I was running something like FreeBSD 4.3 with KDE as my primary desktop (refused to go from Win98 to XP so went BSD instead) at the time of the "BSD is dieing, netcraft confirms it" meme. Believe you me I was there and I took it very personally at the time, how could someone say my beloved desktop of choice was dieing! ....hang on a minute that was their plan all along... bloody trolls. Was probably those pesky linux troll users slagging off the original BSD unix systems in the early 2000's. I get the same thing today from Fandriod trolls slagging off my current BSD distribution known as OSx & iOS.

The FBI coming over here to New Zealand and thinking they can trample over the instructions of NZ Courts and also rights and civil liberties of a New Zealand resident is pretty harsh I think!

We sent French Secret agents to prison in New Zealand in the past. I see no good reason why we can't send a couple of FBI chaps behind bars for committing illegal acts on the visit to New Zealand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior

Nice post Anonymous FBI person.

First the current act of NZ Parliament in this case is the Search and Surveillance Act 2012, not 2009 as you cite.

Further in the current act. 113 Powers of persons called to assist
(1) Every person called on to assist a person exercising a search power is subject to the control of the person with overall responsibility for exercising that power.
(2)..(j)copy any document, or part of a document, that the person exercising the power has determined may be lawfully copied.

In this case the FBI can not exceed the powers of the NZ Police. The NZ Court procedure was for the evidence to be held in safe custody until a court hearing was to decide if the FBI would be given any access at all. The NZ Police Officer left the FBI in an evidence room without any supervision at which point the FBI cloned the 18 hard dives and left the building and sent them to the USA via FedEX WITHOUT permission from the NZ Police. This is absolutely illegal. The NZ Police had no legal standing to override the NZ Courts decision for due process to decide if the FBI would be granted access, ergo the FBI had no legal basis for carrying out their illegal acts of copyright infringement and contempt of court on New Zealand soil.

Time for the FBI agents to be arrested for committing a crime in New Zealand. We arrested and sent French secret agents to jail for violating NZ Laws in the Rainbow Worrior bombing in the past. There as absolutely no good reason the FBI should believe they can act above the law in New Zealand and get away with it!!!!!

Yeah, it might appear that the NZ Police would have been authorized to make a legal copy but that is not what happened. The FBI where left in a room with the evidence and before the NZ Police officer got back to the room they took copies and left, without telling the officer, and shipped the cloned hard drives back to the USA via FedEX.

The FBI has clearly broken the sovereign rights of New Zealand here and also failed to comply with a New Zealand court procedure that demanded that the defense would be granted a court hearing to decide if the FBI would be given any rights at all to the data. The FBI agents should be charged with an offense and NZ should demand they be extradited back to New Zealand for a court hearing to face charges of illegal copyright infringement and contempt of court.

For the 3rd or 4th time in this story you've posted the same thing. And yet again I'll reply that the laws you cite do not apply to copying anything in NEW ZEALAND. The FBI has no jurisdiction in New Zealand and must comply with NZ courts. In this case the NZ courts set a hearing date to decide if the FBI should have access to any information, the FBI ignored the NZ Courts and simply copied and FedEx'ed the 18 hard drives copied out of New Zealand without even telling the NZ Police first.

In fact that is exactly what has happened in this case. Before the extradition hearing due in August the FBI instructed the NZ Police and Crown Law office to argue in court that the defense should not have access to any existence. The latest ruling by the judge overruled the FBI's request and said that under the New Zealand Bill of Rights the defense should have access to all the information that has to date been denied to them.

The copying was done in New Zealand and not subject to US jurisdiction and laws. It's the NZ Laws that apply here and a NZ Judge said the FBI had to wait until a hearing for it to be decided if they would get access to this information. The FBI breached a NZ Court order and illegally stole the data. No 'fair use' or 'incident to a judicial proceeding' the Feds broke a NZ Court order!!!

The NZ Police where told by the NZ Court that a hearing was going to have to be conducted before the FBI got to see anything, which the FBI and NZ Police ignored and broke NZ Laws. The FBI did not even ask the NZ Police permission to remove the information, they took it without even the NZ Polices approval.

Yeah that "fair use" you talk of only applies under US jurisdiction. Here in New Zealand we are a separate country and we have our own laws. So your American FBI can not just come over here and apply your own set of rules in our sovereign country thank you!!

The FBI broke a court order in NZ that stipulated that a further hearing would be required to decide if the FBI where going to be given access at all. They just copied and stole the information without even the NZ Police knowing what they where doing.

Google you have Billions so just pay up and stop being a whiney bitch. For some crazy reason you think that you should be able to use everybody else's hard work for free so you can show your adverts to make money. How much do you pay to spider the billions of pages on the WWW that you use to make up your search engine? Nothing. How much to you pay to your Gmail users so you can data-mine their private emails? Nothing. How much do you pay for using 1000's of patented technologies in your Andriod operating system? Nothing. For christ sake they who battle with Oracle over Java copyrights could have been solved if you GPL'd Andriod to be compatible with GPL'd Java, but no instead you just stole it. Before Eric Schmidt your moto used to be "Do No Evil" and it meant something. Now Google you are just another free loading cheap skate, you are the guy who turn up to a party with 4 beers and gets rotten drunk on everybody else's beer, then has the balls to try take 2 beers home because you didn't actually drink all of your own.

Yes but wouldn't the immunity apply when the the copies are being made legally, "This section does not prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative.."

If a NZ judge has said that the FBI have no right to access that information at this time, then the NZ Police and the FBI are not conducting the investigation an a manner in which it is lawfully authorized.

Crown Lawyer Mark Ruffin acting of behalf of the FBI in NZ has until Monday to report to the judge why the FBI and NZ Police have appeared to act unlawfully in allowing copies to be made and why the NZ Police have allowed the FBI to take data that was to be held in "safe custody" by the NZ Police out side the country.

The best answer Ruffin was able to give the New Zealand High Court was that a NZ/USA mutual assistance arrangement obligated the NZ Police to give the FBI the information and "The agreement states that each country gives up some of its sovereignty for the mutual benefit of all." For Christs sake if it's ok for the NZ Police to ignore laws in New Zealand because the FBI told them to what's next? How about the NZ Police just water board Mr Dotcom until he gives up the passwords to encrypted drives.

The next interesting question, can any of the information that have gained from this illegal copying of Mr Dotcom's data be used as evidence in the USA legal case? If the defense can show that the FBI have illegally obtained this information then doesn't it have to be thrown out of court?

Tell me it's not so!!! Can we now please indite the FBI on charges of copyright infringement please. A story in the NZ papers said that have taken copies of storage devices that contain home movies and other personal items. Will the FBI now have to pay $150,000 for each file they have illegally made copies of? It would seem that the FBI have been working with the NZ Police on getting copies of this private data, would't that mean the FBI are now a party to "conspiracy to commit copyright infringement"!

As a New Zealander I'd like to send a message to the USA Government, "please get the fuck off my front lawn!".

The USA does not have any right to extradite anybody from New Zealand for copyright infringement. http://www.nzlii.org/nz/legis/consol_reg/esoao1970390/esoao1970390.html That is the reason the feds made up bullshit racketeering and money laundering charges against Megaupload managers.

As a New Zealander I say, fuck you USA, get the hell off my front lawn.

Google's product is Andriod users. Google's customers are it's advertisers. Andriod is gaining traction because it's given away free. There should be no surprise there. The big question really is how on earth do Apple get to charge more money for similar hardware and functionality and still not be able to manufacture enough devices to meet demand. I used to run FreeBSD with a KDE desktop for years and are was a big advocate of open source because I hated the virus and trogans the where fcuking up windoze computers. The problem now is the unfriendly scammers who are spreading malware on free software on Andriod app stores. Getting crap on my computer was my I dropped windoze and all the unfriendly malware getting into Andriod is a reason I can't consider something like the new Samsung Galaxy Andriod devices. Andriod is the new windoze when it comes to security and malware issues. Sorry to say by that walled garden without the malware is looking very good.