New Zealand Spy Agency Deleted Evidence About Its Illegal Spying On Kim Dotcom
from the oops dept
I have to admit that I'm consistently amazed at just how badly law
enforcement in both the US and New Zealand appeared to screw up the raid
and the case against Kim Dotcom. I've said it a few times before, but
it really feels like authorities in both places actually believed the
bogus Hollywood hype being spread by the MPAA about how Dotcom was
really a James Bondian-villain, and acted accordingly, while ignoring
any evidence to the contrary. As you know by now, the New Zealand
equivalent of the NSA, the GCSB, illegally spied on Kim Dotcom and other New Zealand residents and citizens -- and the New Zealand government then decided to try to hide that. While the police agreed that the spying was illegal, they declined to do anything about it, so Dotcom sued the government himself.
The latest news in this: GCSB appears to have deleted key evidence in the case in a hamfisted attempt to cover up its illegal activities. Even more ridiculous, GCSB is trying to cover this up by claiming that the material had "aged off" -- implying that it was deleted automatically. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key claims that they had to delete the information under the law.
Of course, there are a few problems with that. The first is that under New Zealand law, like most countries these days, parties have an obligation to preserve documents likely to be necessary in a legal case. But, even more damning is that there's video of John Key in the New Zealand Parliament trying to defend against an earlier claim that GCSB had deleted some evidence by insisting that GCSB does not delete anything ever:
In the video, he notes: "This is a spy agency. We don't delete things.
We archive them. And they went right back to the ultimate source
document, and asked themselves the question: Has there ever been a
deletion? And the answer was NO!!" And yet now he's claiming that it's
normal everyday policy to delete key evidence?
The latest news in this: GCSB appears to have deleted key evidence in the case in a hamfisted attempt to cover up its illegal activities. Even more ridiculous, GCSB is trying to cover this up by claiming that the material had "aged off" -- implying that it was deleted automatically. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key claims that they had to delete the information under the law.
Of course, there are a few problems with that. The first is that under New Zealand law, like most countries these days, parties have an obligation to preserve documents likely to be necessary in a legal case. But, even more damning is that there's video of John Key in the New Zealand Parliament trying to defend against an earlier claim that GCSB had deleted some evidence by insisting that GCSB does not delete anything ever:
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