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NSA Unlawfully Surveiled Kim Dotcom in New Zealand
- mtgx 9y agoAnd now waiting for the other shoe to drop: FBI doing parallel construction with evidence obtained through that illegal NSA surveillance.
- dboreham 9y ago"The Good Wife" is a great source of information on this.
- djrogers 9y agoNo need - there’s nothing in the article that indicates any US laws that were broken... -edit to correct autocorrect
- jonknee 9y agoExcept for the part he's not an American so it wouldn't be illegal for the NSA to snoop his emails and no parallel construction is needed to know that Kim Dotcom ran a massive pirate site. He boasted about it and his wealth from it openly! Kim's great at getting press and that's about all there is to see here.
- I_am_tiberius 9y agoWas Kim dotcom considered a national security risk because of Megaupload or because of other things he did / or planned?
- gozur88 9y agoUnlawful in New Zealand. I'd be surprised if what they did wasn't legal under US law.
- koolba 9y agoShort of political assassination, is anything done by the US government outside the US illegal under US law?
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoTo quote Malory Archer: "It's the government! Even if it wasn't legal they'd enforce it."
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoThere's a difference between being illegal and there being a precedent of it being illegal. The government does lots of things that are probably illegal but there's no precedent set. That gives them the opportunity to argue in court why the specific instance in question is different.
- openmosix 9y agoPolitical assassination has been a thing for the US gov for a while https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/05/cia-long-history-kill-leaders-around-the-world-north-korea https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/05/cia-long-his...
- fenwick67 9y agoYes, thank you. Similar to how "The president can't have a conflict of interest", the three-letter agencies can basically do whatever they want and get away with it.
- ak4g 9y agoStrictly staying within US law is not the only thing that the US intelligence apparatus tries to do. There are also agreements not to monitor the citizens of "Five-Eyes" citizens in those countries without due process; even if not illegal, it would violate the intelligence-sharing agreements we have with those nations and would be highly improper due to the damage to national security that risking those intelligence-sharing agreements would entail. That being said, this story is incredibly thin. >It aimed to explain why Dotcom and others charged in the FBI's Megaupload investigation were spied on for two months longer than previously admitted. There's no reason this would even be improper, if the FBI had gone through due process in the US, which it appears they had. This story appears to be entirely Kim Dotcom's lawyer trying to politicize his case in order to fight a lawful extradition.
- turc1656 9y agoCorrect. I was wondering the entire time reading the link what exactly was illegal since it is fairly common knowledge that all nations spy on each other and in the US it is totally legal for the US government to spy on foreigners who are not on their soil.
- gozur88 9y agoIt's a confusing headline. What the NSA does is probably illegal in every country but the US, but the implication is it's illegal in the US. It's probable they do things that are illegal under US law, but I doubt this is one of them.
- toufka 9y agoThe concept of legality gets awkward when talking about the military force of a nation, but even in the United States there are limits to what the military (NSA, DOD, etc.) are authorized to do. Though the matter at hand could be framed as a matter of 'economic security' to the US, it is unclear that such an argument is sound. And if that argument is not sound, the consequences that stem from the US military being involved in the domestic law enforcement of another state against their will are not desirable to the US from a policy perspective. Though NSA's actions may or may not be illegal in the US, there are other standards used to judge or analyze military action in the global economic marketplace.
- dane-pgp 9y agoI don't know enough about US law, but if the president is required (at least in theory) to receive authorisation from congress before (or after) attacking an enemy nation, is there not some equivalent requirement for using the military apparatus against an ally? Perhaps the constitution allows the president to do whatever he or she wants with the military (as long as it is within the historic bounds of what militaries do) without triggering the need for congressional approval unless it reaches a "state of war" at which point people might actually start dying. That would seem like the sort of practical level of discretion that a country would give its executive branch, but I can't help thinking that there could or should be some law somewhere that gave the president's actions against allies some type of legislative basis, so that voters had an idea of how the president would use these secretive powers, and could hold the executive to account at the ballot box.
- erentz 9y agoI think it's probably legal given he is a foreign national on foreign soil. (I'm not sure if there is anything in the laws that empower the NSA that limits their scope for what matters they investigate on, if so, they may have violated that. If not, there probably should be.) A fairer question might be, why is the mission of the NSA to enforce copyright law for media companies? Shouldn't they be busy trying to hunt down terrorists, prevent attacks against the USA and it's people abroad, things like that?
- Taniwha 9y agoNo, he was a legal NZ resident, the law protected all residents equally The GCSB was found to be illegally wiretapping him, sadly since that time the govt changed the law to make all that stuff legal. It's election year here in NZ if we want to change these laws we need to change the govt.
- aptidude187 9y agoCan someone state in a nutshell why this guy keeps getting bullied by the government?
- Fifer82 9y agoPiracy. MegaUpload was a huge warez distributor around the same time as RapidShare. File Hosters over HTTP
- aptidude187 9y agoSo why are rapidgator and uploaded or any other upload services getting off the hook
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cavanasm 9y agoI'm not sure they are, they're just not nearly as public. Kim Dotcom is / was notoriously boastful about his actions, and all the money he made off those actions. I've never heard similar things about the founders of any other file hosting service founder/owner that is well known for piracy. Makes him an incredibly appealing target I think.
- toyg 9y agoSame as PirateBay, which made its name when they publicly replied to copyright enforcement letters with insults. Refusing to be humbled by established authorities is the real crime, because it corrodes their legitimacy and hence their whole existence. It's a bit like being homosexual in countries with harsh state-religions but tolerant attitudes: keep it quiet and nobody will bother you, but if you flaunt it then the law will crack down on you, because you're attacking the basis of the whole legal edifice.
- nerpderp83 9y ago
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- 1024core 9y agoSince when did the NSA become the copyright industry's police? There were no security implications of Kim's operation; why was he targeted by the NSA?
- sunsetMurk 9y ago(Un)Fortunately they have the tools that others want to use, so other agencies request info & access. Very similar to how the FBI manages a database of faces for facial recognition [1] and your local LEO can query w/o a warrant or probable cause [2]. 1. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/smile-youre-in-the-fbi-face-recognition-database/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/smile-youre-in-t... 2. ...I'll try to find the link but recently watched a YouTube video of a government hearing on this where the senator or congressman was very unhappy about this situation.
- baybal2 9y ago>(Un)Fortunately they have the tools that others want to use, so other agencies request info & access. The bigger thing there is the fact that a kind of well orchestrated "operation" took place is now proven, disclosed, and fully admitted by NZ officials. The info disclosed gives a lot of background on how US NSA solicits "favors" from other states and on what pretexts
- revelation 9y agoYou phrase it as if this is a daily occurrence, "other agencies request info & access". In Germany, when intelligence agencies merge with ordinary law enforcement, we call it Gestapo. There should be by definition very little overlap between the two. Law enforcement works nationally, where law applies; intelligence agencies can not work where law applies, because they would be in flagrant violation of it.
- schlowmo 9y ago> "In Germany, when intelligence agencies merge with ordinary law enforcement, we call it Gestapo." Who is "we" in this context? At least in the Germany I know most people actually call this "Gefahrenabwehr" (literally: danger prevention) or "Staatsschutz" and can't remember any historic event which has shown that this is a bad idea. If right-wing terrorist join the party people call it "Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund" (National Socialist Underground) [0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Undergrou...
- philip1209 9y agoPutting aside the target of the surveillance - Yes, the NSA is a spy agency. It's their job to spy outside the country. And of course the spying is illegal outside of the country - no country endorses being spied on by foreign governments.
- dgfgfdagasdfgfa 9y ago> And of course the spying is illegal outside of the country - no country endorses being spied on by foreign governments. Isn't this exactly what the Five Eyes surveillance agreement is? It certainly seems extremely relevant and may also explain why the NSA's surveillance here was possible.
- zciwon 9y agoIt's illegal for these countries to spy on their own citizens so they get their friends to do it instead.
- revelation 9y agoNone of the information obtained by a spy agency can ever enter a court of law, and none of it should ever be "passed" or "shared" with ordinary law enforcement so they can act on it & parallel construct.
- toyg 9y agoI'm not shocked in the slightest - spying is likely the most harmless of actions performed by US and NZ against Dotcom. It's still much more shocking to me how NZ authorities de-facto renounced their sovereignty, by letting US agents free to walk all over their laws when they raided him. They did that with glee, with the happiness of a servant who knows he's making a great job for his master and rewards will ensue. It made a mockery of the NZ justice system, all involved police chiefs and politicians should have been thrown in jail for treason.
- darawk 9y agoOh look, the NSA using its extraordinary capabilities solely to ensure the military security of the United States. Kim Dotcom surely represented a strategic threat to our interests. /s
- yuhong 9y agoThinking about it, Watergate came after we left the gold standard. The more money being spent on the NSA, the more government debt increase and benefit contractors like Snowden.
- jonknee 9y agoThe only mention of NSA seems to come from Kim... His logic appears to be that as a Five Eyes member the NSA and GCSB have some shared resources and that means the NSA used those resources to spy on him. That might be true, but he has no evidence that the NSA cares one bit about him. I seriously doubt the NSA was tasked with working a non-terrorism related piracy case, but that's me. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=11897719 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=11897719 > Dotcom, who should have been protected from GCSB surveillance as a New Zealand resident, said the GCSB did not know because its equipment was being used by the NSA, which was "directly involved". > The GCSB documents do contain an admission of NSA involvement, although it was not made outright. In response to the accusation the GCSB had accessed NSA networks, the bureau refused to answer on national security grounds and acknowledged that under High Court rules that doing so would be seen by the court as an admission it had. > Dotcom said the details showed some other party was using GCSB systems and he believed it would be the NSA."The US government has requested my extradition. The NSA is clearly the most interested party." > "The NSA has unrestricted access to GCSB surveillance systems. In fact most of the technology the GCSB uses was supplied by the NSA."
- moomin 9y agoWorth pointing out at this point that Kim is a heavily-documented liar. If he told me the sky was blue, I'd go outside to check.
- peter422 9y agoDon't worry, he has been meticulously collecting evidence and can prove everything! Unfortunately he can't post it just yet, but he'll definitely post it soon! Maybe next week! Or next month! But it's gonna be huge!!!
- ceejayoz 9y ago(Right after he gives Hannity his other scoop: https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/866016183815942144 https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/866016183815942144)
- Zorlag 9y agoBefore you sympathize with this man. He ripped of tons of people with a subscription scam in Germany a couple of years ago. Before that he got a sentence for insider trades. He is a criminal alright.
- dmit 9y agoIrrelevant. The story is not about him.
- jonknee 9y agoIt's quite literally all about him, he's the only one making the allegations! If you read past the headline there is no source for NSA involvement other than Kim himself.
- xkiwi 9y ago>He ripped of tons of people with a subscription scam in Germany a couple of years ago. Can you provide a source relate to the subscription scam?
- will_brown 9y agoAs long as the US wastes tax payer dollars doing investigations and enforcement of Hollywood copyrights, I'd like to see them pay some dumb as agent to do a comparison of the total number of copyright violations on YouTube vs the total number of copyright violations on Mega servers. For fun they could do a comparison of the number of copyright complaints both YouTube and Mega received and the number of those complaints they have acted on. Maybe for extra bonus we can also compare the number of counterfeit products on Amazon (violating copyright or trademark).
- freshhawk 9y agoBut is it a waste? The export of American values through their media is an incredibly powerful tool. Ignoring their goals and values, which I disagree with, the tactics and strategy make complete logical sense. There is a reason that military agencies get to edit scripts before they allow the use of their resources in movies and it's not because they're stupid people.
- will_brown 9y ago>The export of American values through their media is an incredibly powerful tool. If American made media is such a powerful tool you think American tax payer dollars would go to something like Mega maximizing distribution of American values through this media, rather than spending (tax payer) money to limit the distribution of said American values.
- nerpderp83 9y agoVoice of America. See also military censorship of military resources used in movies.
- freshhawk 9y agoTrue, if America had the same propaganda goals but a much more socialist attitude. As it is, one of those values is that the people who own this media should be incredibly rich. And those rich people should have more of a say over what is allowed, and they love copyright - the longer the term and the more violent the enforcement the better.
- stefantalpalaru 9y ago"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
- shomyo 9y agoNSA Unlawfully Surveiled everyone in the world. Nothing new here.