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FBI Ordered to Copy Kim Dotcom Evidence for Possible Return

megaIn New Zealand Kim Dotcom’s legal team continues the battle over data that was seized from his home.

Dotcom’s lawyer previously argued that the FBI illegally took his computers, depriving Megaupload’s founder from using it for his defense.

The defense teams wants this data back as soon as possible, and a recent decision by the New Zealand court makes this possible.

Judge Winkelmann has ordered the FBI to start copying the 150 terabytes of data for a potential handover.

Whether Dotcom will get the data still has to be decided, but the Judge wants it to be ready when that ruling comes in.

The U.S. opposed the handover with FBI agent Michael Postin complaining that the copying could take weeks to complete.

However, Judge Winkelmann responded by saying that the U.S. authorizes have “ample means’ to get it done.

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  • Guest

    How big are hard drives these days? Several terebytes?

    Yeah, I’m sure it would take several weeks for some IT flunky to write the short .bat file or shell script required.

    Also, FBI logic:
    Making the first copy? Easy.
    Making a second copy? Impoooooosible!

    • You swine

      I was with you,  until you broke my screen-reader.

      Last time….  “divide by zero” , just crashed my screen-reader.

      “FBI logic” …. completely fucked my system up.

    • FuzzyDuck

       That’s because the first copy was actually stolen by the FBI. Stolen in the good old fashioned meaning of the word, that is that the rightful owner no-longer has it.

      • Asdf

        And the FBI’s 486s were no good to read or let alone copy all that data!

  • Dongs

    How about them apples.

  • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

    The Feds need to be rapped on their hands hard over this. It’s more and more becoming crystal clear that this is not about shutting down an illegal business but about kowtowing to the wishes of the music/movie/tv industries.

    • FrostyC

      Kowtowing is definitely the correct verb. I mean fuck, the FBI is fighting their battles! How much damn money are they pouring into the US government?! Maybe if we can take the MPAA out we’ll have removed a large malignant nodule from the U.S. government’s corruption.

      Kowtow: The act of deep respect shown by kneeling and bowing so low as to have one’s head touching the ground.

      • Guest

        A person that is kowtowing makes it easy and an open invitation for someone to fuck them in the ass.

      • Igigfw

        Kowtow = Bend over

      • Asdf

        I thought the verb was genuflect

  • Alyssa Blindy

    “However, Judge Winkelmann responded by saying that the U.S. authorizes have “ample means’ to get it done.”
    You mean authorities?
    I think torrent freak really needs an editor.
    With regards to the article though, I think the FBI bit off more than they could chew in taking down MegaUpload.

    • Anonymous Monkey

       Agent: “But we’re the F. B. friggin I! We can whatever we want!”
      Judge: “Good, so you’ll have no problems complying with this then.”

    • nobody

      Even an editor and a triple checker can have looked over the mistake. Mistakes just happen.

      Napkin math. 110 Euro for a 2GB harddisk. 150 TB = 150,000 GB. 150,000/2 = 75,000 harddisks. 75,000 x 110 = 8,250,000 Euro in harddisks alone to get a single full copy.

      • Bill

        No, 75
        2TB hds would be enough… And those are about 150 usd each…

        • Shogunreaper

           You can get them for about $100.

      • Efsdfsd

        2GB hard drives? what planet do you live on? my laptop alone has 600GB

      • Fygo

         110 EUR for 2GB disk? Are you living 15 years ago?

      • Shitgun

         I like how he says “Mistakes just happen” and then one just does :)

    • mwhahaha

      An editor on a website? Ha! Welcome to the future, where all content is citizen produced and quality suffers along with accuracy and substantiation. 

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  • Doc
  • SomeGuy

    I think you mean “authorities”, not “authorizes” in that last line.

  • Mark

    So to, a copy should be provided to the defence…god damn yank gov bullying and trying to rule the world just as Hitler wanted to…

  • Anyone

    let’s assume 100MB/s which modern harddrives easily reach.
    that would mean about 18 days to copy if you copy them one after another

    so in theory they are correct with “weeks”
    but if you copy it more efficiently you should be done in a few days at most.

    • Dirt Slow

      100MB/s = 6,000MB/m = 360,000MB/h = 8,640,000MB/d = 8.24TB/d 

      At this “dirt slow” copy rate … 

      150 terabytes would take 18 days to copy. 
      25 petabytes would take 8.5 years to copy. 

      • Danny

        That is obviously worst case, assuming that somehow all of Kim’s data was on one drive or that the FBI only has one computer with a couple of SATA/SAS ports.

        I would bet its split into 2TB disks, so you could process all the disks in parallel, depending on the amount of hardware you have it could take you less than an hour, at most a day.

    • drhead

      They are obviously using a RAID array (if not, they’re doing it wrong).  If it was a RAID 1+0 array, it should only take as long as copying one or two full hard disks over (I’d assume MU was using this configuration since there’s not a lot of choice with that much data).  As for the cost of disks, I quickly found a 2TB hard drive for $80.  Assuming the data is in a RAID 1+0 like I said, that’d be 150 drives (2 mirrored sets in a striped set) which would be $12,000.

      • mwhahaha

        Uhm they can raid a man’s house in a foreign country after spying on his communications, I think that regardless of the set up of his drives they can have the stuff copied in a couple of days.

        Maybe they could torrent it to him, so we can all have a look and judge for ourselves.

    • OccamsKatana

      Good in theory, if they copied them one after another, but if they had more than one copying device, they could do them all at the same time. Essentially, they could have them all copied if they ran more than one machine dramatically reducing their copy time. But alas, the FBI uses redundant technology, and they share the only 80-386 computer they have. And that’s a helluva lot of floppy disks they are copying to. But as we all know, the FBI is completely incompetent, as they prove and reprove time after time.

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  • Decimus

    So, they raid his house illegally.  Then they legalize it.  It sounded like they were holding his stuff without any authorization.  Kim asks for it back since they really don’t have any claim to it.  So now they’re going to be able to copy the data?

    Just give it back.

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  • Nick

    However, Judge Winkelmann responded by saying that the U.S. authorizes have “ample means’ to get it done.

    Deal with it motherfucker, you broke your own law noob.

    • http://twitter.com/Mathew30 Mathew Lisett

       sorry who broke their own law?

      • Cave Johnson

        Who is sorry?

        • Nick

           who’s what?

  • FREE ME

    25 petabytes x 1024 = 25,600 terabytes. 

    Say $100 per terabyte = $2,560,000 USD. 

    Even at $50 per terabyte = $1,280,000 USD. 

    But Carpathia will sell all 1103 servers with the 25 petabytes for a cool $1,000,000. 
    That’s a bargain.  25 petabytes (at $39 per terabyte) AND 1103 FREE servers! 
    (Includes FREE SHIPPING to NZ too!)

  • Mark

    In time this most likely will end up with prejudice, since I doubt if the USA will return all the files, or one file at all

  • Guest

    The elite keeps ruling the majority…

    • mwhahaha

      Everyone wants things that are in their own interests. Even you.

      I know I do.

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  • Rekrul

    The US says they shouldn’t have to show any of the evidence before the extradition hearing. So in other words, extradite them first, and then once they have them in custody, they can be shown the evidence against them.

    Yeah, that’s fair…
     

    • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

      Only in Bizarro world…… which I am honestly becoming more and more convinced that we live in today.

  • Kat

     ” copying the 150 terabytes of data for a potential handover.
    Whether Dotcom will get the data still has to be decided, but the Judge wants it to be ready when that ruling comes in.

    The U.S. opposed the handover with FBI agent Michael Postin complaining that the copying could take weeks to complete.

    However, Judge Winkelmann responded by saying that the U.S. authorizes have “ample means’ to get it done”

    yeah before I though this was crap excuse, and now confermed. With funding, such as the corrupt us govt has, it is really no problem to get it done in under a day, heck even I could if given the funding. Would be like this, buy drives, rent computer lab(pay fee) hook up drives, plug in, = done in less than one day.

  • Horsemeat

    150TB is a hell of a lot of data, what does he keep on the hard drives anyway?

    Or is it more of a case of 130TB of dummy random data and 20TB of real encrypted data…

    There was me thinking the 4TB of stuff I have was a lot.

    • Guest

       4TB? What? Is this 1999? LOL.

    • http://twitter.com/Mathew30 Mathew Lisett

       you saying 150TB being a lot, mae me re read the article thinking they meant more.

      hell 150tb for MU service is naff all as i was expecting PB not TB of storage. and i went past the 6TB mark a few years back, think about it a bluray rip by tself is 40gb. and if you do movies ie your a creator of films etc, then your looking at an easy 4TB just for that, and each project can go past that.

      • Anyone

        MU used 25 Petabyte (25000 Terabyte)
        the 140TB are Dotcom’s personal files seized from his home

        • Guest

          which contains the raid I believe, so it may have years worth of CCTV footage in HD … may explain the extreme amount of TBs used.

  • Guest

    I wonder if they will come up with the excuse that some of the hard drives are missing or damaged and therefore the data cannot be copied.

    • Anon

      That, or there will be a “terrorist bombing” on the facility holding the servers. 

      • Lulz

        More likely arson.

    • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

      If they try that crap, I hope that the judge throws in prison the sad fuck who is drafted to do that AND the 3 people up from him and THEIR 3 people up from them!

    • ThatGuyOverThere

       If that happened, and I was the judge, I’d throw the case out because the supposed evidence is not complete/corrupt. Sounds like a mistrial waiting to happen if they pull that shit.

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  • Arnie

    Do people realize this data is spread over multiple harddrives? You can copy those in parallel – more than one at the same time – so it’ll take much less than 18 fucking days.

    • Netfucks

      I thought he had one massive 150TB harddrive the size of a smart car…

  • http://twitter.com/Anime4PSP Anime 4 PSP

    18 days, eh? fbi employees are so stupid that none of them though of paralleling ?

    • Guest

      not stupid but so far up their own ass in stating that they can’t do it because they don’t want to do it. This is just a trick by them to get out of doing it in order not to hand any evidence to the defence that could be used (and will be used) against them.

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  • wow@really.nz

    I don’t understand.  Why does the FBI hold possession of that data, and not the New Zealand police?  Did the FBI physically ship the hardware over to the U.S. or something?  Didn’t the FBI merely copy the data and mail it, not actually remove it?  Also, why is an American state in charge here?  Why is New Zealand in the position of pandering to the American FBI over something that should be under their control?

    • Anyone

      they basically just took it from New Zealand authorities
      the whole operation was a giant clusterfuck, and I’m surprised it hasn’t collapsed yet.

  • mwhahaha

    Meh, the fat lad just wants his pron back.

  • :D!

    Didn’t the FBI state that the evidence isn’t evidence because it’s digital?

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  • Chellspecker

    Maybe Kim owns the intellectual property rights to his 150 TB of data and they won’t be allowed to copy it under current copyright law? That would slow them down a bit…

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  • Netfucks

    Ive got like 3tb of data, hes got 150tb, i though i had a lot…

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  • Karl

    I know this post is a bit old, but why is everyone talking about copying individual drives? Kim would most likely just of had a SAN or three, with good hardware a SAN will have throughput near the speed of all the individual drives, and if he’s using 8GB fibre….

    Put it this way, if the FBI don’t decide to be d***ks (ie copying to individual drives), and just buy a like for like SAN, they could get it all copied in well under a week.

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