This has been mentioned before, but could you please not change links and edit titles unless there's a reason for it. Or at least make it transparent to the users that something has been changed.
"The main points from Justice Winkelmann's judgment:
- The search warrants used under the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act were unlawful.
- The FBI's removal of "clones", or copies, of computer data offshore was unlawful.
- Any clones remaining in New Zealand must stay here.
- The attorney-general must provide Mr Dotcom with any clones currently held by New Zealand police."
This line from the ruling PDF basically explains why the searches were declared illegal:
"The warrants did not adequately describe the offences to which they related. Indeed they fell well short of that. They were general warrants, and ash such, are invalid."
The judge then goes on to say:
"Before I leave this topic, there is one further peculiarity about the form in which the warrants were sought and issued which I record: the applications did not extend to racketeering, or to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. It included money laundering rather than conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Attached to the warrant was this document that stipulated what could be searched and seized by the authorities. It listed this particular part:
"All records and things in whatever form, including communications, relating to the activities of the Mega Conspiracy, including but not limited to, Megaupload, Megavideo and Megastuff Limited"
The judge says about this (in reference to Dotcom's lawyer I believe):
"I accept his submission that without definition of the 'Mega Conspiracy' it is hard to imagine what falls within this category"
Another juicy bunch of tidbits are these:
"Assuming then that the police were operating under a valid warrant, what were the police entitled to do in this case? There were required to conduct a preliminary sorting exercise at the premises, as the warrants could not authorise an officer to removed from the premises indiscriminately all documents and records. In this case the police faced the additional difficulty that they were not the investigating officers and had limited knowledge of the operation."
"Given the state of knowledge of the police, it would have been proper approach for them to involve officers from the FBI in this exercise. Section 46(1) authorises the use by police of "such assistants as may be reasonable in the circumstances for the purpose of the entry and search. Because assistants would have been foreign law enforcement officials it maybe have been prudent to have them as named assistants in the warrants authorising the search."
"Providing the police act reasonable in so doing, following the initial sorting exercise, they were then entitled to remove from the premises those things which at the time they reasonable believed contained material which might be of evidential value."
Short story is: the warrants were too broad, didn't accurately describe what the items were being seized for in relating to the offences and thus the warrants were unlawful not to mention the police technically weren't allowed to seize what they did from the properties in the warrants.
> "All records and things in whatever form, including communications, relating to the activities of the Mega Conspiracy, including but not limited to, Megaupload, Megavideo and Megastuff Limited"
That bit reads like someone wrote up a search warrant after watching a few episodes of CSI: Miami.
More like a police force looking to impress the FBI bent over backwards. What a bunch of provincial clowns. I'm sad to be a New Zealander when stuff like this happens (see the police raids on so called 'terrorists' and the recent court shambles for more of the same).
