
Why Kim Dotcom hasn’t been extradited 3 years after the US smashed Megaupload - thursdayb
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/why-kim-dotcom-hasnt-been-extradited-3-years-after-the-us-smashed-megaupload/
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corin_
When will the US DoJ hire a decent PR firm? Again and again during these three
years they've made cock-ups that push people (like myself) towards supporting
Dotcom even if we don't particularly like the guy, and even if we think for
the actual charges he's likely in the wrong.

> _In the forfeiture case, prosecutors will argue why Dotcom’s claim on the
> frozen assets should not be allowed—and therefore forfeited to the US
> government—under the "doctrine of fugitive disentitlement." That idea posits
> that if a defendant has fled the country to evade prosecution, then he or
> she cannot make a claim to the assets that the government wants to seize
> under civil forfeiture._

Hooray, a loophole in the laws that might let them seize his assets: call him
a fugitive! Even though he hasn't visited America one single time in his life.
And even though he is still in the country where he calls home, and has done
for more than a year before this case started.

Maybe it's not the DoJ's fault, maybe Dotcom and his lawyers (and PR) are
really, really good. But nearly every story in the past 3 years has made him
look good and them look bad, which shouldn't be the case when you've got a
government department charged with delivering justice against a guy with a
track-record of being an asshole and breaking the law.

~~~
ObviousScience
It doesn't help their case in my mind that they probably broke the law with
the seizures they performed: I was using Megaupload to store backups and
distribute files I legally owned, such a game maps or documents.

During their raids, they seized the funds used to provision the servers,
failed to preserve the data, went so far as to prevent efforts on the part of
Megaupload to return the data to me, and failed to allow for any sort of
process for me to claim it before the servers were destroyed.

That data wasn't specifically targeted in a forfeiture action, nor was it
specifically accused of being infringing. The US government simply destroyed
my data as part of their raid against Megaupload without any concern for the
fact I was engaged in legal business with them, and simply using them for
remote storage.

Nevermind that they induced a foreign government to illegally spy on one of
their residents as part of a copyright enforcement action. That's just
hideously ugly.

~~~
Fuxy
I would be nice if there was a way to calculate the amount of financial damage
the US government did to legitimate users of the Mega Upload Service.

The US government should be held financially responsible for these.

Plus you could consider the failure of the US governments preservation of Mega
Uploads data as destruction of evidence.

If the evidence is not present during the trial it didn't exist.

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acqq
This was insightful for me:

""Congress, initially as part of the War on Drugs but later expanded to
include most federal offenses, criminalized almost every financial transaction
that flows from funds that are the proceeds of ‘specified unlawful activity,’"
Bruce Maloy, an Atlanta-based attorney and an expert in US extradition law,
told Ars by e-mail.

"In simplest terms, if you possess funds from a crime and do anything with the
money other than bury it in the ground or hide it under the mattress, you have
committed a new crime. Spending the money is a new crime, opening a bank
account is a new crime. These expenditures do not have to be in furtherance of
the original crime, but my recollection is that here it alleged that they are.
In short, throwing in a money laundering allegation is quite common in US
federal indictments."

Page Pate, another Atlanta-based defense lawyer who has also worked on
international extradition cases, agreed. "It's almost automatic to add money
laundering charges to any offense whether it's drug-related or not," he said.
"I haven't seen it that often in criminal copyright cases. The US has been
very aggressive in adding money laundering and forfeiture in criminal cases.""

Ain't it great, War on Drugs?

~~~
corin_
I'm against the war of drugs, but not sure it's to blame here. A law
criminalizing the use of illegally-gained funds is a useful law for them in
general, and it happened that their big focus at the time was the war on drugs
so that's where they'd get the most use from it. But as far as I know, it was
never claimed to be only for the war on drugs, and they didn't attach it to
the war on drugs as a smokescreen the way they attached the Patriot Act to
terrorism.

I could be wrong about that, but as far as I'm aware it was an innocent
connection to drugs. After all, if you are impeaching civil liberties you may
need a smokescreen like drugs or terrorism, but making it illegal to use
illegally-gained funds is something I suspect most US citizens would be OK
with immediately without the need for deception.

~~~
acqq
So how US managed to survive without that law for all the years? I can't
imagine the law was necessary for anything, except that it allowed US to
prosecute those who'd be off the hook otherwise. So yes I do believe it was
the "War on Drugs" peddled as the rationale for the law: "look these drug guys
are slipping away, we have to make a new law and get them with it."

~~~
rayiner
A lot of the financial transaction laws are contemporaneous with RICO, and
were aimed at organized crime which is as a huge problem back then. Mafia
families were conducting hits in midtown Manhattan back in the 1970's, in
highly public places like high end restaurants. This is pre-1980's escalation
of the drug war too.

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caractacus
1\. Because he had a lot of money to spend on lawyers

2\. Because there are some fundamental issues - slowly getting cleared - on
issues of search, procedure, etc

3\. Because the legal system can take a bloody long time to achieve anything

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unimportant
Tons of money to fight the extradition + him being good at exploiting the US
gov hate of the people to make himself look like a freedom fighter instead of
the greedy scumbag that he is via well done PR campaigns.

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brador
Might be that thing where in exchange for working for them you get to keep
your freedom.

~~~
longlivegnu
>where in exchange for working for them you get to keep your freedom.

I'm not sure that's how freedom works.

~~~
clamprecht
That is how it works, see Federal Sentencing Guidelines Section 5K1.1:
[http://www.ussc.gov/guidelines-
manual/2011/2011-5k11](http://www.ussc.gov/guidelines-manual/2011/2011-5k11)

I don't think that is the case with Dotcom at this point.

