Kim Dotcom's extradition case begins

Kim Dotcom goes to court to fight his extradition case as the political situation in the country has never been worse.

As John Minto says:

“This week it will be important for another reason. It will be a litmus test not of (Kim Dotcom and his internet activities) but of just how independent our courts are.”

The egregious invasion of this country’s sovereignty and the scandalous arrest of Dotcom for what was an alleged civil breach of copyright in an armed raid has opened up the very nature of political power an corruption in this country.

The government has used the revelation of the spies breaking the law to further extend their power, attack civil liberties and to corrupt all aspects of this country that are supposed to act as a counterweight to the abuse of Executive Power.

Police take Hager to court over sources

The election campaign saw the nature of this come out in public with Nicky Hager’s book “Dirty Politics” and the public event “the Moment of Truth” which brought together Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and others to reveal the truth about how this country has been taken over by the NSA Surveillance State.

This should have opened the eyes of the public but instead the public went into complete denial of the truth and returned the sitting government to power and opened the doors to what is fascism where all pillars of state power (including the fourth Estate) are being used to reinforce corporate power.

This saw one of this country’s worst criminals (Cameron Slater) getting his complaints investigated by police which resulted in the policeraid of investigative journalist Nicky Hager’s house. There has been a campaign of vilification against the government’s critics by the government itself and the mainstream media. In the meantime, John Key and his cronies have been whitewashed in every single actionthat has been taken against them.

Secret Police investigations of NZers using spineless corporations

This is fascism acting under a fig leaf of democracy.

This trial is, indeed a litmus test of just how independent our courts are.

Here is the mainstream coverage

Kim Dotcom’s extradition hearing starts today

A court hearing to decide whether internet businesman Kim Dotcom should be extradited to face trial in the United States will finally begin today.

Radio NZ,

21 September, 2015

It has been nearly four years since armed officers and a police helicopter swarmed Mr Dotcom's mansion in Coatesville, north of Auckland, arresting him and three other men.

Mr Dotcom was the mastermind behind the now-defunct Megaupload, a cyber storage locker that the FBI claims willfully breached copyright on a mass scale by hosting illegally-created movie, music and software files.

Three other men who held senior positions at Megaupload - Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato - were also arrested during the 20 January 2012 raid, and also face extradition.

A further three Megaupload staff members were arrested overseas.

Kim Dotcom, left, and Bram van der Kolk.    Photo: RNZ

Among the charges the men face are conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, money-laundering and racketeering, and fraud by wire transfer.

However, the United States' attempt to extradite Mr Dotcom and his co-accused has been persistently stymied by court action taken by the four men over the extradition process and mistakes made by New Zealand police and spy agencies before and during the raid.

Six months after the raid, a High Court ruling - which was later overturned - found the search warrants used in the raid were too road.

Then, in September 2012, the Government was forced to admit the Government Communications and Security Bureau's (GCSB) spying on Mr Dotcom was illegal, as he was a New Zealand resident.

That sparked a review of the spy agency, and a widely-opposed law change that allowed the agency to spy on its own citizens in certain circumstances.

Kim Dotcom told Radio New Zealand the events leading to today's extradition hearing had taken a personal toll and affected the friendships with his three co-accused.

Listen to Kim Dotcom speaking to Kate Newton on Morning Report ( 4 min 18 sec )

"You're not always positive because of the sheer power that is opposing you ... governments, Hollywood, the recording industry and all they want is to crush me and I'm just one guy," he said. "The pressure can get to you - but I'm still here."

Kim Dotcom said the four co-accused were no longer close friends.

"When you go through stressful times like this there are a lot of things that bubble up where you are stressed and you are annoyed and I think that kind of led to us all cooling off a little bit.

"We were very close friends before all of this started and I don't think we are that close any more."

The case against Dotcom

The United States' case against Mr Dotcom was summarised in a 200-page document made public at the end of 2013.

The FBI claimed Megaupload, while purporting to be an online locker for people to store large files for their own use, was in fact acting as a repository for thousands of illegally uploaded movies, television episodes and music tracks.

Kim Dotcom's mansion in Coatesville in January 2013.    Photo: AFP

Megaupload did not have a search function, but third-party websites that indexed files on the site sprang up, allowing internet users to search for titles.

The site also had a rewards system, paying small cash amounts to users who uploaded files that proved popular among other Megaupload users.

Some very active uploaders earned more than US$50,000 in this way.

The evidence summary claimed this rewards system "provided a direct financial incentive for ... users to post URL links on [third-party] linking sites".

"It was known in the public that the Mega Conspiracy rewarded some users who uploaded popular copyright-infringing works, even despite claims on the Mega Sites that suggested otherwise."

Legal document filed against Megaupload     Photo: RNZ

The US alleged - based largely on emails between senior Megaupload staff - that the accused were willfully infringing copyright themselves, by uploading and also viewing illegal copies of copyrighted material; knew that material on their sites was infringing copyright; were making money from subscription fees and advertising as a result of hosting those illegal files; failed to block the accounts of copyright infringers; and failed to remove the infringing material.

"At a minimum, Megaupload Limited was plausibly aware of the ongoing rampant infringement taking place on its website," the evidence summary said.

Third-party copyright violation was not an extraditable crime under the agreement between New Zealand and the US, meaning the US would have to show evidence that Dotcom and his co-accused were in an active criminal conspiracy with their users.

In an affidavit filed in North Shore district court last week, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig said the evidence provided did not meet the threshold necessary to extradite the men.

"There is ... serious lack of evidence of communications between [Megaupload] and such alleged users needed to prove an agreement that is subject to laws of conspiracy," professor Lessig wrote.

"The United States Constitution prohibits the United States Department of Justice from prosecuting, as they apparently want to here, a new kind of criminal conspiracy based on defendants providing an 'environment of infringement' or their failing to disable all links to an allegedly infringing copy."

Hearing delay

The extradition hearing, which has already been rescheduled nine times, could be delayed again this week.

It was expected to run for four weeks, in the jurisdiction of North Shore District Court.

Before the hearing itself gets under way, the court will hear an application from Mr Dotcom's lawyers for another delay, because the United States would not allow Mr Dotcom to spend frozen assets on hiring United States lawyers and expert witnesses.

Mr Dotcom's lawyers said this placed their defence at a disadvantage compared to the United States and the New Zealand Crown, which had no such curbs on their preparation.

Laila Harre, Kim Dotcom and journalist Glenn Greenwald speak to reporters after the Moment of Truth event.    Photo: RNZ / Kim Baker Wilson

Politics and spies

Kim Dotcom has loomed large not only in New Zealand's courts since 2012, but also in the country's politics.

Following on from the GCSB revelations, Mr Dotcom launched the Internet Party last year in order to contest the 2014 general election.

A vote-sharing alliance with the Mana Party was condemned by some within Mana, including former MP Sue Bradford, who quit the party as a result.

Internet-Mana gained just over one percent of the party vote - not enough for any list MPs - and Mana leader Hone Harawira lost his Te Tai Tokerau seat.

Just days before the election, Mr Dotcom hosted an event at Auckland Town Hall billed as "The Moment of Truth", where he promised to reveal proof that Prime Minister John Key knew about him well in advance of the mansion raid, and had a hand in moves to extradite him.

No such evidence emerged, but the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden - who appeared at the event via videolink from Moscow - claimed the NSA had access to mass metadata from New Zealanders via a surveillance programme called XKEYSCORE.

John Key denied there was any mass surveillance of New Zealanders, saying while some of the metadata might be from New Zealand, it was not being collected wholesale.

Mona Dotcom.    Photo: AFP

Kim Dotcom also played a crucial role in the political demise and subsequent resurrection of former ACT MP John Banks.

Mr Banks was convicted last August of failing to declare two $25,000 donations during his 2010 Auckland mayoralty campaign, as coming from Mr Dotcom.

In his decision convicting Mr Banks, the trial judge said he found the testimony given by Mr Dotcom and his estranged wife, Mona, to be reliable.

However, the Court of Appeal acquitted Mr Banks of the charge earlier this year, finding Crown Law had misled the court by failing to disclose a memorandum in which Mr Dotcom contradicted the version of events he gave in court

Kim Dotcom ‏@KimDotcom  4h4 hours ago

This case is not just about me. This case is about how much control we allow US corporations and the US government to have over the Internet

I can recommend this open letter from one of the most principled people in this coutnry, John Minto.

Open letter to Kim Dotcom

By John Minto

The Daily Blog,

20 September, 2015

Kia ora Kim,

Good luck with defending the government’s extradition case against you this week. Whatever the outcome in the District Court I’m sure it will end up in the Supreme Court eventually so there’ll be a lot of water to go under the bridge yet.

You are facing the wealth, power and wrath of corporate America because you provided an efficient means for people to share files on line which allegedly included some copyrighted songs and movies as is done on many internet platforms.

But instead of taking a civil claim against you Hollywood’s corporate moguls want to make an example of you. They want you in jail forever as the modern-day equivalent of the body left hanging on the scaffold for the vultures or the severed head on a pike… Don’t mess with us is their Mafiosi-type message.

The political environment in which your case is heard is more critical than what the law says. A case of alleged copyright infringement has no basis for extradition hence the desperate claims of “conspiracy” and “racketeering”. If our courts have honesty, courage and backbone they will toss this out as a corporate-inspired abuse of legal process.

The truly embarrassing aspect is just how our GCSB (Government Communications Security Bureau) and police fell over themselves to help out corporate America with their keystone-cops raid on your home. That’s an issue which will be addressed only when New Zealand withdraws from the five eyes network and develops an independent foreign policy. It won’t happen tomorrow but it will happen.

Your millions and uber-capitalist lifestyle are a turnoff to me but during the election campaign I was impressed with what I took as your genuine commitment to the progressive policies of Internet MANA. Had you wanted us to change MANA policies – even with a single comma – we wouldn’t have had a bar of any relationship with the Internet Party. From our point of view your campaign donations that came with no strings attached were welcome. In contrast Labour and National’s very existence depends on corporate money which in turn depends on them adopting corporate-friendly policies.

I have always disagreed with your analysis of the election outcome. It was not your so-called “poisonous politics” which defeated Internet MANA or lost Hone Harawira his seat as MANA MP. In fact the strategy MANA adopted in our decision to go into a strategic alliance with the Internet Party was a successful strategy. Hone gained more votes in last year’s election than he gained in the previous 2011 election and Internet MANA gained significantly more party votes than MANA received by itself in 2011.

(Hone’s vote in Te Tai Tokerau increased from 8,121 in 2011 to 8,969 in 2014 while the MANA vote in the Maori electorates increased from 25,889 to 29,207. The Internet MANA party vote increased by roughly 50% from the MANA 2011 party vote – up from 24,168 to 34,094)

What lost Hone his seat was the political establishment of right-wing Labour MPs, the Prime Minister, National Party, Maori Party and Winston Peters all urging their supporters to back Labour MP Kelvin Davis. For most of the Labour Party leadership the highest priority at the election was to drive MANA out of parliament. Had Labour been able to get close to government it would have needed the extra seats Internet MANA could have brought to a Labour-Green-Internet MANA government. However Kelvin Davis preferred to be a backbench MP in a losing party than be part of a winning team to change the government.

Despite the election outcome I remain proud of the risk MANA took in the relationship with the Internet Party. We did so with our eyes open and as I said that aspect of our campaign was successful.

I think where the Internet Party made a serious error of judgement was in the handling of the “moment of truth” meeting at the Town Hall a week out from the election. It was a “moment of truth” in its revelations of mass surveillance of New Zealanders by the US National Security Agency but this was buried in the media’s expectation of a more detailed revelation of John Key’s knowledge of your case much earlier than he claimed.

In any case that issue was never going to go far. Key has lied and dissembled so often about his memory on a whole range of issues that he would simply have shrugged his shoulders and most media would have accepted it and moved on quickly.

Fixated as they are on trivial political sideshows the mainstream media ignored the issue of mass surveillance and launched a tsunami of negative publicity – led by the Herald and TV3 – which swamped the Internet MANA campaign and dropped the party vote to less than two percent when it had been up to four percent a month earlier.

Your case has already been of importance to this country in helping reveal the extent of lying and illegal mass surveillance of New Zealanders conducted by the GCSB.

This week it will be important for another reason. It will be a litmus test not of yourself and your internet activities but of just how independent our courts are.

Kia kaha, kia toa, kia manawanui.

Here is the recording of the full Moment of Truth