A judge has ordered the New Zealand police to return all materials irrelevant to their investigation to Doctom.
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom was arrested last year in an “excessive” (to say the least) raid on his New Zealand home. Even the Prime Minster of New Zealand admitted that the raid was unlawful at best in his apology to Dotcom. Dotcom vowed to fight this thing with everything he had, and it looks like he’s just scored one over New Zealand’s boys in blue, with a Judge ordering the police to sift through all digital material taken illegally from Dotcom and to return anything irrelevant to their investigation. At their own cost, of course.
Clones of hard drives that have already been shipped off to America must be returned if they contain personal information, and destroyed if they don’t. Dotcom and his co-accused will also receive clones of any materials that the police do deem necessary to the case, which effectively means that he’ll be getting all of his stuff back.
High Court justice Helen Winkelmann, who issued the judgement, said that the police’s initial seizure of Dotcom’s property without properly sorting it was “unlawful.” She also said the police had no right to keep any material that is irrelevant to the case.
Dotcom isn’t letting this bungled police raid and investigation get to him, announcing a new filehosting service in October, designed to be immune to both lawsuits and raids.
Source & Image: Stuff.co.nz
