8 ms·

Megaupload Takedown Questioned By Users, Lawyers

69 points by AJ007 15y ago

epoxyhockey 15y ago
I'm still wondering how the US legally obtained copies of Megaupload internal email prior to seizing their servers.
- earl 15y ago
  What I find far crazier is how does the government get off stealing domain names and servers, taking Megaupload's business dark, and of course encouraging all users to leave, without a conviction. Or any adversarial representation from megaupload, Kim whatever-his-name-is, at all. It feels a lot like Russia: some unaccountable someone in the fbi or doj just decided to steal this company and did so, with the full support of the government.
  - mdasen 15y ago
    So, I brought up something similar to a third year law student last week. As he explained it, when the police arrest a drug dealer, the drugs are seized and tested for evidence. They don't get to keep the drugs, possibly destroy or sell them, etc. while the trial is pending. Likewise, in this case, the servers are going to be seized as evidence pending trial. He also noted that a grand jury had been impaneled and indicted Megaupload (along with six individuals) and a judge had issued a warrant. So, it wasn't just someone at the FBI or DOJ. It was a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia that indicted them. It is being prosecuted by a US Attorney. More than 20 search warrants were issued in nine countries. It was investigated by the FBI, the New Zealand Police, Hong Kong Customs, the Public Prosecutor's Office in the Netherlands, London's Metropolitan Police, the German Public Prosecutor, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and others. Megaupload and the named individuals will have a public trial. I'm not saying that you should like it, but it is different from "feeling a lot like Russia". There's a certain amount of secrecy that happens in a criminal investigation to prevent those being investigated from being able to hide what they're doing (if they're doing something wrong). I definitely had your reaction when I found out that the site was down and they hadn't had a chance to defend themselves. I think most of us see this as a civil offense - in which case, the seizure might not be justified (I use "might" because I'm not a lawyer). However, if you look at criminal offenses (bank robbery, drugs, gun running, art theft, etc.) you wouldn't expect the accused to keep that property pending trial. We'll see how this plays out. If you don't believe what they did should be a criminal offense, even if they're "guilty" of it, you're not going to agree with any of what the governments are doing. You're going to think that they should be sued similar to what happened to YouTube and have the chance to defend themselves while operating. That's an argument to change the law and you won't be satisfied by the process no matter how above board it is. And I'm not saying that you're wrong - Megaupload does seem a lot more innocuous (even if wrong) than what we generally consider racketeering or conspiracy. I mean, if Megaupload continued, you're not going to have some kid getting addicted to crack on the street or gangs getting guns and causing violence in the community - some rich media company potentially loses a little profit. And I think that reality makes a strong argument that maybe seizure wasn't necessary. However, it's also important to know that there was a lot of due process in a lot of jurisdictions with a lot of different law enforcement working together on this one. It wasn't just seized because some unanswerable someone in a random agency decided they wanted to. Likewise, there will be a trial.
    - earl 15y ago
      Nothing you said contradicted the fact that an unaccountable person in the government broke their business without any opportunity for megaupload to defend themselves. And so it is exactly like Russia. Unless you think that a grand jury indictment -- and let's not pretend, prosecutors are more than capable of indicting a street post, or a ham sandwhich [1] -- should give the doj or fbi the ability to destroy a business. Further, I'm making no claims about whether megaupload's conduct should be criminal; I'm merely claiming that permitting unaccountable people to destroy companies before any conviction or before megaupload has had any chance to defend itself is bullshit. So no, there wasn't anything like real due process. [1] "As a practical matter, a federal grand jury will almost always return an indictment presented to it by a prosecutor. This is the basis for Judge Saul Wachler's famous saying that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to 'indict a ham sandwich.'" — Solomon L. Wisenberg, "Federal Grand Jury Crash Course" http://www.wisenberglaw.com/White-Collar-Criminal-Defense/Grand-Jury-Investigations.shtml
      - Steko 15y ago
        Look if the police are corrupt and go around destroying legitimate businesses willy nilly it's the people's responsibility to demand new police. However there's no indication that's what's going on here. Every indication is that this business knew exactly what they were doing at the highest levels.
- Natsu 15y ago
  Warrants and/or subpoenas. I seem to recall that email that has been stored long enough doesn't even require a subpoena. I guess it depends on where the email was hosted and who had access.
  - epoxyhockey 15y ago
    Ok, so the FBI served Carpathia with a search warrant and .. somehow copied the internal email directly from the physical server without MU being aware of that? The FBI then goes home with their USB stick and reads through that collection of email to find incriminating evidence. That evidence is used as a foundation for their indictment, which is then presented to a grand jury.. to then go back to Carpathia and physically take all of the servers? Just trying to figure this out..
    - aviv 15y ago
      From their website: "Carpathia Government Solutions™ (CGS™) is the leading provider of federally-compliant managed hosting services for government agencies" -- MegaUpload chose the wrong hosting provider for their type of business.
    - wmf 15y ago
      If Mega was running their own email server then I agree that a search warrant wouldn't help much, since it would tip off the targets. Maybe Carnivore could work in that scenario. But if they were using SaaS email, the warrant could be delivered to the service provider and the targets would never know.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  Can't they use the Patriot Act to do that? The Patriot Act was used to catch terrorists, and yet the vast majority of cases in which they used it are drug cases. Ever since 9/11, this whole culture of not following the Constitution, or trying to exploit the loopholes in the laws, has formed. There's no spirit of the law anymore. Now authorities try to find the smallest possible potential loophole to do whatever they want to do. Just look at the GPS tracking issue, which normally you'd think should be illegal. But it took a 9-0 Supreme Court decision to make that clear for the authorities. At this rate, the Supreme Court will be overwhelmed with the number of overreaches by law enforcement that they'll have to decide on.
  - Steko 15y ago
    He's assuming all these emails are on an internal network. If that were the case it's likely the government gained access from a MU employee they leaned on (there are redacted MU conspirators from the indictment who are apparently not presently being charged meaning they may have been cooperating). What's more likely it seems is that these emails were sent internationally and the government (armed with a warrant hopefully) used their backdoors to access them. The arrests were apparently timed to conincide with many of the international employees being in NZ for KDC's birthday.
nostromo 15y ago
I really liked this analysis in Salon: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/21/two_lessons_from_the_megaupload_seizure/singleton/ http://www.salon.com/2012/01/21/two_lessons_from_the_megaupl... Sorry for the extended quote, but it's a great article. > (1) It’s wildly under-appreciated how unrestrained is the Government’s power to do what it wants, and how little effect these debates over various proposed laws have on that power. Contrary to how it was portrayed, the Obama administration’s threatened veto of the NDAA rested largely on the assertion that they did not need a law vesting them with indefinite detention powers because they already have full power to detain people without a trial: not because any actual law expressly vested that power, but because the Bush and Obama DOJs both claimed the 2001 AUMF silently (“implicitly”) authorized it and deferential courts have largely acquiesced to that claim. > That’s more or less what happened with the SOPA fight. [It] sends a very clear message when citizens celebrate a rare victory in denying the Government a power it seeks - the power to shut down websites without a trial - only for the Government to turn around the very next day and shut down one of the world’s largest and best-known sites. Whether intended or not, the message is unmistakable: Congratulations, citizens, on your cute little “democracy” victory in denying us the power to shut down websites without a trial: we’re now going to shut down one of your most popular websites without a trial. > (2) The U.S. really is a society that simply no longer believes in due process: once the defining feature of American freedom that is now scorned as some sort of fringe, radical, academic doctrine. That is not hyperbole. Supporters of both political parties endorse, or at least tolerate, all manner of government punishment without so much as the pretense of a trial, based solely on government accusation: imprisonment for life, renditions to other countries, even assassinations of their fellow citizens. Simply uttering the word Terrorist, without proving it, is sufficient. And now here is Megaupload being completely destroyed — its website shuttered, its assets seized, ongoing business rendered impossible — based solely on the unproven accusation of Piracy.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- mpyne 15y ago
  > And now here is Megaupload being completely destroyed — its website shuttered, its assets seized, ongoing business rendered impossible — based solely on the unproven accusation of Piracy. It was proven to a grand jury -- that's why they (and not the government) handed down an indictment. The treatment is actually similar to what would happen to the brick-and-mortar assets of an indicted meth distributor. Normally when a grand jury hands down an indictment then business functions that aid the alleged criminal activity also get shuttered. See http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/hammond/feds-e-c-company-illegally-dumped-hazardous-waste-in-hammond/article_9be0350f-6ea3-59e5-901a-89c6ab633b8a.html http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/hammond/feds-e-c-com... for instance.
powertower 15y ago
I still don't get what this fuss is about? Do you really think that MegaUpload generated 175MM from a few users signing up to a paid account, and from ads and scams that were displayed on URLs with legit content. If 95% of their revenue came from copyrighted material being shared (without permission), then I'd say MU was a criminal enterprise and what happened was completely okay. If 5%, than not okay. The supporting evidence so far points to the former figure.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  At what percentage do you draw the line?
  - powertower 15y ago
    When that percentage is the primary driver of your business.
    - lwat 15y ago
      Yes and how much is that exactly
    - pavel_lishin 15y ago
      So, 51%?
- talmand 15y ago
  Sure, let the government have its day in court to prove its case. But some would say these people are being punished without due process right now before they appear in court. Plus the fact this has international implications makes it seem the US government has overstepped just a bit. I always love the logic of forcing someone to pay to defend themselves in court but the government takes away your assets so that you are unable to pay for your defense.
- firefoxman1 15y ago
  We all know MegaUpload is the go-to place for pirated content. That's not really in question. The question here is: Is our government following the rules our founding fathers laid out, or do they believe they can cut straight to taking down a company 90% out of their jurisdiction without even following due process. The whole reason it's a debate is because if we, as citizens, don't watch our government closely when they make controversial moves like this, it easily becomes a very slippery slope. If we let our government get away with something like this, where will it end? Soon, will unwarranted search and seizure will be OK for the FBI, so long as they're after "pirates?" Will we end up like Iran who can execute a programmer 'cause they said so? Yeah, those are extreme examples, but the reason it is such a slippery slope is because our court's decisions are largely ruled by precedence. If the courts declare the actions taken against MegaUpload legal, it's pretty much "anything goes" for the FBI and DoJ to attack future, perhaps less piracy-oriented or even completely legitimate companies. All the DoJ or FBI has to say is "see, you let us do it last time with MegaUpload."
creativityland 15y ago
Maybe the Mayan predicted the end of the internet with their calendar ;)
funkah 15y ago
I guess people have quarrel with some of the tactics, but the people who ran this site are just pieces of shit. There just seems to be so little question that they were acting in bad faith. Again, if some of the tactics were bad I have no argument there, but shuttering this site overall does not exactly strike me as a travesty of justice.

69 points by AJ007 15y ago

epoxyhockey 15y ago

I'm still wondering how the US legally obtained copies of Megaupload internal email prior to seizing their servers.

earl 15y ago
What I find far crazier is how does the government get off stealing domain names and servers, taking Megaupload's business dark, and of course encouraging all users to leave, without a conviction. Or any adversarial representation from megaupload, Kim whatever-his-name-is, at all. It feels a lot like Russia: some unaccountable someone in the fbi or doj just decided to steal this company and did so, with the full support of the government.
- mdasen 15y ago
  So, I brought up something similar to a third year law student last week. As he explained it, when the police arrest a drug dealer, the drugs are seized and tested for evidence. They don't get to keep the drugs, possibly destroy or sell them, etc. while the trial is pending. Likewise, in this case, the servers are going to be seized as evidence pending trial. He also noted that a grand jury had been impaneled and indicted Megaupload (along with six individuals) and a judge had issued a warrant. So, it wasn't just someone at the FBI or DOJ. It was a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia that indicted them. It is being prosecuted by a US Attorney. More than 20 search warrants were issued in nine countries. It was investigated by the FBI, the New Zealand Police, Hong Kong Customs, the Public Prosecutor's Office in the Netherlands, London's Metropolitan Police, the German Public Prosecutor, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and others. Megaupload and the named individuals will have a public trial. I'm not saying that you should like it, but it is different from "feeling a lot like Russia". There's a certain amount of secrecy that happens in a criminal investigation to prevent those being investigated from being able to hide what they're doing (if they're doing something wrong). I definitely had your reaction when I found out that the site was down and they hadn't had a chance to defend themselves. I think most of us see this as a civil offense - in which case, the seizure might not be justified (I use "might" because I'm not a lawyer). However, if you look at criminal offenses (bank robbery, drugs, gun running, art theft, etc.) you wouldn't expect the accused to keep that property pending trial. We'll see how this plays out. If you don't believe what they did should be a criminal offense, even if they're "guilty" of it, you're not going to agree with any of what the governments are doing. You're going to think that they should be sued similar to what happened to YouTube and have the chance to defend themselves while operating. That's an argument to change the law and you won't be satisfied by the process no matter how above board it is. And I'm not saying that you're wrong - Megaupload does seem a lot more innocuous (even if wrong) than what we generally consider racketeering or conspiracy. I mean, if Megaupload continued, you're not going to have some kid getting addicted to crack on the street or gangs getting guns and causing violence in the community - some rich media company potentially loses a little profit. And I think that reality makes a strong argument that maybe seizure wasn't necessary. However, it's also important to know that there was a lot of due process in a lot of jurisdictions with a lot of different law enforcement working together on this one. It wasn't just seized because some unanswerable someone in a random agency decided they wanted to. Likewise, there will be a trial.
  - earl 15y ago
    Nothing you said contradicted the fact that an unaccountable person in the government broke their business without any opportunity for megaupload to defend themselves. And so it is exactly like Russia. Unless you think that a grand jury indictment -- and let's not pretend, prosecutors are more than capable of indicting a street post, or a ham sandwhich [1] -- should give the doj or fbi the ability to destroy a business. Further, I'm making no claims about whether megaupload's conduct should be criminal; I'm merely claiming that permitting unaccountable people to destroy companies before any conviction or before megaupload has had any chance to defend itself is bullshit. So no, there wasn't anything like real due process. [1] "As a practical matter, a federal grand jury will almost always return an indictment presented to it by a prosecutor. This is the basis for Judge Saul Wachler's famous saying that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to 'indict a ham sandwich.'" — Solomon L. Wisenberg, "Federal Grand Jury Crash Course" http://www.wisenberglaw.com/White-Collar-Criminal-Defense/Grand-Jury-Investigations.shtml
    - Steko 15y ago
      Look if the police are corrupt and go around destroying legitimate businesses willy nilly it's the people's responsibility to demand new police. However there's no indication that's what's going on here. Every indication is that this business knew exactly what they were doing at the highest levels.
Natsu 15y ago
Warrants and/or subpoenas. I seem to recall that email that has been stored long enough doesn't even require a subpoena. I guess it depends on where the email was hosted and who had access.
- epoxyhockey 15y ago
  Ok, so the FBI served Carpathia with a search warrant and .. somehow copied the internal email directly from the physical server without MU being aware of that? The FBI then goes home with their USB stick and reads through that collection of email to find incriminating evidence. That evidence is used as a foundation for their indictment, which is then presented to a grand jury.. to then go back to Carpathia and physically take all of the servers? Just trying to figure this out..
  - aviv 15y ago
    From their website: "Carpathia Government Solutions™ (CGS™) is the leading provider of federally-compliant managed hosting services for government agencies" -- MegaUpload chose the wrong hosting provider for their type of business.
  - wmf 15y ago
    If Mega was running their own email server then I agree that a search warrant wouldn't help much, since it would tip off the targets. Maybe Carnivore could work in that scenario. But if they were using SaaS email, the warrant could be delivered to the service provider and the targets would never know.
nextparadigms 15y ago
Can't they use the Patriot Act to do that? The Patriot Act was used to catch terrorists, and yet the vast majority of cases in which they used it are drug cases. Ever since 9/11, this whole culture of not following the Constitution, or trying to exploit the loopholes in the laws, has formed. There's no spirit of the law anymore. Now authorities try to find the smallest possible potential loophole to do whatever they want to do. Just look at the GPS tracking issue, which normally you'd think should be illegal. But it took a 9-0 Supreme Court decision to make that clear for the authorities. At this rate, the Supreme Court will be overwhelmed with the number of overreaches by law enforcement that they'll have to decide on.
- Steko 15y ago
  He's assuming all these emails are on an internal network. If that were the case it's likely the government gained access from a MU employee they leaned on (there are redacted MU conspirators from the indictment who are apparently not presently being charged meaning they may have been cooperating). What's more likely it seems is that these emails were sent internationally and the government (armed with a warrant hopefully) used their backdoors to access them. The arrests were apparently timed to conincide with many of the international employees being in NZ for KDC's birthday.

nostromo 15y ago

I really liked this analysis in Salon: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/21/two_lessons_from_the_megaupload_seizure/singleton/ http://www.salon.com/2012/01/21/two_lessons_from_the_megaupl... Sorry for the extended quote, but it's a great article. > (1) It’s wildly under-appreciated how unrestrained is the Government’s power to do what it wants, and how little effect these debates over various proposed laws have on that power. Contrary to how it was portrayed, the Obama administration’s threatened veto of the NDAA rested largely on the assertion that they did not need a law vesting them with indefinite detention powers because they already have full power to detain people without a trial: not because any actual law expressly vested that power, but because the Bush and Obama DOJs both claimed the 2001 AUMF silently (“implicitly”) authorized it and deferential courts have largely acquiesced to that claim. > That’s more or less what happened with the SOPA fight. [It] sends a very clear message when citizens celebrate a rare victory in denying the Government a power it seeks - the power to shut down websites without a trial - only for the Government to turn around the very next day and shut down one of the world’s largest and best-known sites. Whether intended or not, the message is unmistakable: Congratulations, citizens, on your cute little “democracy” victory in denying us the power to shut down websites without a trial: we’re now going to shut down one of your most popular websites without a trial. > (2) The U.S. really is a society that simply no longer believes in due process: once the defining feature of American freedom that is now scorned as some sort of fringe, radical, academic doctrine. That is not hyperbole. Supporters of both political parties endorse, or at least tolerate, all manner of government punishment without so much as the pretense of a trial, based solely on government accusation: imprisonment for life, renditions to other countries, even assassinations of their fellow citizens. Simply uttering the word Terrorist, without proving it, is sufficient. And now here is Megaupload being completely destroyed — its website shuttered, its assets seized, ongoing business rendered impossible — based solely on the unproven accusation of Piracy.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mpyne 15y ago
> And now here is Megaupload being completely destroyed — its website shuttered, its assets seized, ongoing business rendered impossible — based solely on the unproven accusation of Piracy. It was proven to a grand jury -- that's why they (and not the government) handed down an indictment. The treatment is actually similar to what would happen to the brick-and-mortar assets of an indicted meth distributor. Normally when a grand jury hands down an indictment then business functions that aid the alleged criminal activity also get shuttered. See http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/hammond/feds-e-c-company-illegally-dumped-hazardous-waste-in-hammond/article_9be0350f-6ea3-59e5-901a-89c6ab633b8a.html http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/hammond/feds-e-c-com... for instance.

powertower 15y ago

I still don't get what this fuss is about? Do you really think that MegaUpload generated 175MM from a few users signing up to a paid account, and from ads and scams that were displayed on URLs with legit content. If 95% of their revenue came from copyrighted material being shared (without permission), then I'd say MU was a criminal enterprise and what happened was completely okay. If 5%, than not okay. The supporting evidence so far points to the former figure.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
At what percentage do you draw the line?
- powertower 15y ago
  When that percentage is the primary driver of your business.
  - lwat 15y ago
    Yes and how much is that exactly
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    So, 51%?
talmand 15y ago
Sure, let the government have its day in court to prove its case. But some would say these people are being punished without due process right now before they appear in court. Plus the fact this has international implications makes it seem the US government has overstepped just a bit. I always love the logic of forcing someone to pay to defend themselves in court but the government takes away your assets so that you are unable to pay for your defense.
firefoxman1 15y ago
We all know MegaUpload is the go-to place for pirated content. That's not really in question. The question here is: Is our government following the rules our founding fathers laid out, or do they believe they can cut straight to taking down a company 90% out of their jurisdiction without even following due process. The whole reason it's a debate is because if we, as citizens, don't watch our government closely when they make controversial moves like this, it easily becomes a very slippery slope. If we let our government get away with something like this, where will it end? Soon, will unwarranted search and seizure will be OK for the FBI, so long as they're after "pirates?" Will we end up like Iran who can execute a programmer 'cause they said so? Yeah, those are extreme examples, but the reason it is such a slippery slope is because our court's decisions are largely ruled by precedence. If the courts declare the actions taken against MegaUpload legal, it's pretty much "anything goes" for the FBI and DoJ to attack future, perhaps less piracy-oriented or even completely legitimate companies. All the DoJ or FBI has to say is "see, you let us do it last time with MegaUpload."

creativityland 15y ago

Maybe the Mayan predicted the end of the internet with their calendar ;)

funkah 15y ago

I guess people have quarrel with some of the tactics, but the people who ran this site are just pieces of shit. There just seems to be so little question that they were acting in bad faith. Again, if some of the tactics were bad I have no argument there, but shuttering this site overall does not exactly strike me as a travesty of justice.