Art by Thierry Ehrmann

NOBODY was terribly shocked or even surprised to see it confirmed that NSA had spied on Kim Dotcom [1,2], who is definitely not a threat to US national security. People spent a great deal of time discussing how NSA surveillance got misused in the war against drugs, but little attention has been paid to Kim's complaints, maybe because he is far away in New Zealand (NZ), very far from the US. It should also be added that NZ police broke the law by using forces that had been created to fight terrorism and instead used excessive power to intimidate and destroy the lives of Kim and his family. This whole unbelievable episode (or set thereof) helps show that NZ is still besieged by the empire, which also tries to legalise software patents over there.

"This is neither capitalism nor democracy, never mind freedom."It should be noted that the "empire" we speak of is run by large corporations (or megacorporations, some call them multinationals) whose heads operate covertly, through politicians. They gained power through a coup against the government and won a long time ago. The harassment of Kim has done nothing for small entities (it only harmed them based on new reports [3]) and messengers favourable to Kim are not just being silenced/censored by British ISPs but also intimidated by large corporations that attacked Kim [4].

This is neither capitalism nor democracy, never mind freedom. This is fascism. Remember why Groklaw could not go on anymore. ⬆

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. NSA used PRISM surveillance on Kim Dotcom

   Ng said that he pored over the documents that were released by the courts in May and found a link between the New Zealand government intelligence agency and the US National Security Agency (NSA).
   
   He said that the New Zealand Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) provided assistance during the investigation of Kim Dotcom, adding that this means that nowhere is safe from prying eyes.





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





3. Megaupload Shutdown Hurt Smaller Films, Helped Blockbusters

   While the major movie studios have all praised the demise of Megaupload, new data suggests that the shutdown has impacted part of the industry negatively. Extending previous work, European researchers show that the closure of the service had both positive and negative effects on box office revenues. Using weekly data from 10,272 movies in 50 countries spanning over several years, the researchers found that the Megaupload shutdown actually hurt smaller movies.





4. Comcast Threatens to Sue TorrentFreak for Copyright Infringement (updated)

   Comcast has sent TorrentFreak a cease and desist letter, claiming copyright over contents of an article which revealed that Prenda Law was involved in operating a pirate honeypot. Failure to comply will result in a lawsuit in which the Internet provider will seek damages, a Comcast representative informs us. In addition, Comcast also alerted our hosting provider, who is now threatening to shut down our server.