighted when NZ once again came 1st equal in the results. The proof given of the independence of our judiciary is probably the most encouraging thing to come out of the Dotcom saga, and this latest decision reinforces that. There is no way that the same NZ Govt which has allowed Jackson and his Hollywood mogul mates to destroy basic worker protections in the local film industry would be happy to see NZ judges so consistently standing up for the rule of law and doing their job. Especially since the PM is the Minister in charge of the intelligence services, the outcome of any case is likely to be a further embarrassment to him and his insistence that he's never even heard of Dotcom before he was arrested.
I look forward to watching developments in this case, as it is increasingly shaping as a fight between the judiciary and the executive, with Dotcom as the proxy, and so far, the judiciary is way ahead on points.
"Is this anything like the Star Wars scandals where everyone except the actors and screenwriters and whoever make money?"
Pretty much. All the crew are no treated as contractors, exempting the studios from having to worry about trivia like worker safety or liability in the event of accidents. Jackson screamed and whined and howled and threatened, and got what he wanted, and a fortnight before the Hobbit premiere complained that NZ needs to be much MORE accommodating to Big Media if it wants more productions here.
But the police aren't. Gene Hunt lives on there.
It was the repeated overturning of dodgy convictions by the House of Lords, usually with pointed comments about the standards of evidence and police conduct which was behind NZ's abolition of their use.
The politicians thought Kiwi judges would be more likely to toe the party line. For the most part they do and it's been interesting to see judges with the gonads to not go along with what the police and govt wanted for a change - this has a lot to do with the fact that Kim Dotcom has pockets deep enough to actually defend himself.
... the case will collapse after it comes out the government had actually screwed up the targetting entirely and been spying on his homeless illegal immigrant namesake Kim Dotorg instead...
Sherlock, because he'd be bright enough to check his own immigration records before snooping. (Actually, he probably wouldn't bother, but he'd certainly know he was meant to!)
It doesn't mean you can collect. Trying to collect from law enforcement performing their job is a real stretch. Considering that the pirated copyright protected works belong to U.S. copyright holders then the law was within their rights to tap his phone as he is a foreigner of the U.S.
Really? When exactly did Congress vote to fund an agency to violate the sovereignty of friendly countries, to tap the phones of civilian businessmen, in order to enforce Hollywood's copyrights? Perhaps you'd like to nominate this agency as a candidate to be thrown over the fiscal cliff.
And when you've researched the answer to that, perhaps you could point to where it says that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to "foreigners of the US".
They will admit their mistake in court and offer "appropriate" compensation for fucking him around, but, when asked for details between NZ and US the government they will simply say you can't have them. they will cite any number of different reasons, national interests or details are protected under some weird act. Either way he will get some money but not the pleasure in exposing any agreement the two governments have.
Unfortunate really, as I'd love to find out how the fuck the US can make demands to another government for a simple matter of copyright violation, which is interestingly, a civil matter in all countries except for the US and now japan,
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