👩🏾‍🤝‍👩🏻 👩🏽‍🎨 🖕🏽 Kim Dotcom: Caught, the most wanted person online. Part 3 💳 👂 👨🏾‍🌾

For some, Kim Dotkom, the founder of the infamous file hosting MegaUpload, is a criminal and an Internet pirate; for others, he is an unbroken fighter for the inviolability of personal data. On March 12, 2017, the world premiere of the documentary film was held, in which interviews were given with politicians, journalists and musicians who know Kim “from all sides”. New Zealand director Annie Goldson, using a video from personal archives, talks about the essence of Dotcom's legal battles with the US government and other government agencies that have proclaimed a battle for global Internet piracy.

In his youth, Kim Dotcom considered the United States a bastion of world democracy, a country whose government selflessly fights for the triumph of justice throughout the world. After playing the roles of a hacker, a juvenile delinquent and a computer security consultant, by the age of 30, Kim decides to start a business and creates the largest file hosting service, MegaUpload, which has reached 160 million users. Almost until the closure of the site in 2012, it ranked 13th in the ranking of the most visited Internet resources. Over the 7 years of MegaUpload’s existence, Kim has earned more than hundreds of millions of dollars, but as a result of litigation has turned into bankrupt. The United States initiated the prosecution, accusing Dotcom of posting pirated content and copyright infringement, which allegedly caused damage to the copyright holders in the amount of 500 million.dollars.

So far, Kim has not been able to recover from the blow and improve financial matters, since he spends all his money on the services of lawyers and the creation of new innovative projects, such as the K.im platform, the so-called “file store”, which makes payments to based cryptocurrency.

The article tells about the plot of the film "Caught in the Net", as well as excerpts from other journalistic materials inaccessible to the Russian-speaking reader.

Kim Dotcom: Caught, the most wanted person online. Part 1 by
Kim Dotkom: Caught, the most wanted person online. Part 2

Court 2012: continued

On August 7, 2012, the “Internet Millionaire,” as the press called Dotcom, arrived at the Auckland Supreme Court for a 3-day hearing. The lawyer asks Detective Inspector Grant Wormold of the New Zealand Organized and Financial Crime Agency: “Was Dotcom a significant threat, and was an elite tactical group needed to give him a search warrant in January? After all, it’s not every day that the police arrive in peaceful houses in the early morning, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, knock out doors and surround the perimeter in a paramilitary manner? Shouting orders to each other on the walkie-talkie - is this not the usual practice of the New Zealand police? Or am I missing something? ”

The inspector answers him: “Yes, you missed something!” If there is a risk of a firearm in the house, the police cannot search the house without armed support. ”

When reading the indictment, it was mentioned that materials related to child pornography and terrorism were stored on the MegaUpload website. Andrew Bridges, an Internet lawyer at Fenwick & West Law Firm, said in this regard that this prosecution has nothing to do with copyright infringement, "but this is one attempt to present the accused as truly dangerous, negative and rotten people." The message was such that Dotcom was extremely dangerous, so the inspector did not fail to show the judge a color photo of the shotgun with which he allegedly detained Dotcom. Let the people think that Kim is not only engaged in piracy on the Internet.

Computer reporter Greg Sandoval notes that the prosecution has aggressively created the image of a man who, in addition to copyright infringement, deals with more dangerous things. Naturally, this turned out to be a lie.

Regarding the photo with a gun against the background of Mercedes with the number plate “Guilty,” Kim explained that it was taken in a place called Cape Kidnappers (Cape of the Reapers) on the southeastern tip of Hawke Bay on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand, where he was relaxing family. Dotcom told the court that on that day they went to shoot at targets. Another photograph, also seized by the police in the Dotcom house, shows a similar event, but only in Ireland more than 10 years ago, that is, in about 2002.

Later, at a meeting of the Supreme Court, the police admitted that the security room in the Dotkom mansion was not locked, and Kim was unarmed at the time of his arrest.

Mona Dotcom at that moment was 7 months pregnant. She almost started a premature birth, she was so scared for 3 young children, seeing men everywhere with weapons in their hands. She asked the police to let them go to the children, but they answered: “No, you should be here, stay where you are!” Mona was very worried that these people would enter the room with their weapons and scare them very much.

The judge asks Inspector Grant Wormold a question: “It turns out that you acted on the basis of information provided to you by the FBI?”, And he replies: “Yes!”

The FBI and the US Department of Justice have been involved in this matter from the very beginning, but this is not surprising, but how much the New Zealand authorities have decided to trust the instructions received from the FBI. The raid was carried out with such enthusiasm, as if the police were looking for a Doomsday car in the mansion, which, if activated, would destroy the evidence of crime around the world.

Dotcom’s lawyer asks the inspector what means they were going to seize dangerous information, and he replies: “Laptops, mobile phones, electronic secretaries ...”. The lawyer notes that these devices are not means of destroying evidence or other dangerous information. This is a site, all of whose data is on the servers, and not in the dotcom house, to which the inspector replies: “And what could we hope to find there, a remote control with a red button”?

According to Kim, they tried to arrest him as quickly as possible, so that he could not use any "device to destroy evidence." In reality, it took them 15 minutes to find Dotcom in his own home. “There is no such device and never has been, so they could not find it. This is just nonsense! ”

A similar assault on the suspect’s home should have served as an unambiguous message to the world: “Don't mess with the US about copyright!” The only thing that comes to mind when watching videos of the capture of Dotcom is a raid against Osama bin Laden, but there was a completely different degree of importance!

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales tells the crew of the movie Caught on the Net: “Looking at these frames, you might think that some South American dictator is being captured. I thought it was both ridiculous and indicative of how extreme the reaction of the authorities in certain cases can be. To some extent, I did not agree with what MegaUpload was doing. Of course, this required a trial, but obviously it was not worth sending a capture group with automatic weapons there. ”

June 28, 2012

The main court ruling in the Kim Dotcom case, which fights off the FBI’s attempts to extradite him to the United States: Supreme Court judge Helen Winkleman has recognized the illegality of a search warrant for his mansion. The police arrested Dotcom’s property and accounts for millions of dollars, and now they will have to return all this to the owner.

People got the feeling that the state machine crushed Dotcom illegally and unfairly. New Zealanders suddenly saw that this story has 2 sides, and perhaps this is just the US attack on someone who turned out to be an obstacle to Hollywood. Kim became a national hero - on the street he was surrounded by a crowd of young people who asked for autographs from him and shouted: "Kim, we love you!"

City buses pounded the streets of Auckland, adorned with an ad for Dotcom's Good Times music album. People wanted to fight injustice against him, and it so happened that the whole world suddenly found out about Dotcom. In the video “Mr. President,” Kim sings: “The war for the Internet has begun! Hollywood controls politics! This government is killing innovation! We won’t let it get away with them! ”

“Kim Dotcom is a very controversial person. Even in the face of serious litigation, he does not lose his sense of humor and teases the US government, ”says writer Gabriella Coleman. “But what about freedom of speech, Mr. President?” Kim sings, referring to Obama's speech on Internet freedom.

Thanks to the ironic and buffoonish attitude to his work, Kim won the sympathy of those who, if Dotk was much more serious, would believe in his guilt. Although the driving force behind companies such as MegaUpload is the desire to earn as much as possible, people began to sympathize with it thanks to the charisma of the founder.

Kim says the following is interesting: following the lobby that upholds the interests of owners of multimedia content, the US government is able to use real military tactics against Internet boring! “Think, this is just ridiculous, and such an approach will not change anything anyway! None of what they did changed the way the Internet worked or reduced the level of piracy. ”

According to Steve Fabrizio of the American Film Production Association, after the closure of MegaUpload in 18 weeks, sales of legal video content on official sites increased by 6-10%. “This is just one pirate site, and as soon as it was shut down, the profit increased significantly. Imagine what will happen if you close all the pirated sites! This is a really serious impact on the legitimate market. ”

Greg Sandoval says: “You can’t trust the numbers that the film industry itself reports, and moreover you cannot trust the analysis of the Internet that interested people offer. One of the reasons for piracy is that people hear something amazing about some product that they cannot get legally in their country, and then they download it from the Internet illegally. One may not approve of such behavior, but it is impossible to stop it. In fact, there is a simple solution that does not include special forces - just change the way you do business, and sell what you sell in one country to another. If you don’t do this, pirates enter the scene. ”

Kim admits that he is a passionate gamer. He plays online in Modern Warfare on the Xbox and once noticed that ping increased by 15-20 ms. An ordinary gamer wouldn’t have noticed this, but Dotkom even paid attention to such a slight delay. Only after the arrest did he understand what was the reason for the ping's deterioration - intelligence agents redirected his traffic in order to have access to all the data transmitted and received by Kim via the Internet.
During the Supreme Court hearing, Detective Grant Wormold had to answer many questions. When a question was raised about the meeting that discussed the raid on the Dotcom estate, Wormold looked very uncomfortable.

Asks Paul Davidson, a lawyer for Kim Dotcom, “On December 4, 2011, you attended a meeting where the details of the operation to capture the suspect were planned. Among the participants in the meeting was a representative of the Department of Justice. This is true?" Wormold replies: "Yes, that is."
Lawyer: was there any other group of people present at this meeting?

Detective: yes, attended.
Lawyer: and what is the field of their activity?
Detective: they worked for the state.
Lawyer: I see. Can you tell us who they are?
Detective: I would rather not say that.
Lawyer: for what reason?
Detective: due to the nature of their activities.

Detective Inspector Grant Wormold, Head of Dotcom Capture Operation

It was clear that in the process of hearing the case, something went completely wrong as intended by its organizers. Somehow, intelligence services were involved in MegaUpload. The GCSB Government Communications Bureau, the New Zealand equivalent of the US NSA, has been following the Dotcom for a long time. This bureau is a member of the so-called Five Eye Alliance. Special services of Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA - these are 5 secret eyes that monitor the whole world.

They have great influence at the highest state level. The moment the Dotcom arrived in New Zealand, the United States activated its ties with the GCSB and the government of that country to make Dotcom their priority goal. To do this, they even went to illegal surveillance, simply put, they spied on Dotkom around the clock, monitored all his movements, purchases, conversations on the mobile network and Internet traffic. At the same time, the activities of the GCSB are regulated by strict rules that prohibit spying on citizens or residents of New Zealand.

Kim says that when they connected to his iPhone, his perception of the world completely changed. “You understand that they not only read your emails, they are present even when I am alone with my wife. In fact, they were right there between us! They have no right to do this to anyone and never! ”

“Is so the state should dispose of listening to communications? Is it possible to direct the antennas, which should protect your country from an external threat, to themselves? "Asks Sean Gallager, IT editor of the Ars Technica website," and all in order to accuse a person of what is not even a criminal offense New Zealand. "

And today, Kim Dotcom’s case is also making John Ki’s government blush. “Prime Minister John Key ordered an urgent investigation into the illegal surveillance of an Internet millionaire.” John Key apologized to Dotcom, “because any citizen of the country and any resident has the right to protection from such incidents. The reason for this was a mistake, a human factor, and not a big secret conspiracy against Mr. Dotcom. ”

The first anniversary of the raid: 01/20/2013

“Matthias Ortmann, CTO, Bram van der Kolk, Chief Programmer, guys, I wish you a megaChristmas from Santa Dotcom! Turn off the Internet! ”- so Kim congratulated his team on the new 2013 year.

"Truth. Honesty. Knowledge. Independence ”- on January 20, 2013 Kim organized a theatrical production on his estate, recreating the actions of the police a year ago. “Warning, you are having an illegal party! All stay on the ground! " - a black helicopter with the inscription FBI on board is circling in the air, the capture group descends the ropes along the walls of the house, the audience sitting on the benches in the center of the yard enthusiastically watches the enchanting action - the presentation of the new Dotcom project called MEGA. Kim showed his first achievements in December 2012, and already in January, the resource was launched on the New Zealand domain.

Kim really can’t refuse a sense of humor - he presents the Mega website surrounded by police girls on a stage built in the courtyard of his own mansion.

The new file hosting threatens another round of conflict with the US authorities. “I know that I am innocent, and I have absolutely nothing to fear. Their accusations are all nonsense, ”Kim said in a January interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Despite the scandal raging around him, Dotkom is convinced of Mega's prospects. Now he is ready to offer users an even more advanced and convenient content access system.

On the Mega file hosting service, users can share various types of data with each other, including documents, photos, movies and music. All content is encrypted directly in the browser, which gives an additional degree of information security. Thanks to this, it becomes more difficult for copyright guardians to understand what kind of materials are sent through the resource.

Only the person who posted it and the one to whom he will pass the access code will be able to know which content is posted on the service. On the new site, the user will have the opportunity not only to store 50 GB of information for free, but also to issue a paid subscription for a wider range of services. For $ 40 a month, anyone will receive their own online safe with a capacity of 4 TB.

The colorful figure of Dotcom and the scandalous Megaupload train created such a stir around Mega that the site did not even survive the invasion of visitors in the first hours after the opening. Already 14 hours after the launch, the resource was visited by 1 million people, half of whom were registered on the site.

Kim says from the stage: “Today, guys, the launch of Mega! Now you are all encrypted! ” It uses encryption and cloud storage so that users cannot follow how it was done with it. “The US government is investing billions in massive spy clouds to have access to all your data and communications. Using Mega, you say no! to the states that spy on you! ”

The FBI representative believes that “Thanks to encryption, only God knows what can be stored on this site. There may be copyright files, ISIS documents, child porn - there could be anything! They created a new file hosting service so that now no one can look inside! ”

Kim claims that the new site will become what prevails over government surveillance. He tells the crew of the film: “I will be the only person who will be remembered as a fighter with mass surveillance, using technologies that return your freedom to you!”
After 3 years, in July 2015, Dotkom said that he was no longer involved in the work of the Mega website, moreover, storing files in this cloud service may be unsafe. The fact is that most of the shares of the service belonged to Monet, with whom Kim divorced. The rest of the shares, according to Dotcom, was seized by an "unfriendly Chinese investor" with the support of the New Zealand government, since the site was registered in the .nz domain zone. In response, the owners of Mega said that Kim left the project back in 2013 and since then the fate of the resource has not interested him.

The people against espionage

In March 2013, news agencies reported that an investigation by the GCSB found out: the bureau conducted illegal surveillance not only of the Dotcom, but also of 85 New Zealanders. Prime Minister Ki proposed to calm this scandal by changing the law and giving the intelligence bureau even more power. If the draft law is approved, then the GCSB will have the authority to legally monitor all citizens of the country.

July 27, 2013 in New Zealand held a youth antispyware protest. Dotkom spoke to the protesters, who said: “In the United States, the government is the most greedy for power, and the GCSB is the puppet whose strings it pulls! But the biggest puppet is John Key, your prime minister. ”

“I will never come to terms with this and will fight until we find out the truth, until we know every detail!”

Before that, on July 3, in the parliament building, John Key met face to face with Kim Dotcom. The Internet giant has presented public concerns about the proposed bill. The speaker of the meeting asks Dotky the question: “Do you think, know or assume that the prime minister knew what you were doing before the raid was carried out?”

Kim replies: "He knew about me before the raid, I know that for sure!" “No, he did not know!” Kim, smiling, replies: "Well, you know that I know that!".

The Prime Minister says: “I know that you don’t know, but oh well!” And Kim immediately retorts: “Then why are you blushing, Mr. Prime Minister?”, “And why are you sweating?” Dotcom replies: "I'm just hot, I have a scarf on me!"

In an interview with the film crew, Kim says: “it turns out that I was given a residence permit in New Zealand with a view to further extradition!”

Warner bros already negotiated with the government of this country regarding the filming of the film “The Hobbit. Lord of the Rings". It was a budget of millions of dollars and many opportunities for New Zealand. The Prime Minister saw this as an opportunity for a double blow.

First: since we will delight Hollywood movie studios, they will begin to shoot more films with us! Second: we will make happy the White House, which so wants to "shut up" Dotcom.

There are a number of investigations that confirm: the conspiracy theory against Dotcom is true. Kim was legally allowed to stay in the country, despite his criminal past, but in normal circumstances he would not have received residency. This happened at the same time that John Key met with representatives of Hollywood.

In an interview with Prime Minister John Campbell, host of the New Zealand Campbell Live show, said: “I will walk through people who knew about Kim Dotcom. These are Simon Powell, the office of the Solicitor General, the Royal Law Office, the New Zealand police, Jonathan Coleman, who represents the Organized and Financial Crime Agency. This is followed by Nigel Beacon and all immigration officers, your election office, Hillary Clinton, the US Department of Justice, the FBI, the US Attorney General’s office, senior American police officers, but not you! ”

The Prime Minister replies: “That's right! I do not want to report bad news, but there is no conspiracy here. Dotcom is a person who, according to the United States, has broken the law. He is the one they are trying to extradite to the United States. With this, everything begins and ends with this. "

Kim again failed to make the raid on his mansion considered illegal. Now the Supreme Court has declared the search legitimate and has stated that it is not going to blame anyone from the GCSB for espionage. The prosecution spokesman noted that each time Dotcom lawyers lose, they file an appeal - this is programmed. "But every time they appeal, we win."

Kim says, “You know, it's all politics.” In 2013, he posted on Twitter: “Parliament has just passed a law on the GCSB against the will of most New Zealanders. Rest in peace, privacy! Pay them back in the 2014 election! ”

The second anniversary of the raid: 01/20/2014

Kim’s mansion was filled by reporters and news channel correspondents. "Good morning, hello, thank you for coming!" Today is a great day, ”Kim goes to them in his eternal black fleece jacket with a“ zipper, ”“ Today we founded an Internet party! ”

Journalist and writer David Fisher recalls: “I could not believe it and asked Kim if he really decided to go into politics. When he answered “yes,” I thought: “God, you are crazy!” This is complete madness! ”

Kim says he really didn't care about politics. But after the raid, having learned all its background, he realized what it would be like to be someone who suffers from abuse of power. “Of course, I wanted to replace the government, otherwise why should I get into politics?”

For his team, Ortmann, Kolka and Batato, Kim's passion for politics was something secondary. They did not understand how this could affect the extradition process, which was about to begin, and how it would help to remove the charges that they were going to present in America.
The reason for the divorce from Mona is an aggressive raid?

On April 8, 2014, an Internet party picnic was held. In his speech, Kim said: “We are part of the 5-eye global surveillance system!” Kim rushed into politics, and Mona continued to do what she had been doing for 2 years - to worry about herself, her husband, children, nervous and worried about their future. She recalls that Dotkom always behaved confidently, in any circumstances, under any events. Mona, on the other hand, constantly feels in limbo, because the trial with his case is still ongoing, and it is difficult to even imagine what could happen in six months. Constant tension forced her to finally take certain steps - if Kim wishes the children good, they need to break up. She will not live too far with the children, who need to change the situation until they become as “nutty” as their mother.

Mona later confirmed to the film crew that the raid and subsequent events greatly influenced the decision to break up with Kim. “Before that, Kim and I were very happy.”

Mona really had great difficulty coping with stress. Kim says his wife’s constant anxiety greatly influenced their relationship. “For me, the worst consequences of this whole thing are that our relationship has collapsed!”

“She was the love of my life. After the divorce, I posted on Twitter a small ad saying that Mona and I separated, and since this is a family affair, we ask you not to bother us in this difficult period. ”

The sequel will be very soon ...

Topic: Ivan Lilekvist and Kim Dotkom, a large interview: the story of Megaupload, extradition to the United States, freedom, bitcoin. Part 1

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