7 ms·

Megaupload Demands Return of Millions of Dollars From U.S. Govt.

191 points by Garbage 14y ago

Fizzadar 14y ago
If the money is returned, I hope Dotcom gets megaupload back in it's top file-sharing spot, and shoves it in the face of the US Govt. who have clearly fucked up big time. It does seem as if the Govt. was desperate and, without any correct process or concrete evidence, scrambled to shutter the site and Dotcom as fast as they could. And now it will hopefully backfire, and the internet will rejoice.
gouranga 14y ago
This is what happens when the US government does something blatantly immoral and illegal to the wrong guy. Most of us bend and take it or get the fuck bombed out of us or end up in a bag. Regardless of what Kim has supposedly done, it's nice to see someone standing up to them.
- acron0 14y ago
  Even for the US government this seems like a real stretch though. I mean, what did they think was going to happen? There is ostensibly no case here. I would just love to know what their plan was and how they thought it'd lead to the end of Megaupload. Anyway, as long as the US political system keeps pandering to the whim of Hollywood, the Internet will keep on knocking it out the park.
  - jeffool 14y ago
    I can only hope that someone signed their name without actually using the Internet that much; without realizing what this was. It was bad enough when they ruined a legit hip hop music site. MegaUpload actually has a name, and a willingness to throw the associated clout around. You'd think anyone with the power to do this would have been familiar with them.
  - emiliobumachar 14y ago
    The end of Megaupload has already happened, well before the trial. Maybe that was the plan all along.
    - pyre 14y ago
      If Kim is able to successfully fight back, and get back money/servers/etc, do you think that he won't be able to put it back together again? It would set them apart from other services in that they tussled with the US DoJ (+ MPAA/RIAA) and won.
      - rglover 14y ago
        I'm sure he could put everything back together, but most users will probably be weary of the government keeping a constant watch on the site.
        pyre 14y ago
        Why? If he successfully defeats them in court, I don't see how the government would have an 'in' to monitor the site. If they settled, that's another story (especially if the settlement terms were not public).
        talmand 14y ago
        The government doesn't have to monitor the site. Just the threat alone of confiscating servers so that regular users lose access to their data is enough. Dotcom can totally win this case, restore his service, and the government hits him again six months later over new infringements. That's a risk many will not take. In my opinion this action has possibly ruined the future growth of cloud services. I've always been leery of using a third-party server you do not control and the government showing it has no problems shutting that server down, whether it has anything to do with you or not, is a serious problem to consider. Plus, since hosting services will often put multiple websites on the same box then that's a potential problem to consider. One we've seen before. What if this happened to Dropbox? What if this happened to Apple's iCloud? Sure, people will say that will never happen but history is full of people saying similar things.
  - adventureful 14y ago
    They thought they'd break him, that he'd capitulate and grovel. Take his money, deplete him of resources to fight, and that'd be that. They also counted on New Zealand justice not being any problem to roll over.
  - rdtsc 14y ago
    > I would just love to know what their plan was and how they thought it'd lead to the end of Megaupload. They arrest they guy, confiscate his property => Megaupload is down. Their job is done. I am sure they probably sugar-coated it using some superficial motives about starving Hollywood actors and set designers. But in reality it is just pandering to the lobbyist pressure from Hollywood. US Govt acting immorally and often illegally on behalf of giant corporations shouldn't be a surprise (see United Fruit company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company).
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
      - debacle 14y ago
        But this is both.
  - grecy 14y ago
    > Even for the US government this seems like a real stretch though. I mean, what did they think was going to happen? The same thing that's happened in every country where they exert their influence: Capitulation. Obviously, they were wrong.
Peroni 14y ago
Can someone with any modicum of legal experience weigh in here? I appreciate that all of these articles are undoubtedly bias in favour of Megaupload however a lot of the facts lead me to believe that it will be near impossible for them to lose. If megaupload do in fact win, surely that will have an immense impact globally? Is it possible to actually quantify the knock on effects of either outcome from a global perspective?
- Natsu 14y ago
  I don't claim to be a lawyer, but I have read up on this case, including the indictment. As always, if your interest in legal matters is anything but academic curiosity, consult a lawyer. One thing that stands out to me is that most of this argument is against the idea that criminal infringement applies to secondary liability (i.e. faulting these guys for the infringement of others). One problem for them is that the indictment accuses some of them of direct infringement based on some of MU's emails. This can lead to trouble with the NET Act [1], which has the explicit criminal liability they need to extradite here. There are limits, though: they would need to be able to prove that enough infringement had happened to rise to a criminal level. They also have criminal conspiracy charges in there, though I believe those to be predicated on proving some sort of criminal infringement. Note, however, that on the acts of direct infringement, it's possible for not everyone in the group to be involved. For example, one of the emails I remember about locating a pirate copy of some show was between a couple of employees. That wouldn't necessarily implicate Kim himself unless they could connect him to the act. There was a lot of nonsense in the indictment, though, trying to make everything sound like it had a criminal motive. Some of the same allegations made in it could be repeated against sites like YouTube, for example. The indictment did, however, contain quite a few emails that made the Mega group look pretty bad. I believe their lawyers already addressed those, saying that their words were being twisted around. Ultimately, I think this is going to be a fairly unpredictable case. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NET_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NET_Act
  - Symmetry 14y ago
    The problem with the actual charges, from what I read, is that the emails show that MegaUpload was trying to do the absolute minimum necceesary to comply with the DMCA. They were, in fact, not actually living up to everything that they had to do to under the DMCA and are thus guilty of copyright infringement under civil law, but the government decided to press criminal charges instead, and making a good faith effort to abide by the DMCA is enough to get out of those charges. EDIT: A better explanation: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/02/is-megaupload-a-lot-less-guilty-than-you-think/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/02/is-megaupload-a-l...
ktizo 14y ago
I think part of the judgement involved in going after Kim was in trying to find someone who didn't fit a nice cuddly image that was easy to defend. What they didn't apparently factor in was that perhaps he might be bright and better than them at playing games.
minikomi 14y ago
Torrent Freak always strikes me as very well written.. Is there a similarly well written source which supports the "other side" of the copyright story?
- Zirro 14y ago
  See http://mpaa.org/blog http://mpaa.org/blog if you want "extreme" bias in the other direction.
  - minikomi 14y ago
    Thanks, that's quite the read!
  - lindenr 14y ago
    They appear to be sticking with the "2.2 million American jobs" line even though the figures were shown to be inaccurate iirc. For me it really weakens their credibility the way they keep pretending like that.
- thirdsun 14y ago
  For music artists & piracy, see http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/ http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/
josteink 14y ago
If this is the US's response to people relocating outside US borders for their business because of asinine US privacy and copyright-laws, I don't think it will play out to their advantage in the end. The one lesson learned here from everyone involved is: Whatever you do, do not involve US companies in your business.
- talaketu 14y ago
  > do not involve US companies in your business. Actually, there is a whiff of a trade dispute brewing between Australia and US about this. > "the US has accused the Australian government of misleading its agencies about the Patriot Act’s scope, and warned that its [cloud service providers] should not be barred from competing for the work." http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/trade-war-up-in-the-clouds-20120529-1zhpg.html http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/trad...
- fpp 14y ago
  Almost all Non-US banks have already learnt this lesson during the last years. Try to get an account with a non-US bank or use a non-US financial service company if you're an US citizen / green card holder (or have been that until recently) - they will tell you "no thanks". I've some time ago even seen Terms of Services on financial web sites that asked US citizens to leave because of the overstretched liabilities the US is one-sidedly trying to enforce outside their jurisdiction.
  - adventureful 14y ago
    It depends on the size of your account, as to whether they say "no thanks" or not.
    - muyuu 14y ago
      The bigger, the worse. More liability.
      - adventureful 14y ago
Im_Mr_Manager 14y ago
Am I in the tiny minority here who thinks that what Megaupload was doing was illegal and should be prosecuted? Ok I get it, the US is trying to apply their laws onto the world and that is a big issue but this seems like the wrong case to get outraged over. Megaupload was built for the purpose of hosting/sharing copyrighted files. You know it and I know it.
- jeffool 14y ago
  I don't know how to convey the opposite opinion in a way you've likely not heard before. I'll go to extremes. And a handgun is made to kill people. But we generally agree there's a limited context in which that is acceptable, so we allow it. If I want to store my files online, copywritten or not, there's nothing illegal about it.
  - cynicalkane 14y ago
    The accusations are that Megaupload was in conspiracy to commit piracy, knowingly working with mass pirates to make large and legally significant amounts of money for themselves, and the indictment presents IM logs and communications that allegedly prove it. If a file host is like a gun shop, then Megaupload was allegedly like an arms dealer.
    - jeffool 14y ago
      Yes, that's the allegation. However, the post I replied to seemed to be saying that "what's the big deal? This service can only be about piracy." I'm saying "no, we don't all agree that this service inherently exists to serve piracy. There are legit uses that exist, and the service is a valid one." And besides, the best analogy to digital lockers? Actual lockers. Their purpose is "hold stuff". If someone uses them for drugs, it's that person who is in trouble. And to presume the intent of the existence of lockers, even if one bus station does cater to gunmen, is silly. We should all be able to look at lockers and say "there's nothing wrong with that."
      - cynicalkane 14y ago
DigitalSea 14y ago
The US government knew they never had a solid case from the start. This whole situation was never going anywhere, it was created to disrupt traffic to Megaupload (and it did), only the exact opposite is now going to happen. Megaupload are going to get a heap of cash back, Dotcom is obviously angry and will no doubt force Megaupload back to the top of the file sharing food chain before too long. The bottom line here is: the US turned what is a civil matter into a criminal one by dressing everything up in money laundering and conspiracy charges and it backfired. I'm no lawyer though.
freshnote 14y ago
Looking back at some of the earlier HN conversations, when Megaupload was first shut down by the US, you can see those who made damning accusations and blind assumptions that Megaupload were guilty. These people should be ashamed. They are part of the problem. It's baffling they would be so opinionated and cocksure although they plainly didn't know the facts. I'm curious why these HN readers told bald faced lies. What's in it for them? How many other discussions have they polluted with misinformation?
- pyre 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure those people believed that Megaupload was guilty prior to the indictments. E.g. if the US served copyright-infringement indictments against ThePirateBay and a bunch of HNers claimed that ThePirateBay was guilty, it would be a stretch to say that their opinions were solely based on the indictments...
adventureful 14y ago
As an American citizen, I hope the rest of the world realizes that there are plenty of those of us here that are thankful when other countries' justice systems push back. We need a lot more of that, we need help to restrain our government and get it back to operating within a moral boundary. International push-back and isolation would help do that. I think the US Government's reach and power has mostly gone beyond the ability of Americans to restrict, and most Americans are willfully asleep at the wheel (thus our skyrocketing prescription drug abuse, Americans are numbing themselves). It might take a global concerted effort to lock the monster down (keeping in mind the monster has a $4 trillion budget, larger than the size of Germany's entire economy). They might continue to still go all crazy police state on us anyway, but standing up to bullies is important.
- sneak 14y ago
  You contradict yourself - you claim that the government is operating outside of a moral boundary and is beyond the ability of the citizenry to restrict, but you also claim that international push-back and isolation would help. You're right that it's totally out of control - the rule of law is gone. You're wrong about the potential solutions. The only nonviolent solution is to leave the country and avoid the jurisdictional reach. Take your ball and go somewhere that has the rule of law. They _will_ continue to "go all crazy police state on us", and that is precisely why it's time to leave. It's impossible to make things better while being persecuted or beaten or censored or imprisoned without trial.
  - adventureful 14y ago
    I don't think I contradicted myself at all. I said mostly operating outside the ability of Americans to restrict (some aspects do, some aspects don't). And I said I think it will help, if the globe pitched in to restrict the US Federal Govt. There's no contradiction there at all. The push-back by international powers would accomplish international restriction of the Feds that US citizens cannot short term (US citizens mostly have no influence over New Zealand justice, nor trade relations with Singapore, nor military relations with Japan, and so on and so forth). It would take a very large cultural shift to get the US military out of Japan from our side (it would take more than just a new President). Japan, however, can and should kick the US military out tomorrow morning. Ditto Germany. It's better if you stop thinking of America as a 'normal' nation, and start thinking of it as an international superpower that has 180 military bases around the globe, with its fingers in every pie. Americans for example have zero influence or control over the Federal Reserve. You'd have to turn congress inside out to then get laws passed that reach to the Fed. Other nations can however change their relationship with the Fed and its banking arms. American voters would have to reform the entire government top to bottom before they got to restricting CIA activities in Italy (for example). Italy however, can get started on that tomorrow morning. The US Government is extremely large and powerful, and it has a superpower's reach globally. It makes perfect sense that it would help if the rest of the world pushed back against its international abuses. Let me provide you an example: I can vote for a congressman, that single congressman cannot realistically stop the NSA at this point, the NSA has a budget equal to the budget of Greece. It would take a complete government overhaul to restructure the NSA, and that will take a long time. Other countries however, at their choosing, can immediately alter what they allow departments like the CIA or NSA to do in their jurisdiction (and or at least make the effort to push back). The US Government is not one thing, it's a massive entity with many powerful heads that operate independent of each other.

191 points by Garbage 14y ago

If the money is returned, I hope Dotcom gets megaupload back in it's top file-sharing spot, and shoves it in the face of the US Govt. who have clearly fucked up big time. It does seem as if the Govt. was desperate and, without any correct process or concrete evidence, scrambled to shutter the site and Dotcom as fast as they could. And now it will hopefully backfire, and the internet will rejoice.

gouranga 14y ago

This is what happens when the US government does something blatantly immoral and illegal to the wrong guy. Most of us bend and take it or get the fuck bombed out of us or end up in a bag. Regardless of what Kim has supposedly done, it's nice to see someone standing up to them.

acron0 14y ago
Even for the US government this seems like a real stretch though. I mean, what did they think was going to happen? There is ostensibly no case here. I would just love to know what their plan was and how they thought it'd lead to the end of Megaupload. Anyway, as long as the US political system keeps pandering to the whim of Hollywood, the Internet will keep on knocking it out the park.
- jeffool 14y ago
  I can only hope that someone signed their name without actually using the Internet that much; without realizing what this was. It was bad enough when they ruined a legit hip hop music site. MegaUpload actually has a name, and a willingness to throw the associated clout around. You'd think anyone with the power to do this would have been familiar with them.
- emiliobumachar 14y ago
  The end of Megaupload has already happened, well before the trial. Maybe that was the plan all along.
  - pyre 14y ago
    If Kim is able to successfully fight back, and get back money/servers/etc, do you think that he won't be able to put it back together again? It would set them apart from other services in that they tussled with the US DoJ (+ MPAA/RIAA) and won.
    - rglover 14y ago
      I'm sure he could put everything back together, but most users will probably be weary of the government keeping a constant watch on the site.
      - pyre 14y ago
        Why? If he successfully defeats them in court, I don't see how the government would have an 'in' to monitor the site. If they settled, that's another story (especially if the settlement terms were not public).
        talmand 14y ago
        The government doesn't have to monitor the site. Just the threat alone of confiscating servers so that regular users lose access to their data is enough. Dotcom can totally win this case, restore his service, and the government hits him again six months later over new infringements. That's a risk many will not take. In my opinion this action has possibly ruined the future growth of cloud services. I've always been leery of using a third-party server you do not control and the government showing it has no problems shutting that server down, whether it has anything to do with you or not, is a serious problem to consider. Plus, since hosting services will often put multiple websites on the same box then that's a potential problem to consider. One we've seen before. What if this happened to Dropbox? What if this happened to Apple's iCloud? Sure, people will say that will never happen but history is full of people saying similar things.
- adventureful 14y ago
  They thought they'd break him, that he'd capitulate and grovel. Take his money, deplete him of resources to fight, and that'd be that. They also counted on New Zealand justice not being any problem to roll over.
- rdtsc 14y ago
  > I would just love to know what their plan was and how they thought it'd lead to the end of Megaupload. They arrest they guy, confiscate his property => Megaupload is down. Their job is done. I am sure they probably sugar-coated it using some superficial motives about starving Hollywood actors and set designers. But in reality it is just pandering to the lobbyist pressure from Hollywood. US Govt acting immorally and often illegally on behalf of giant corporations shouldn't be a surprise (see United Fruit company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company).
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
    - debacle 14y ago
      But this is both.
- grecy 14y ago
  > Even for the US government this seems like a real stretch though. I mean, what did they think was going to happen? The same thing that's happened in every country where they exert their influence: Capitulation. Obviously, they were wrong.

Peroni 14y ago

Can someone with any modicum of legal experience weigh in here? I appreciate that all of these articles are undoubtedly bias in favour of Megaupload however a lot of the facts lead me to believe that it will be near impossible for them to lose. If megaupload do in fact win, surely that will have an immense impact globally? Is it possible to actually quantify the knock on effects of either outcome from a global perspective?

Natsu 14y ago
I don't claim to be a lawyer, but I have read up on this case, including the indictment. As always, if your interest in legal matters is anything but academic curiosity, consult a lawyer. One thing that stands out to me is that most of this argument is against the idea that criminal infringement applies to secondary liability (i.e. faulting these guys for the infringement of others). One problem for them is that the indictment accuses some of them of direct infringement based on some of MU's emails. This can lead to trouble with the NET Act [1], which has the explicit criminal liability they need to extradite here. There are limits, though: they would need to be able to prove that enough infringement had happened to rise to a criminal level. They also have criminal conspiracy charges in there, though I believe those to be predicated on proving some sort of criminal infringement. Note, however, that on the acts of direct infringement, it's possible for not everyone in the group to be involved. For example, one of the emails I remember about locating a pirate copy of some show was between a couple of employees. That wouldn't necessarily implicate Kim himself unless they could connect him to the act. There was a lot of nonsense in the indictment, though, trying to make everything sound like it had a criminal motive. Some of the same allegations made in it could be repeated against sites like YouTube, for example. The indictment did, however, contain quite a few emails that made the Mega group look pretty bad. I believe their lawyers already addressed those, saying that their words were being twisted around. Ultimately, I think this is going to be a fairly unpredictable case. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NET_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NET_Act
- Symmetry 14y ago
  The problem with the actual charges, from what I read, is that the emails show that MegaUpload was trying to do the absolute minimum necceesary to comply with the DMCA. They were, in fact, not actually living up to everything that they had to do to under the DMCA and are thus guilty of copyright infringement under civil law, but the government decided to press criminal charges instead, and making a good faith effort to abide by the DMCA is enough to get out of those charges. EDIT: A better explanation: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/02/is-megaupload-a-lot-less-guilty-than-you-think/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/02/is-megaupload-a-l...

ktizo 14y ago

I think part of the judgement involved in going after Kim was in trying to find someone who didn't fit a nice cuddly image that was easy to defend. What they didn't apparently factor in was that perhaps he might be bright and better than them at playing games.

minikomi 14y ago

Torrent Freak always strikes me as very well written.. Is there a similarly well written source which supports the "other side" of the copyright story?

Zirro 14y ago
See http://mpaa.org/blog http://mpaa.org/blog if you want "extreme" bias in the other direction.
- minikomi 14y ago
  Thanks, that's quite the read!
- lindenr 14y ago
  They appear to be sticking with the "2.2 million American jobs" line even though the figures were shown to be inaccurate iirc. For me it really weakens their credibility the way they keep pretending like that.
thirdsun 14y ago
For music artists & piracy, see http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/ http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/

josteink 14y ago

If this is the US's response to people relocating outside US borders for their business because of asinine US privacy and copyright-laws, I don't think it will play out to their advantage in the end. The one lesson learned here from everyone involved is: Whatever you do, do not involve US companies in your business.

talaketu 14y ago
> do not involve US companies in your business. Actually, there is a whiff of a trade dispute brewing between Australia and US about this. > "the US has accused the Australian government of misleading its agencies about the Patriot Act’s scope, and warned that its [cloud service providers] should not be barred from competing for the work." http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/trade-war-up-in-the-clouds-20120529-1zhpg.html http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/trad...
fpp 14y ago
Almost all Non-US banks have already learnt this lesson during the last years. Try to get an account with a non-US bank or use a non-US financial service company if you're an US citizen / green card holder (or have been that until recently) - they will tell you "no thanks". I've some time ago even seen Terms of Services on financial web sites that asked US citizens to leave because of the overstretched liabilities the US is one-sidedly trying to enforce outside their jurisdiction.
- adventureful 14y ago
  It depends on the size of your account, as to whether they say "no thanks" or not.
  - muyuu 14y ago
    The bigger, the worse. More liability.
    - adventureful 14y ago

Im_Mr_Manager 14y ago

Am I in the tiny minority here who thinks that what Megaupload was doing was illegal and should be prosecuted? Ok I get it, the US is trying to apply their laws onto the world and that is a big issue but this seems like the wrong case to get outraged over. Megaupload was built for the purpose of hosting/sharing copyrighted files. You know it and I know it.

jeffool 14y ago
I don't know how to convey the opposite opinion in a way you've likely not heard before. I'll go to extremes. And a handgun is made to kill people. But we generally agree there's a limited context in which that is acceptable, so we allow it. If I want to store my files online, copywritten or not, there's nothing illegal about it.
- cynicalkane 14y ago
  The accusations are that Megaupload was in conspiracy to commit piracy, knowingly working with mass pirates to make large and legally significant amounts of money for themselves, and the indictment presents IM logs and communications that allegedly prove it. If a file host is like a gun shop, then Megaupload was allegedly like an arms dealer.
  - jeffool 14y ago
    Yes, that's the allegation. However, the post I replied to seemed to be saying that "what's the big deal? This service can only be about piracy." I'm saying "no, we don't all agree that this service inherently exists to serve piracy. There are legit uses that exist, and the service is a valid one." And besides, the best analogy to digital lockers? Actual lockers. Their purpose is "hold stuff". If someone uses them for drugs, it's that person who is in trouble. And to presume the intent of the existence of lockers, even if one bus station does cater to gunmen, is silly. We should all be able to look at lockers and say "there's nothing wrong with that."
    - cynicalkane 14y ago

DigitalSea 14y ago

The US government knew they never had a solid case from the start. This whole situation was never going anywhere, it was created to disrupt traffic to Megaupload (and it did), only the exact opposite is now going to happen. Megaupload are going to get a heap of cash back, Dotcom is obviously angry and will no doubt force Megaupload back to the top of the file sharing food chain before too long. The bottom line here is: the US turned what is a civil matter into a criminal one by dressing everything up in money laundering and conspiracy charges and it backfired. I'm no lawyer though.

freshnote 14y ago

Looking back at some of the earlier HN conversations, when Megaupload was first shut down by the US, you can see those who made damning accusations and blind assumptions that Megaupload were guilty. These people should be ashamed. They are part of the problem. It's baffling they would be so opinionated and cocksure although they plainly didn't know the facts. I'm curious why these HN readers told bald faced lies. What's in it for them? How many other discussions have they polluted with misinformation?

pyre 14y ago
I'm pretty sure those people believed that Megaupload was guilty prior to the indictments. E.g. if the US served copyright-infringement indictments against ThePirateBay and a bunch of HNers claimed that ThePirateBay was guilty, it would be a stretch to say that their opinions were solely based on the indictments...

adventureful 14y ago

As an American citizen, I hope the rest of the world realizes that there are plenty of those of us here that are thankful when other countries' justice systems push back. We need a lot more of that, we need help to restrain our government and get it back to operating within a moral boundary. International push-back and isolation would help do that. I think the US Government's reach and power has mostly gone beyond the ability of Americans to restrict, and most Americans are willfully asleep at the wheel (thus our skyrocketing prescription drug abuse, Americans are numbing themselves). It might take a global concerted effort to lock the monster down (keeping in mind the monster has a $4 trillion budget, larger than the size of Germany's entire economy). They might continue to still go all crazy police state on us anyway, but standing up to bullies is important.

sneak 14y ago
You contradict yourself - you claim that the government is operating outside of a moral boundary and is beyond the ability of the citizenry to restrict, but you also claim that international push-back and isolation would help. You're right that it's totally out of control - the rule of law is gone. You're wrong about the potential solutions. The only nonviolent solution is to leave the country and avoid the jurisdictional reach. Take your ball and go somewhere that has the rule of law. They _will_ continue to "go all crazy police state on us", and that is precisely why it's time to leave. It's impossible to make things better while being persecuted or beaten or censored or imprisoned without trial.
- adventureful 14y ago
  I don't think I contradicted myself at all. I said mostly operating outside the ability of Americans to restrict (some aspects do, some aspects don't). And I said I think it will help, if the globe pitched in to restrict the US Federal Govt. There's no contradiction there at all. The push-back by international powers would accomplish international restriction of the Feds that US citizens cannot short term (US citizens mostly have no influence over New Zealand justice, nor trade relations with Singapore, nor military relations with Japan, and so on and so forth). It would take a very large cultural shift to get the US military out of Japan from our side (it would take more than just a new President). Japan, however, can and should kick the US military out tomorrow morning. Ditto Germany. It's better if you stop thinking of America as a 'normal' nation, and start thinking of it as an international superpower that has 180 military bases around the globe, with its fingers in every pie. Americans for example have zero influence or control over the Federal Reserve. You'd have to turn congress inside out to then get laws passed that reach to the Fed. Other nations can however change their relationship with the Fed and its banking arms. American voters would have to reform the entire government top to bottom before they got to restricting CIA activities in Italy (for example). Italy however, can get started on that tomorrow morning. The US Government is extremely large and powerful, and it has a superpower's reach globally. It makes perfect sense that it would help if the rest of the world pushed back against its international abuses. Let me provide you an example: I can vote for a congressman, that single congressman cannot realistically stop the NSA at this point, the NSA has a budget equal to the budget of Greece. It would take a complete government overhaul to restructure the NSA, and that will take a long time. Other countries however, at their choosing, can immediately alter what they allow departments like the CIA or NSA to do in their jurisdiction (and or at least make the effort to push back). The US Government is not one thing, it's a massive entity with many powerful heads that operate independent of each other.