14 ms·

Police have to return material to Dotcom

170 points by stfu 13y ago

joering2 13y ago
> Police are expected to complete the request at their own cost. This is NOT true, of course. It will be done at tax-payers expense. And Chief of Police is probably happy -- next financial year most people will forget about this raid and he has a good reason to ask for more money, because, you know, capturing criminals gets more expensive... Obnoxious.
- mtgx 13y ago
  If anything, they should be punished for this move, and get a 5% cut in next year's budget.
  - saalweachter 13y ago
    Eh, cutting the department's budget retributively is stupid. The most appropriate and effective punishment is to find the people who are most responsible and should have shut the whole thing down (eg, the Chief), fire them, and pursue any appropriate civil or criminal charges against them. If the grunts take a pay cut and the cars go an extra year before being replaced, the Chief may still choose to do the same thing again. If you're the Replacement Chief for the Chief who was sacked and sued, you might reconsider...
    - apalmer 13y ago
      Would go further punishing the Police for this kinda thing would be bad precedent. The police chief did nothing wrong as far as i understand, he got all the right warrants, didn't use excessive force, didn't ignore protocol etc. The judicial branch may or may not have some responsibility, as its their job to interpret the law and use some degree of judgement. But ultimately this is the laws created by the legislative branch, and it appears this is the executive branch pushing through some agenda at behest of the US. I do think the policeman has the responsibility for some level of personal professional conduct, i on the other hand do not want the police to have the full authority to chose to disregard the judicial and executive branches of government because they dont agree with a law
      - saalweachter 13y ago
        Yeah, to some extent I'm speaking out my ass a bit since I don't know the full details. If the judge issuing the warrants acted improperly, fire him. If the judge shouldn't have issued the warrant, but the chief shouldn't have asked for it, reprimand them both. If everyone acted legally but the laws are stupid, fire the legislators and get new laws. You've got to find the right point to apply your anger to effect appropriate change.
  - ars 13y ago
    That punishes entirely the wrong people. They will just fire someone who had nothing to do with this.
maeon3 13y ago
It's because of stuff like this that Cloud Computing is not a very good solution, because at the drop of a hat, some user, or someone could drop in a picture of an underage girl showing some boob, or some folder of MP3 songs or whatever, and then everyone starts shouting 'Oh god won't somebody think of the children', and you come back to your data centers are in ruins, locks cut, doors broken in, and all that is left is cat5 cables, and a 7 year legal battle (from another legal system in a different country) ahead of you. It's because of stories like this that I keep hidden secret offsite offline backups, that only I know about and you would have to torture me to get that info. That way when your entire business is squished from the judicial system of a different country based on the behaviors of a person you don't even know, at least you can salvage what you have and try to pivot and get your stolen income streams back while you enter a 7 year legal battle where you win. You have to plan for hurricanes knocking out your individual data centers, and you have to plan for legal hurricanes that knock out ALL your data centers. It's part of the new world. You have to be able to replicate, or else the mafia don walks into your shop, and you have to do everything they say. With prior preparation, you can tell the don you are not interested in his insurance, and then buckle down for the legal/illegal hurricane coming your way.
- Adirael 13y ago
  I keep local backups of everything. The HP Microserver I bought is very handy for stuff like that. If anything happens to my servers (ALL of them) being back online will be a matter of hours/days and not years.
  - easytiger 13y ago
    What is the noise output of one of those?
    - Adirael 13y ago
      HP claims 22dB. I saw a blog post that swapped the fan and added a variable resistor to achieve 6dB. The one I got at the office is barely noticeable (it's at my feet). On a home setting a closet would be a good place to hide it and shield any sound from the hard driver or fans.
tripzilch 13y ago
"A judge has ordered the police to sift through all digital material taken illegally from Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and to return anything irrelevant to their investigation--at their own cost." ahahaha, have fun sifting through 25 petabytes of data! As I've said before, I really wonder how much of that data really is copyrighted content (of course, just about all data is copyrighted in a manner, legally speaking, what I mean is stuff that the RIAA/MPAA have a copyright claim to, who are behind this international shakedown). Perhaps we'll find out, and if not I'd be very interested in the numbers because I can't seem to find a way to make them add up to something in the ballpark of 25PB.
- vidarh 13y ago
  Unless he had a full backup of MegaUpload at his house, it's not going to be 25 petabytes of data. MegaUpload was hosted in the US and any data stored with their hosting service would presumably be outside of the scope of this case. As far as I understand this ruling is about his personal data, confiscated when they raided his house.
  - tripzilch 13y ago
    Hm, okay, that makes sense. Didn't realize this was only the data they confiscated from his house.
- Kurtz79 13y ago
  The idea of the police having to "sift" though all this data it's impossibly hilarious. It's like they have a court order that tells them to spend their day watching porn.
  - bediger4000 13y ago
    And that sounds great, until you realize that it's Kim Dotcom's porn. I'm thinking that porn wouldn't really be to anyone's taste, and may actually be aesthetically repugnant.
fmstephe 13y ago
As a New Zealander I was very disappointed that we appeared to be cooperating with US legal requests with no consideration of whether those requests were reasonable or even legal. I feel a cautious pride to see that there is an effective pushback from our courts against what is an unjust extradition attempt.
- grecy 13y ago
  Hear, hear. New Zealand has a strong history of standing up to the big bully, I sincerely hope it continues. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand%27s_nuclear-free_zone#Recent_developments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand%27s_nuclear-free_zo...
  - aunty_helen 13y ago
    ~Attempted inclusion of software patents at the request of MS + IBM ~3 Strikes law prototyped by US for their consumption ~Royal Dutch Shell's anti-sea protest law ~Skycity's law change (and block) for convention centre These have all been in the last National Governments term yet you insist on using an example from the 70's that shows how we stuck it to the man...
    - fmstephe 13y ago
      I agree that we don't have anything close to a perfect record. And when dotcom was raided at gunpoint I really felt that this was it. Everything you wrote above was now just the new normal, and we were just a passive conduit of foreign and corporate interests. But this pushback seems quite real and give some reassurance that some part of the NZ legal system is working in a way that can make us feel (sometimes) proud.
- marssaxman 13y ago
  As a US citizen who has long admired New Zealand from afar, I have similar feelings.
codex 13y ago
This in no way vindicates Dotcom; the police simply seized all potential evidence without sorting it first. Evidence deemed irrelevant to the case must be returned; the rest will be kept.
jorgeleo 13y ago
Police have to return material.. <sarcasm>aaawwwwww</sarcasm>
mariuolo 13y ago
Even if they returned his drives, how could he be sure the data is intact or doesn't contain trojan horses of some kind? It's the last piece of hardware I would want to connect to my system.
ttrreeww 13y ago
So.. does that mean megaupload is coming back with data in tact? I got some... hmm... data I wish to retrieve :)

170 points by stfu 13y ago

> Police are expected to complete the request at their own cost. This is NOT true, of course. It will be done at tax-payers expense. And Chief of Police is probably happy -- next financial year most people will forget about this raid and he has a good reason to ask for more money, because, you know, capturing criminals gets more expensive... Obnoxious.

mtgx 13y ago
If anything, they should be punished for this move, and get a 5% cut in next year's budget.
- saalweachter 13y ago
  Eh, cutting the department's budget retributively is stupid. The most appropriate and effective punishment is to find the people who are most responsible and should have shut the whole thing down (eg, the Chief), fire them, and pursue any appropriate civil or criminal charges against them. If the grunts take a pay cut and the cars go an extra year before being replaced, the Chief may still choose to do the same thing again. If you're the Replacement Chief for the Chief who was sacked and sued, you might reconsider...
  - apalmer 13y ago
    Would go further punishing the Police for this kinda thing would be bad precedent. The police chief did nothing wrong as far as i understand, he got all the right warrants, didn't use excessive force, didn't ignore protocol etc. The judicial branch may or may not have some responsibility, as its their job to interpret the law and use some degree of judgement. But ultimately this is the laws created by the legislative branch, and it appears this is the executive branch pushing through some agenda at behest of the US. I do think the policeman has the responsibility for some level of personal professional conduct, i on the other hand do not want the police to have the full authority to chose to disregard the judicial and executive branches of government because they dont agree with a law
    - saalweachter 13y ago
      Yeah, to some extent I'm speaking out my ass a bit since I don't know the full details. If the judge issuing the warrants acted improperly, fire him. If the judge shouldn't have issued the warrant, but the chief shouldn't have asked for it, reprimand them both. If everyone acted legally but the laws are stupid, fire the legislators and get new laws. You've got to find the right point to apply your anger to effect appropriate change.
- ars 13y ago
  That punishes entirely the wrong people. They will just fire someone who had nothing to do with this.

maeon3 13y ago

It's because of stuff like this that Cloud Computing is not a very good solution, because at the drop of a hat, some user, or someone could drop in a picture of an underage girl showing some boob, or some folder of MP3 songs or whatever, and then everyone starts shouting 'Oh god won't somebody think of the children', and you come back to your data centers are in ruins, locks cut, doors broken in, and all that is left is cat5 cables, and a 7 year legal battle (from another legal system in a different country) ahead of you. It's because of stories like this that I keep hidden secret offsite offline backups, that only I know about and you would have to torture me to get that info. That way when your entire business is squished from the judicial system of a different country based on the behaviors of a person you don't even know, at least you can salvage what you have and try to pivot and get your stolen income streams back while you enter a 7 year legal battle where you win. You have to plan for hurricanes knocking out your individual data centers, and you have to plan for legal hurricanes that knock out ALL your data centers. It's part of the new world. You have to be able to replicate, or else the mafia don walks into your shop, and you have to do everything they say. With prior preparation, you can tell the don you are not interested in his insurance, and then buckle down for the legal/illegal hurricane coming your way.

Adirael 13y ago
I keep local backups of everything. The HP Microserver I bought is very handy for stuff like that. If anything happens to my servers (ALL of them) being back online will be a matter of hours/days and not years.
- easytiger 13y ago
  What is the noise output of one of those?
  - Adirael 13y ago
    HP claims 22dB. I saw a blog post that swapped the fan and added a variable resistor to achieve 6dB. The one I got at the office is barely noticeable (it's at my feet). On a home setting a closet would be a good place to hide it and shield any sound from the hard driver or fans.

tripzilch 13y ago

"A judge has ordered the police to sift through all digital material taken illegally from Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and to return anything irrelevant to their investigation--at their own cost." ahahaha, have fun sifting through 25 petabytes of data! As I've said before, I really wonder how much of that data really is copyrighted content (of course, just about all data is copyrighted in a manner, legally speaking, what I mean is stuff that the RIAA/MPAA have a copyright claim to, who are behind this international shakedown). Perhaps we'll find out, and if not I'd be very interested in the numbers because I can't seem to find a way to make them add up to something in the ballpark of 25PB.

vidarh 13y ago
Unless he had a full backup of MegaUpload at his house, it's not going to be 25 petabytes of data. MegaUpload was hosted in the US and any data stored with their hosting service would presumably be outside of the scope of this case. As far as I understand this ruling is about his personal data, confiscated when they raided his house.
- tripzilch 13y ago
  Hm, okay, that makes sense. Didn't realize this was only the data they confiscated from his house.
Kurtz79 13y ago
The idea of the police having to "sift" though all this data it's impossibly hilarious. It's like they have a court order that tells them to spend their day watching porn.
- bediger4000 13y ago
  And that sounds great, until you realize that it's Kim Dotcom's porn. I'm thinking that porn wouldn't really be to anyone's taste, and may actually be aesthetically repugnant.

fmstephe 13y ago

As a New Zealander I was very disappointed that we appeared to be cooperating with US legal requests with no consideration of whether those requests were reasonable or even legal. I feel a cautious pride to see that there is an effective pushback from our courts against what is an unjust extradition attempt.

grecy 13y ago
Hear, hear. New Zealand has a strong history of standing up to the big bully, I sincerely hope it continues. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand%27s_nuclear-free_zone#Recent_developments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand%27s_nuclear-free_zo...
- aunty_helen 13y ago
  ~Attempted inclusion of software patents at the request of MS + IBM ~3 Strikes law prototyped by US for their consumption ~Royal Dutch Shell's anti-sea protest law ~Skycity's law change (and block) for convention centre These have all been in the last National Governments term yet you insist on using an example from the 70's that shows how we stuck it to the man...
  - fmstephe 13y ago
    I agree that we don't have anything close to a perfect record. And when dotcom was raided at gunpoint I really felt that this was it. Everything you wrote above was now just the new normal, and we were just a passive conduit of foreign and corporate interests. But this pushback seems quite real and give some reassurance that some part of the NZ legal system is working in a way that can make us feel (sometimes) proud.
marssaxman 13y ago
As a US citizen who has long admired New Zealand from afar, I have similar feelings.

codex 13y ago

This in no way vindicates Dotcom; the police simply seized all potential evidence without sorting it first. Evidence deemed irrelevant to the case must be returned; the rest will be kept.

jorgeleo 13y ago

Police have to return material.. <sarcasm>aaawwwwww</sarcasm>

mariuolo 13y ago

Even if they returned his drives, how could he be sure the data is intact or doesn't contain trojan horses of some kind? It's the last piece of hardware I would want to connect to my system.

ttrreeww 13y ago

So.. does that mean megaupload is coming back with data in tact? I got some... hmm... data I wish to retrieve :)