New Zealand appears to have used NSA spy network to target Kim Dotcom | Hacker News Reader

New Zealand appears to have used NSA spy network to target Kim Dotcom

arstechnica.com

144 pointsdiscostrings34 comments

Kimble appeared on the NSA radar back in 1994. He was allegedly part of a global conspiracy trading in calling cards stolen from AT&T. They were stolen by an insider and cost AT&T an estimated $20 million if memory serves me right.

This was back in the day, just after many countries made the switch from analogue to digital telephony and blue boxing was no longer viable. BBS access (I.e. pre-Internet) was therefore harder to get for free. Hacking int. PBXes with 0800 numbers and calling cards were the next best thing at the time (allegedly :-] )

Due to the nature of the crimes the case fell under the jurisdiction of the US Secret Service. Kimble has been on their hit-list ever since. The guy is like a soap bar to the US security apparatus. They are dying to get their greasy mitts on him. Every time they get close he slips out of reach.

> And cost AT&T an estimated $20 million...

$17.5 million.

Do we know each other?

Account 46 days old. I assume you're a troll, so probably not, no.

Why does the Secret Service have jurisdiction over those types of crimes?

The Secret Service has two responsibilities: protection (e.g. of the president) and preventing/investigating financial crimes.

At least they get one job right.

Almost all of the time.

The Secret Service does more than protect the president; their primary purpose is to combat counterfeiting. The morons who run this country figured that computer crimes were closer to counterfeiting money than to any other crimes, and so the Secret Service got in on the action.

Wire fraud.

An interesting apropos:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._Un...

This is extremely scary if proved to be true. Imagine if the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) were able to get their hands on or direct their war on bittorrent with these tools. Actually, the RIAA has a listing on its website [1] of various news clippings, like, "Pirates beware: Kim Dotcom's Mega isn't the safe haven he says it is" and "Kim Dotcom, Pirate King". It would be interesting to find out how Dotcom came to be entered into a NSA system as a target.

[1] http://www.riaa.com/news_room.php?content_selector=riaa-news...

> It would be interesting to find out how Dotcom came to be entered into a NSA system as a target.

He's not in the United States.

Everyone outside the United States is a target.

Dotcom hosts things. Terrorists need things hosted. We investigate terrorists. Therefore we investigate Dotcom.

Or something like that.

See my comment above. A little bit of history as to why Kimble is a marked man: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6266309

You talked about the secret service, which is quite different from the NSA.

You really believe that one doesn't need the other? Bottom line. You get a file. You name has a little mark against it. He is one of the selectors, I guarantee it.

This is in the context of New Zealand (but it does raise many questions about international intelligence sharing and the nature of these systems).

New Zealand has already admitted that their targeting of Kim Dotcom was against their laws. Their solution for the future? They passed a law this week that removes the exemption from domestic spying for New Zealand citizens and residents[1]. Once the system's in place, it just takes a stroke of the pen...

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-21/new-zealand-passes-spy...

This is disappointing. New Zealand seems to be a pretty sensible country and I'd hoped for better.

Most New Zealanders hoped for better. Depending on the poll, somewhere between 60% and 80% of us opposed the GCSB bill.

A little background - our prime minister John Key is a very pragmatic politician, carefully avoiding contentious issues to remain popular and keep his party in power. His actions over the GCSB bill are very out of character - he's pulled in a lot of favours, twisted a lot of arms and spent a lot of hard-earned political capital to get it passed (just). If he loses the next election (still very much up in the air), passing this bill will be largely to blame.

There is a very bad smell about this. He's already changed labour laws purely for Warner Brothers (they threatened to move the Hobbit to eastern Europe), and I'm fairly sure that the GCSB bill is mostly about fixing the legal disaster that the Kim Dotcom exercise has degenerated into. The MAFIAA is a remarkably apt name, given their tactics.

Step 1: We must violate your rights for national security.

Step 2: We must violate your rights to stop child abuse.

Step 3: We must violate your rights to prevent cybercrime.

Step 4: We must violate your rights to protect entrenched business interests.

Step 5: We must violate your rights to preserve our own power.

Step 6: We must violate your rights to enrich ourselves at your expense.

Sad, but true it seems. There might be a difficult way out, but I don't believe we should accept this.

One insight is that the framers of the US Constitution did not necessarily anticipate the current differences of today (even though the more some things change, the more these remain the same)...

IMHO, USG needs:

  1. The separation of powers could use a rebalancing to prevent the executive branch from wielding absolute autonomy, i.e., post-Henry VIII.

  2. Campaign finance reform is a requirement.  Congress isn't going to cut off their own campaign funding, except by sheer force of the people.  Fund candidates equally with 50% matching public-for-private funds up to the absolute total limit for the seat.  Then let the best message, hustler and money manager win.

The concept of executive orders - particularly as it's being used in modern times - needs to be abolished.

We need sunset provisions on most legislation, requiring laws / regulations to be renewed every X years or they disappear. There are now 175,000 pages of Federal regulations. They're adding thousands of pages per year on average. Who could possibly have a grasp of what's in that? Most of the politicians that passed Obamacare didn't even bother to read it, and I suspect the same is true of most of the legislation passed in DC (most of which is written by lobbyists).

We need a strong separation of corporation and state, for the same reason we have a separation of church and state. They should not be allowed to corrupt each other; specifically noting that it works both ways.

We need a drastic IRS overhaul. Filing should be no more complicated than filling out six or seven lines spanning the size of an index card. Most deductions, loopholes, etc should be abolished. All corporate welfare should go away, including in energy and agriculture.

The ability to wage any type of war should require very specific Congressional approval, including limiting time and scope (requiring extensions otherwise). The ability of the executive to wage war without Congressional approval should be completely curtailed.

The Federal Reserve should either be abolished or neutered (reformed substantially and weakened). Its power to practically do anything it wants to financially must be stopped. It has created three nation shattering bubbles in the last 15 years, and is brewing two more right now on purpose (with the stated goal to generate asset inflation). The Fed is singularly responsible for enabling the profligate spending and general fiscal irresponsibility that has gone on in DC the last 13 years. Without their willingness to fund it all by devaluing the dollar, the vast military industrial complex, spying programs, wars, and insane budget deficits would be impossible.

"There are threats our government needs to protect New Zealanders from."

Serious question; What threats does the NZ government need to protect against by comparison to that of the US? Don't get me wrong, I think many of the threats against our country (the US) are as much our fault as anyones. And I'm not saying nobody wants to attack NZ. But I also don't see any jihadists burning the NZ flag. (Or is that just another example of how much our news media sucks?)

The last terror attack in NZ was when France bombed the Rainbow Warrior in 1985. I don't think there are any legitimate threats to New Zealand.

The only other recent piece of action here were the 2007 Uruwera raids which turned out to be yet another police cock up resulting in no convictions

Threats from the US to not have a trade agreement. This is all linked to the TPPA. Though if you asked John Key he'd tell you Al Qaeda.

This won't be much of a surprise to people paying attention, but it does show just how pervasive the level of surveillance has become now. If they're using it to build a case of someone accused of enabling piracy, then it's most definitely not being used for it's stated (and vaguely legal) purpose which moves it onto an even more shaky footing.

We should be disgusted that our governments believe that this is just and valid.

That didn't take long. So much for those folks who thought the gov't would never stoop so low.

Previously, Kim Dotcom had made an allegation that Joe Biden himself was somehow involved.

At the time, it seemed preposterous.

Now,... it's entirely plausible.

If they keep this shit up, then Kim Dotcom's ego is going to burst.

If it hasn't already burst... I can't imagine what it would take.

To begin with, this article makes its argument that the NSA is involved with the Kim Dotcom situation based on two flawed arguments:

1) The use of the term "selectors" implies the use of PRISM because PRISM uses the term "selectors" for search criteria. If you look at the other recent leaks, it shows that "selectors" is a generic term used across multiple tools by several, if not all, of five eyes intelligence agencies (try popping "gcsb selectors" or "gchq selectors" into Google). It's possible that they used PRISM or one of the other NSA tools, but they could very well have also used any of their own tools.

2) The phrase "REL TO NZL, AUS, CAN, GBR, USA" means "related to fives eyes". Google provides plenty of additional examples, but it seems that "REL TO" means /releasable to/, not /related to/. In order words, personnel in the other intelligence agencies are allowed to see it; it doesn't imply that they have worked on it. See [1] for an example, but again, lots of other examples in Google.

The document says on page 13 that the FBI asked OFCANZ for assistance in carrying out an arrest warrant, OFCANZ then requested GCSB to "gather intelligence" on Kim Dotcom and his associates. In addition, on page 4 it states "No information concerning Mr. Dotcom or Mr. van der Kolk which GCSB obtained as a result has to date been shared with the Five Eyes." The authors of the Ars article and the original article are both trying to make the point that the NSA is spying on Kim Dotcom, but there's no mention of the NSA or that GCSB was using NSA tools anywhere in the leaked document.

Finally, I'm not sure who leaked these documents, but they didn't bother redacting anything - there's personal information all over the place. I see names of the police staff, and (though they're hard to read) the defendants' e-mail addresses, phone numbers, addresses, passport numbers, driver's license numbers. That's not cool.

[1] www.transcom.mil/publications/showPublication.cfm?docID=04A4D891-1EC9-F26D-0715CB3E5AF1309B

Shocking, ha!

Now that NSA surveillance is widely known, it is unavoidably up for sale. What enterprise wouldn't position itself as a strategic national asset in order to benefit from surveillance data, no matter how much it must pay in political contributions. Evidently the entertainment industry has already succeeded at it.

I was a bit shocked to read in the Wikileaks diplomatic wires how much effort is spent on bullying US allies about petty intellectual property issues. I'm more shocked the NSA gets dragged into such trivialities, but not surprised.

Are there any boundaries of propriety that have not been breached?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com