Customs Asked to Leak Kim Dotcom Secrets to FBI for “Brownie Points”

[Ernesto]

While not much has happened recently in the U.S. case against Megaupload and Kim Dotcom, across the pond the scandals keep stacking up.

Last week the judge overseeing the extradition case said that it was likely that the Megaupload founder was still being spied on. This surveillance would include sensitive conversations with his legal team.

“[...] it would appear likely that some form of surveillance and/or interference with telephone communications has happened,” Judge Dawson said. Nonetheless, he refused to order the U.S. to stop any type of surveillance until more evidence was produced.

Secret and illegal evidence gathering techniques have been a dominant theme throughout the case, and today another chapter can be added. The NZ Herald reports that government employees were casually instructed by email to pass on privacy sensitive information.

The email in question comes from Greg Davis, former operations manager of Customs’ Integrated Targeting Operations Centre. It was sent to Immigration New Zealand’s intelligence unit and offered a unique reward for leaking information about Dotcom to the FBI.

“The FBI would be interested in anything we have on Kim Dotcom so any information we can proactively feed to them on him will buy you many brownie points,” the email, obtained through an Official Information Act request, states.

The Brownie Points email.

The unusual request came after conversations Davis had with custom’s Washington liaison, and suggests that more informal information gathering was going on than previously thought.

The revelations are certainly relevant for Dotcom’s case, but should also worry the general public as privacy violations appear to be of little concern for these Government officials.

The Government has thus far declined comment on the issue, but several politicians have spoken out against it.

“Our actions should not be based on trying to earn brownie points in Washington. Our actions should be based on rule of law,” Labour’s Grant Robertson said in a response.

Kim Dotcom’s legal team will undoubtedly use the information in his defense. There are still several issues pending in New Zealand including an extradition hearing currently scheduled for April 2014, more than two years after Megaupload was shut down.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

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[Devin]

"Our actions should not be based on trying to earn brownie points in Washington".

Absolutely correct.

[Mike]

The scandal around New Zealand law enforcement's illegal activities in helping the US government raid Kim Dotcom's house and file criminal charges against him keeps expanding. The raid on the house has already been declared illegal by the NZ High Court. Then there was the issue of the local equivalent of the NSA, the GCSB, illegally spying on Dotcom for the US, despite rules that forbid GCSB from spying on New Zealand residents. It seems to be getting even worse.

A few days ago, it was revealed that a document, which was illegally withheld from an earlier freedom of information request, showed that a senior New Zealand Customs official named Greg Davis, told staffers that it would "buy you many brownie points" if they shared info about Kim Dotcom with the US FBI -- despite not being allowed to share info like this.

At least one of the people who received the email noted that people should "seek legal advice" before handing over such information, but it's unclear if anyone actually did that.

Now, as concerned members of the New Zealand Parliament are wondering why top customs officials were interested in handing over private information on New Zealand residents to a foreign country's intelligence agencies for "brownie points," New Zealand's Customs officials have announced that they will not answer questions about it, in an effort to -- get this -- "protect the privacy" of the guy who sent that email, Greg Davis.

Davis, by the way, was running New Zealand Custom's "Integrated Targeting Operations Centre," which collects a ton of information on travelers. Many in New Zealand had already complained about the possibility of this group to abuse its powers, but at nearly the same time Davis was proving their point, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key was defending the center with that old liar's trope: "anyone who is innocent has nothing to fear." He should have added "unless US officials are interested in you -- then you're fucked."

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[Devin]

Hypocrisy makes the world go round. This is a nice example of karma.