PCAvisor, by Computerworld New Zealand staff, Computerworld New Zealand, 15 June 2012
Auckland
High Court has ordered the United States government to "immediately
commence preparation" to supply Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and his
co-defendants with a copy of data held on seized Megaupload servers.
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According
to a judgement delivered by Justice Helen Winkelmann today the material to be
handed over includes over 10 million intercepted emails, "voluminous
financial records obtained from a number of different countries" and more
than 150 terabytes of data that was stored on servers seized in New Zealand
alone. The judgement refers to the contents of servers rented by Megaupload in
the US as being "very large" but according to other reports amount to
25 petabytes.
Dotcom,
Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk, are awaiting an extradition
hearing related to US copyright infringement charges which is due to take place
on August 6. All four defendants have denied any wrongdoing.
The US
government is seeking a judicial review of an earlier judgement by Judge David
Harvey on May 29, which ordered the US to disclose within 21 days
"documents and materials relating to the whether the US has a prima facie
case" against the Megaupload defendants for the purposes of extradition.
Meanwhile
the US applied to remove the effect of the order of May 29.
Crown
lawyers acting for the US have argued that the scope of that order
"trespasses on the trial procedures of the requesting country." In
the US the obligation for prosecutors to provide discovery or disclosure is
triggered when a defendant makes their first appearance in a US court.
The US also
argued that if the order was not suspended it would not be able to comply because
the 21 day time period was too brief. According to the US submission the
process of providing forensic images of New Zealand data not already copied
will take a minimum of two and a half months. Furthermore, the US argued it was
unable to provide readable copies of the items it has imaged as much of the
content was encrypted.
But in her
judgement Justice Winkelmann said that the respondents (Dotcom, Batato, Ortmann
and van der Kolk) were seeking a clone of the encrypted drive and that the
absence of passwords provided no barrier to this.
On the
timing issue, if a complete stay were issued, the extradition hearing date
would "inevitably be lost."
"Whilst
it is certainly possible that, given the issues that remain outstanding between
the parties, the 6 August 2012 date will be jeopardised, the applicant, as the
prosecuting party, must accept an obligation to do all that it can to maintain
that date," Winkelmann said.
Winkelmann
said she was therefore satisfied that a compromise suggested by Dotcom's lawyer
Willie Akelman was the "appropriate resolution".
This means
the US will not be required to provide the disclosure copies as ordered by
Judge Harvey, however it must immediately start preparing to do so.
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| Megaupload
Trial May Never Happen, Judge Says |
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