NSA Unlawfully Surveiled Kim Dotcom in New Zealand

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/344742-nsa-unlawfully-surveiled-kim-dotcom-in-new-zealand

by jorkro • 9 years ago

455 121 9 years ago

mtgx• 9 years ago

And now waiting for the other shoe to drop: FBI doing parallel construction with evidence obtained through that illegal NSA surveillance.

dboreham• 9 years ago

"The Good Wife" is a great source of information on this.

djrogers• 9 years ago

No need - there’s nothing in the article that indicates any US laws that were broken...

-edit to correct autocorrect

jonknee4• 9 years ago

Except 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.

gozur883• 9 years ago

Unlawful in New Zealand. I'd be surprised if what they did wasn't legal under US law.

koolba• 9 years ago

Short of political assassination, is anything done by the US government outside the US illegal under US law?

rm_-rf_slash• 9 years ago

To quote Malory Archer: "It's the government! Even if it wasn't legal they'd enforce it."

dsfyu404ed2• 9 years ago

There'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• 9 years ago

Political assassination has been a thing for the US gov for a while https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/05/cia-long-his...

ak4g• 9 years ago

Strictly 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.

abfan1127• 9 years ago

only if its forbidden by treaty.

syshum4• 9 years ago

It should be, the US Constitution should apply to government actions ANYWHERE not just actions on US Soil, the US Constitution was never designed to be geographically limited, it was designed to limit what the government was allowed to do, period, in all cases in all lands, everywhere

Sadly the US Court Systems has stated it does not have the authority to apply the Constitution to the US Government when the US Government is acting outside US Soil, it is a ridiculous standard but....

elihu• 9 years ago

If it's done by a member of the United States military, there's the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I'm not sure if it applies to the NSA or CIA, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Code_of_Military_Justi...

turc1656• 9 years ago

Correct. 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.

gozur883• 9 years ago

It'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.

erentz• 9 years ago

I 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• 9 years ago

No, 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.

aptidude1872• 9 years ago

Can someone state in a nutshell why this guy keeps getting bullied by the government?

Fifer82• 9 years ago

Piracy. MegaUpload was a huge warez distributor around the same time as RapidShare. File Hosters over HTTP

aptidude1872• 9 years ago

So why are rapidgator and uploaded or any other upload services getting off the hook

e12e• 9 years ago

I think it's a little more to it than that - it's not just that they made money of piracy, but also the publicity and prestige around the case. I'd liken it to what happened with Kevin Mitnick - when he eluded the FBI for so long - and the surrounding pressure to increase sentencing around unauthorized access to computer systems. The lobby powers are a bit different this time around, with copyright being the main issue - but "damages" are just as, if not way more, overblown IMNHO.

Piss off large conglomerates, and they'll in turn get the government to throw the book at you, even if they have to write a new book to get it done...

1024core• 9 years ago

Since 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• 9 years 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-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• 9 years 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

revelation2• 9 years ago

You 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.

philip12092• 9 years ago

I'm more interested in how much corporate espionage and counter-espionage they do. If a foreign company steals/hacks domestic IP and that hurts the US economy, I wouldn't be surprised if they took action. So, if we can agree that this type of action is reasonable by the NSA, then I could see them justifying the surveillance of Kim Dotcom under industrial counter-surveillance.

tenpies• 9 years ago

It's not just protective. Snowden indicated that part of what they consider national security involves economic security. In their interpretation, their mandate includes corporate and economic espionage, and ensuring that the US maintains its economic edge.

See:

Spying on Petrobas, a a Brazilian oil company: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-bra...

Spying on an EU Anti-trust official: https://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-spied-on-eu-antitrust-official...

And there are a number of cases where the NSA spied on payment processing companies. I haven't included those because you could argue that those may be related to tracking terrorism funding.

wildmusings4• 9 years ago

The US intelligence apparatus exists to protect the interests of the citizens of the United States. A foreigner who violates millions of dollars of intellectual property belonging to American citizens and companies is a threat to our interests, and also of the interests of the nearly 200 nations that participate in the global copyright regime, whose copyrights he was also violating. Foreigners on foreign soil have no rights as far as US law is concerned.

adrianratnapala2• 9 years ago

You are right, or something resembling right, as regards Kim Dotcom in relation to the US.

But there is still something troubling here for Americans, because it means that there is an existing mechanism (and/or set of social relations) in place by which American copyright interests can turn the intelligence agencies into their servants. Once such machinery exists, it is at least as dangerous to Americans as it is to foreigners.

derefr• 9 years ago

Foreigners on foreign soil have no rights as far as US law is concerned.

Except for, you know, treaty rights. Which there are a lot of.

petre• 9 years ago

protect the interests of the citizens of the United States

Namely the RIAAA and MPAA in this particular case.

benevol• 9 years ago

If you remember the Snowden revelations, then you also remember that the NSA had been using their power for other then "legal" purposes, such as for economic espionage, and for a long time already.

lostlogin• 9 years ago

Something surely went on between the NZ Key government who were negotiating for the filming of the Hobbit. The studio seemingly found that massive tax breaks weren't enough, and it's been suggested that the curtailing of Dotcom's efforts was part of it.

briandear4• 9 years ago

You are assuming they are. This Dotcom clown could say there were aliens in his bedroom, would be compelled to believe that?

philip12092• 9 years ago

Putting 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• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

It's illegal for these countries to spy on their own citizens so they get their friends to do it instead.

revelation2• 9 years ago

None 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.

toyg2• 9 years ago

I'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• 9 years ago

Oh 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• 9 years ago

Thinking 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.

jonknee4• 9 years ago

The 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

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• 9 years ago

Worth 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• 9 years ago

Don'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!!!

b3lvedere• 9 years ago

Yep. He has been for years and years. http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/kimble/

43gg43g32g• 9 years ago

seriously doubt the NSA was tasked with working a non-terrorism related piracy case

They go after literally everything. Do people not remember the snowden leaks?

jonknee4• 9 years ago

Which Snowden leak showed that the NSA was being used to aid piracy investigations? I'm not disputing they had the technical ability to suck up various Kim Dotcom selectors, just that they have no public reason to do so and there is no evidence that they have.

bgentry2• 9 years ago

I seriously doubt the NSA was tasked with working a non-terrorism related piracy case, but that's me.

There are many examples of NSA and Five Eyes spying that have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism (though afaik none specific to copyright infringement). I linked to a handful in this other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14907667

dogma1138• 9 years ago

The GP is still somewhat correct.

All those cases fall within the domain of legitimate foreign intelligence targets of any organization.

Intelligence agencies perform political and economic intelligence all the time.

But Kim is just an irrelevant target he's way too of a small fish for them to bother.

peterashford• 9 years ago

The GCSB had no reason at all to spy on Dotcom from a New Zealand perspective. The only case being brought against him is a copyright case from US claimants. Who do you think can request GCSB to do it's work for them? I don't think they would have spied on him and raided his home because a foreign business interest was concerned. Unless the request came from a 5-eyes level organisation, I'm pretty sure it would have been illegal for them to act against Dotcom.

incompatible• 9 years ago

Whether or not the NSA spied on Kim in this instance, it would be interesting to know whether they have the capability of spying on NZ networks without assistance from the GCSB. It would be a classic case of shooting your own citizens in the feet: wire up your telecommunications network to allow unlimited spying on demand, then watch as foreign powers make use of it for whatever purposes of their own.

mmjaa4• 9 years ago

the capability of spying on NZ networks without assistance from the GCSB

Of course they do. Read the Wikileaks! The NSA has given itself provenance over the entire planets' worth of digital content. They hack the origin.

nl• 9 years ago

And of course the NSA "doesn't comment on intelligence matters" and so will neither confirm nor deny this.

That means he's entirely free to make up stuff like this knowing that anyone who attempts to call him on it will face the "well it could happen" argument.

throwawaymanbot• 9 years ago

The NSA dishes out intel it has collected to other agencies in the US, including to the IRS and DEA etc. There is no such thing as a person not being a big fish. Its the case being supported that matters.

So in this case, the NSA would have a perfectly good reason to have him under surveillance. Primarily, when you think about how Hollywood and the music industry was impacted economically (and culturally) by his company. The DOJ were justified in requesting technical help, and would expect get intel from the NSA (Who in turn would request assistance from the NZ Folks) to support their case.

I_am_tiberius• 9 years ago

Was Kim dotcom considered a national security risk because of Megaupload or because of other things he did / or planned?

will_brown2• 9 years ago

As 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).

freshhawk3• 9 years ago

But 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_brown2• 9 years 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.

NSA Unlawfully Surveiled Kim Dotcom in New Zealand

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