Comment by junto | Hacker News Reader

Comment by junto | Hacker News Reader

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While I find Dotcom to be a epitome of a shill, I doubt Greenwald or Snowden would back this particular claim if they truly believed it was false.

Both Snowden and Greenwald have choosen to honour the truth above their own safety and security. Both of them are also acutely aware of the fact that standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Dotcom reflects poorly on their own integrity.

Maybe the USG leaked this email as a 'false flag' in order to make Greenwald look a fool when it gets proved as false, or it is true, and Greenwald and Snowden are right to back Dotcom in this particular argument, whether or not he is a crook or not.

A US movie company doing back-room deals (on behalf of the USG) with NZ politicians, in order to get someone extradited for alleged copyright infringement is just downright dirty and a waste of public money. It is corrupt corporatism at it's finest.

If it is true, I hope the shit hits the fan. However, as many others have pointed out. The fact that a politician is dirty is not an automatic guarantee that the voting public won't vote for him.

"shill"? That implies he's working for anyone but himself. "Colourful racing identity" is the usual Australian euphemism, I'm sure there's a New Zealand equivalent.

Really, the amazing thing the US did with MegaUpload was to make Kim Dotcom look like a hero by comparison ...

A main question for me is how dotcom got hold of his email. There is no mention that it came from Snowden's leaks or similar, though it appears that this is what Dotcom is wanted everyone to believe: host an event highlighting mass surveilliance of NZ citizens, publicise an email hours beforehand, hope everyone conflates the issues and thinks that the legitimacy that Greenwald and Snowden lend to the surveillance event is passed onto the email.

Personally, I doubt the CEO of a major company like WB would send an email outlining this kind of agreement, especially when he says that Key told him 'in private' that such and such would happen. I'm not saying it didn't happen but would the CEO of a major movie studio be careless enough to put this in the clear in an email? Half the employees of a place like WB are lawyers...

The first rule of email: if you do something incriminating, don't use email. Oliver North and many many others after him have shown that people are simply stupid.

From small time crooks to big time politicians and a whole spectrum of stupid people in between the 'incriminating email' seems to be a staple element in the arsenal of prosecutions the world over. I don't see why CEO's of major corporations should be exempt. See recent revelations regarding collusion by big companies to depress engineers salaries.

Indeed, even Steve Jobs got caught out by that one: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/19/damning-evidence-emerges-in...

And not only once, his emails were the key evidence in the antitrust eBook case, too.

Ref: http://qz.com/87184/the-steve-jobs-emails-that-show-how-to-w...

The first rule of email: if you do something incriminating, don't use email.

IRS seem to be holding up fine. You just need enough chutzpah to go all in: we don't have the emails, what you're gonna do?

Which is what seems to be happening. Key says he has no recollection of such a conversation

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...

Nixon said he wasn't a crook.

Time will tell, the problem with email is that you can't really shred it and that it likely has passed through some points in between where at least the headers got archived.

What I'm curious about:

- if the email is not fake, how did GG ascertain that it isn't

- if it isn't fake how did KDC get hold of it

- if it isn't fake does Key really believe that he'll get away with doubling down?

- if it is fake how did GG miss that? (it will damage his rep badly)

- could it be a case of misinformation?

- if it is a misinformation attempt, who is the target?

This is going to end badly for at least one party.

The email text seems just too juicy to me, but stranger things have happened and turned out to be true. Not releasing the email+headers is a strange move. That would make it harder to deny it if it is real, at the same time it might allow for removal of remaining traces of evidence.

Tricky!

While that is true, do you imagine that Greewald and Snowden are stupid enough not to validate their sources? They own integrity is on the line here, and Greenwald in particular is trading on that integrity, and the entire Firstlook.org integrity is riding with him.

Either the USD has sold him a complete dummy and Firstlook is dead in the water, or the claim is true.

Greenwald didn't mention this supposed email once. He talked about the mass surveillance of NZ citizens only, evidence for which is pretty substantial. That is something he would have validated. No one, as far as I can tell, has said that Dotcom's email came from Snowden or Greenwald or anyone connected to them.

The problem is one of juxtaposition. Imagine standing next to Al Capone when he's showing a letter from a congressman implicating a whole industry. You might not have anything to do with the subsequent fall-out, especially if the thing turns out to be a falsification. But it will still tarnish your reputation. The only way it will not is if it turns out that it is all true. And all that would not even require you to open your mouth.

Bingo. Better worded than I did.

> While I find Dotcom to be a epitome of a shill, I doubt Greenwald or Snowden would back this particular claim if they truly believed it was false.

Can I just ask you, what's the claim? I cannot watch the video at this time (I'm at work)...

I think this stuff:

- The Kim Dotcom "big reveal" is out - and has almost immediately been dismissed as a fake.

- The "reveal" is an email which purports to show Prime Minister John Key involved in a plan to get the internet entrepreneur into New Zealand so he could be extradited to the United States.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...

As far as I can see at the moment it's just been dismissed as a fake by the people who allegedly sent/received it, and they would deny it, regardless. That does put Dotcom on the back foot and with a burden of proof, but it's not yet game over.

It was dismissed as fake in under 2 hours of the release. Was a full and unbiased review of the claims actually done?

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