FBI Used FedEx To Sneak Dotcom's Hard Drives Out of NZ

First time accepted submitter bpkiwi writes "FBI agents, working with New Zealand police on the Megaupload case, took a copy of Kim Dotcom's hard drives and then immediately sneaked out of the police facility and FedEx'ed them back to the USA. Despite the fact that removal of evidence in this manner without official approval (and a chance for the defendant to challenge it) appears to be illegal, the New Zealand government is now left arguing on a technicality — that the law only covers 'physical' items." Things got slightly better for Megaupload users trying to get their files back today. In a court filing the MPAA said users can have their files back as long as access to copyrighted files is blocked. “The MPAA Members are sympathetic to legitimate users who may have relied on Megaupload to store their legitimately acquired or created data, although the Megaupload terms of use clearly disclaimed any guarantee of continued access to uploaded materials,” MPAA lawyers write.

Re:Physical items?

[ClioCJS]

They didn't take the harddrives, they took the copied files. Understand your enemy.

Re:If a private individual tried this

[Anonymous Coward]

here in the united states of skullduggery we DO have something called the chain of custody. by obtaining the materials outside of what is legally acceptable they have violated the chain of custody, and by using a non governmental agency without judicial oversight they have violated the chain of custody. this SHOULD, according to US law, make the hard drives inadmissible as evidence in court proceedings.

Dodgy dealings

[josh_nz]

This article puts quite a different spin on it, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10811266 [nzherald.co.nz] From the article: "He said he had contacted the agents to offer to take clones of the items to the United States Embassy only to find they had already sent the clones to the US." Sounds like the NZ cops were going to give it to the FBI but the FBI wasn't waiting from permission anyway.

Re:If a private individual tried this

[philip.paradis]

Law enforcement agencies and cooperating entities send evidence via FedEx all the time. It's an accepted mode of transit. As for chain of custody, sorry, you're wrong there too, as long as it was properly documented. As for legally acceptable means of obtaining the materials (in this case, copies of data stored on hard drives, presumably bit-for-bit images of the drive contents), well, they're federal agents who I'm sure signed affidavits attesting to the means utilized to create the copies. Whether or not NZ decides it was okay is up to NZ, but will probably have little to no effect on proceedings in the US.

Now, on to the really important point. Where did you get your legal and/or law enforcement experience? I suspect it may have been a crackerjack box. Sorry, old episodes of Law and Order don't count.

Re:Wait, what?

[shutdown -p now]

NZ already had a pissing match with USA when they banned [wikipedia.org] US vessels that were either nuclear powered or carrying nuclear weapons from entering their waters. That's still in force today, as are the measures US had taken in response.

Re:Wait, what?

[reve_etrange]

The last section of the ANZUS [wikipedia.org] article states that the US and NZ have resumed military cooperation, without NZ having to lift its port ban of nuclear vessels.

Re:Physical items?

[shentino]

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html [copyright.gov]

Copying incident to a judicial proceeding qualifies as fair use, and I'm sure that prosecuting someone for copyright infringement qualifies as a judicial proceeding.

Re:Physical items?

[kiwirob]

Yeah that "fair use" you talk of only applies under US jurisdiction. Here in New Zealand we are a separate country and we have our own laws. So your American FBI can not just come over here and apply your own set of rules in our sovereign country thank you!!

The FBI broke a court order in NZ that stipulated that a further hearing would be required to decide if the FBI where going to be given access at all. They just copied and stole the information without even the NZ Police knowing what they where doing.