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Two MegaUpload Ops Bailed, But Government Wants Surveillance

While MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom will remain in custody for at least another month, two indicted members of the so-called “Mega Conspiracy” were granted bail this morning. Their privacy, however, will have to wait. On top of the revelation that the FBI monitored Skype calls as far back as 2007, officials are now assessing whether the defendant’s homes are suitable for “electronic monitoring”.

Yesterday morning, Kim Dotcom had his application for bail denied at the North Shore District Court in New Zealand.

Judge David McNaughton said that the scale of the charges against the MegaUpload founder combined with his significant resources meant that there was a significant risk he could flee, possibly to his birthplace, Germany.

In a later hearing at the same location, lawyer Guy Foley argued that Dotcom’s alleged co-conspirators – Bram van der Kolk, 29, Finn Batato, 38, and Mathias Ortmann, 40 – are of good character and deserved bail.

This morning Judge McNaughton handed down his decision. He granted bail to both Dutch national Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato from Germany, but denied bail to Ortmann due to financial concerns.

According to Stuff, the FBI’s records show that Ortmann made around $14.5 million from the company between 2005 and 2010, and an additional $3 million in 2011. His accounts, however, show $20.2 million, some $3.5 million more. Ortmann’s lawyer has until tomorrow to come up with an explanation.

Yesterday, Guy Foley described programmer and networking expert Bram van der Kolk as a family man and today his wife Asia expressed relief that he would be coming home.

“I’m just glad my husband is going to be able to play with our baby again,” she said.

Although the Judge granted the pair bail, he ordered them detained for a further week so that their homes could be assessed for surveillance equipment suitability. It’s becoming ever more clear that being monitored is nothing new for these MegaUpload employees.

The US Department of Justice’s indictment showed that the operators of MegaUpload had been subjected to monitoring over the past several years, but a piece of evidence presented in court yesterday revealed not only how far back, but just how deep that surveillance went.

Documents produced by the FBI reportedly show the details of a 2007 Skype conversation between Bram van der Kolk and Mathias Ortmann where they mulled a situation where Kim Dotcom might run off with “the money”.

Although no context was provided by the FBI, Van der Kolk allegedly described the situation with Dotcom more than 4 years ago as “a bit risky” but with Ortmann offering assurances that since Dotcom was “operationally dependent” on the pair he could not “sneak away with the money.”

“What if the shit really hits the fan? Would he take the last little bit of money and take off? He’s good at that,” Van der Kolk replied.

“True,” said Ortmann, “But with his spending nowadays he will attempt to get the shit off the fan, and that’s what he needs us for.”

Dotcom will remain in custody until at least 22nd February.

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  • PlatinumC

    Atleast better than nothing in terms of good news.

    • Guest

      cause this is hard core shit

      people who infringe copyright are fucking terrorists amiright????

      • MAFIAA

        No, only on my copyright…
        only mine…

      • Anon

        Who cares what you think…

        • Kim Dotcodotuk

          So MAFIAA trolls don’t believe in democracy, you want a dictatorship where only your thoughts count? -_-

        • Judge

          who bailed you out Kim?

    • Rls per
    • JudgeDreed

      The US federal government just crossed another red-line.

      Not only they broke the supreme law of the land flagrantly (once more) but they managed to do it in a Foreign country this time! Of course the US law is not supposed to apply in NZ as long as NZ remain a sovereign nation. But this is an issue to be addressed by the NZ citizen.

      Unbelievable!

      Fascism has reach the shores of America. The tea partiers were right. It is time to impeach the president. Our nation is in real danger right now and we must act urgently before the “corporatists” who took over our government start another war.

      But this is not enough. The 3 branches of the government need to be dismissed as well. We need to start the petition process. All the anti-constitutional federal and stat laws need to be nullified including the DMCA, the Patriot Act, the 2008 PRO-IP Act all these drugs forfeiture laws, the MDAA to name a few.

      There is obviously a lot of cleaning to do.

      And since obviously the “corporatists” who usurped the power don’t care about the law and due process, we need to raise a constitutional army to defend the republic and enforce the restoration of the US constitution.

      • Guest

        3 words: watch Zeitgeist films

        • Subfader Subfader

          lol, Zeitgeist are 100% conspiracy

        • Guest2

          @Subfader Subfader:

          lol, Zeitgeist are 100% conspiracy.

          This is what the neo-cons/corporatists are saying in their propaganda as they rip apart the country and the republic for personal gain:

          “Those who are ringing the alarm bell are conspiracy theorists”

          The fact that you carry their message simplistically without elaboration indicate you are a pay troll working for them.

          Ya, Don’t work to hard.. They are a pack of criminals and they are not worth it.

      • Rohe

        As far as I see it: they had servers in the US to serve US customers. Such, they are responsible under US law. I know UK and Russian companies in the IT sector, who refuse to do business with the US because of those brash systemic failures. The US doesn’t ask anything from NZ but extradition based on financial misconduct. Thailand, Russia, Japan, France…there are many historical cases where the local government was asked to extradite persons.

        As many stated: if some of them would have lived in Germany, they couldn’t be extradited – but then they would have faced the law there.

        It will take month, if not years to clear if the extradition is even warranted. This will not end the next two month. They have now five to ten years in courts before them.

    • JudgeDreed

      The US federal government just crossed another red-line.

      Not only they broke the supreme law of the land flagrantly (once more) but they managed to do it in a Foreign country this time! Of course the US law is not supposed to apply in NZ as long as NZ remain a sovereign nation. But this is an issue to be addressed by the NZ citizen.

      Unbelievable!

      Fascism has reach the shores of America. The tea partiers were right. It is time to impeach the president. Our nation is in real danger right now and we must act urgently before the “corporatists” who took over our government start another war.

      But this is not enough. The 3 branches of the government need to be dismissed as well. We need to start the petition process. All the anti-constitutional federal and stat laws need to be nullified including the DMCA, the Patriot Act, the 2008 PRO-IP Act all these drugs forfeiture laws, the MDAA to name a few.

      There is obviously a lot of cleaning to do.

      And since obviously the “corporatists” who usurped the power don’t care about the law and due process, we need to raise a constitutional army to defend the republic and enforce the restoration of the US constitution.

    • Judge

      The US federal government just crossed another red-line.

      Not only they broke the supreme law of the land flagrantly (once more) but they managed to do it in a Foreign country this time! Of course the US law is not supposed to apply in NZ as long as NZ remain a sovereign nation. But this is an issue to be addressed by the NZ citizen.

      Unbelievable!

      Fascism has reach the shores of America. The tea partiers were right. It is time to impeach the president. Our nation is in real danger right now and we must act urgently before the “corporatists” who took over our government start another war.

      But this is not enough. The 3 branches of the government need to be dismissed as well. We need to start the petition process. All the anti-constitutional federal and stat laws need to be nullified including the DMCA, the Patriot Act, the 2008 PRO-IP Act all these drugs forfeiture laws, the MDAA to name a few.

      There is obviously a lot of cleaning to do.

      And since obviously the “corporatists” who usurped the power don’t care about the law and due process, we need to raise a constitutional army to defend the republic and enforce the restoration of the US constitution.

  • WTFFFFF

    How did the FBI get skype logs…I really dont get it.

    I get the logs on emails as Cogent’s servers were raided / search warrant was provided in July 2010!

    • Alan

      I’m wondering the same thing, if skype freely handed them over without a warrant then I know what service I’ll be canceling. :p

      • Anonymous

        Since 2001 you can rely on every company which has an online service requiring encryption to have handed over a backdoor option to the government if said company is american. And there is no need to provide a warrant, ask for one, or provide justification until 90 days after surveillance has officially ceased. Of course, there is no requirement to ever cease surveillance either so in practice any organization under the jurisdiction of the Office of Homeland Security has carte blanche on monitoring anyone at any time without either warrant or justification provided.

        You can thank the “Patriot Act” for that.

        And I’m wondering how any american today could miss this. Any talk of miranda rights and warrants are ONLY applicable if a pair of beat cops physically trudge up and knock on your door.

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

          Oh, give me a break, Scary….. if that had really been done, someone would have leaked the information on that by now. Since there has been no leak, I seriously doubt that they handed over anything.

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001432014105 Mike Harrison

          Many were against that provision after 9/11, thats why it is supposed to be renewed every few years, but every time it seems it may go away finally, it never does.

          Even the current President lied about it as a candidate saying he would get rid of it when it came up for renewal, yet it passed(he actually wanted to punt it to the next President by having it renewed for 6 years which would mean it come up when his successor is in office after his second term) and he gladly signed it. Just another lie from the orator

          Also you have to remember, many in the US are apathetic and have the mentality of “if you are not doing anything illegal, you have nothing to worry about”

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001432014105 Mike Harrison

        I bet they got a secret warrant

      • Wazza

        Skype is a Microsoft owned product and an official business division within the company, either they/owners before them complied with law enforcement, bending over sideways as required… or someone behind the scenes made use of one of the many exploits that Microsoft has yet to fix ;)

        Skype is not a secure method of communication and hasn’t been for a long time, if security gets any looser we’re going to have to start calling it Kim Kardashian

        http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/skype-exploits-i-know-where-you-are-what-you-

    • Richie

      Speaking as a person who has worked for Skype as well as having reverse engineered the proprietary, encrypted Skype protocol, I will tell you three possibilities for how the Skype logs were obtained:

      A) The informant at MegaUpload (who provided internal emails and such) coughed up Skype logs. Easy to do if you are one of the involved parties. We still don’t know for sure if there was an informant, though.

      B) The U.S. wiretapped their Skype conversations via the Patriot Act wiretapping provisions. The Skype client does not, as far as I know, have any wiretapping backdoors, but while the Skype protocol IS peer-to-peer and encrypted, it is NOT anonymous OR even private, as the final point and possibility will show:

      C) Let me explain something to you gullible “I am safe on Skype because it is encrypted” people: While the connections ARE peer-to-peer and encrypted, Skype transmits and stores *EVERY* message, *EVERY* file transmission event (but not the contents), and *EVERY* phone call event (but not the audio, just the duration) back to the MAIN Skype servers. Ever wondered how you are able to log into the chat from one computer, talk to someone and log out, then log in from back home and see all the discussion history you carried out at ANOTHER computer? THIS is how: http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/legal/privacy/general/ — Skype keeps *EVERY* *LAST* *MESSAGE* *AND* *EVENT* on their servers for 30 days, where they are open for law enforcement requests and other fun stuff. Now, here’s the kicker: If the FBI requests that the MegaUpload founders be monitored, Skype can turn on longer-term storage, which is very possibly what happened here. Due to the age of the Skype logs in the case, we know that any such request happened many years ago.

      “Crime for Dummies” version of what C means for you:
      * If you are a criminal and you use Skype to talk to someone about your acts, you are a MORON. No argument here. It simply IS NOT PRIVATE – AT ALL.
      * HOWEVER, if you allow 30 days to pass since your last illegal message, your records will be clean on the Skype SERVER-SIDE (I’ll get to that as the last point).
      * If you are being watched, longer-term storage can be enabled on your account to gather evidence.
      * Finally, EVEN WHEN the Server-side message cache is cleared, you still have another huge problem: Your own computer and that of the person you spoke to. Each of these contain an *INFINITE* log file that contains *ALL* history since *FOREVER*. This simple database can be extracted from either of your two computers and contains the whole history of exactly everything that was ever said to ANYONE you ever spoke to. If you delete this file AND your friend deletes it AND the Skype server-side versions expire, you are still under other risks of course, since a deleted file is never fully deleted and can be partially or fully recovered if it has not yet been overwritten, and other problems.

      The TL;DR: DO NOT USE SKYPE FOR CRIME, YOU MORONS!

      • Richie

        Oh and I forgot to mention two things about the Skype message storage:

        It can be significantly longer than 30 days, depending on what jurisdiction your Skype account falls under (some states and countries require longer storage).

        Secondly, regarding the comment above saying “if skype freely handed them over without a warrant then I know what service I’ll be canceling”; Skype will not give out the data without proper authorities asking, so if it ever gets to the point of an authority asking Skype to hand over your private data, you are in deep shit for more than just the issue of the logs.

      • Richie

        Click “show more” above if you can’t see all the contents of my initial message.

      • how come?

        The article says the “calls” were monitored. That sounds like they’re talking about audio chat then. But by what you said, only the messages get stored. How come would that be possible then?

    • anyonecanpost

      CALLS, not logs. CALLS.

  • Anonymous

    If you use MSN Messenger, AIM, Gmail, Skype, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Facebook or any other service provided by an American company, remember, the FBI / DOJ / ICE has access to it. All you voice and chat messages and emails are logged and stored indefinitely (even after you hit the “Delete” button).

    BOYCOTT AMERICAN SERVICES !!!
    Get a Chinese email address. ;)

    • Anonymous

      Not forgetting PayPal (owned by eBay), also an American company.

    • Anon

      Yeah let’s all now support the Communist Republic of China and be their slaves because the Chinese Government will defend your right to freedom your speech till the day you die.

      • http://travismccrea.com Travis McCrea

        Actually they WILL defend your right to free speech until the day you die… thing is, they will be the one killing you :D

      • OMGWTFBBQ

        Yeah why not? I can’t see the difference anymore. US, China or Iran they are all just as bad. Worst thing about the US is they are pretending to be good guys.At least China doesn’t hide it.

    • JoJo

      lmfao are you joking? You just said boycott American services and now you say get a Chinese email address? *facepalm* both country’s monitor what you do!!!!!! Wow you sure are *smart*

      • BLT

        Yes, obviously it was a joke, so you should probably relax.

      • Anonymous

        If America is your enemy, then China is your friend.

        “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” — Duh?

        • Everyone

          First; the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, he is my ally.

          Second; that doesn’t apply if the enemy of your enemy is also your enemy, and given their crackdowns on basic freedoms, they’re my enemy.

        • Predator

          “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” — Duh?

          Nop.

          But if both of your enemies are also enemies of each other you can play one against the other.

        • Anonymous

          @Everyone in reply to Anonymous. Here is the page you are looking for:

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

          So, now the illiterate can go get edumacated on proverbs.

          Plus, while you’re out there, look up facetious.

        • Everyone

          We’re well awarer of the concept of a proverb. That doesn’t make a proverb correct.

    • PRedator

      “BOYCOTT AMERICAN SERVICES !!!
      Get a Chinese email address. ;) ”

      Are you fucking kidding me?

      The Chinese government is even worst! Find something in Norway or Island instead.

  • Johnsmith

    Makes me not want to do business with Skype if their handing over their logs. Specially if they are giving the keys to the kingdom to the FED’s. i don’t trust them

    • Lawndookyy

      guess i’ll never use a mobile either, I heard of the gov tapping someone’s once too.

      • JFK

        Your house might be wire tapped too. Are you sure you want to live there?

  • peterm

    i skype was encrypted :/

    • peterm

      thought*

      • Anonymous

        It is. The problem with Skype though is that the encryption key is generated by Skype itself which in turn means that government surveillance is possible as long as skype is willing to provide a handy backdoor which gives them the specific encryption keys used for the conversation.

        And that, boys and girls, is why you should never trust a proprietary system to handle your encryption needs. If you use open-source applications instead any such backdoor option will be found and plugged well before the program reaches mature status.

  • Niko

    It’s good to see that FBI and US Government are doing their best to fight online crime and criminals, it makes me forget all about 10% underemployment rate, financial issues, corruption, violence, gangs, drug dealers and similar.
    Good thing that Government is keeping us safe from those REAL criminals.

    • Gae

      Screw gangs and drugs, the government needs to focus even more of its cash and efforts on stopping people watching episodes of south park without paying!

    • http://travismccrea.com Travis McCrea

      I wonder if we could setup a bitcoin account for the guys who are out on bail to get them the resources to flee to Germany?

      It’s hard to watch the United States terrorist actions destroy the lives of good people.

      • JFK

        Lol why will we waste our money on these putas?

  • Anonymous

    as it is revealed that more and more services retain logs of people and freely pass those logs over to the authorities when asked, i would have thought the less people will use those services. when privacy is expected, paid for or not, privacy is what people should get. if it isn’t going to be given, it should be stated on the front page of what ever that service is, so people can then decide whether to use it or not. it’s no good assuming privacy, not have it explained that it isn’t given, only to find out when it’s too late that you never had it to begin with!

    • http://twitter.com/ithinkitisayit Heidi

      That’s why they give you a privacy policy to read :) And a Terms and Conditions. If you do not agree with either, do not sign up (granted, it’s not that simple because these days you have to agree to Terms and Conditions just to turn on your computer, and they’re intentionally designed so people don’t bother reading them, but meh).

    • Gae

      But clearly they have not handed over logs, they have given the FBI a way to listen in on conversations. logs would show who spoke to who, not what was said yet they have all the details of what was said.

      All I can say is be VERY careful when using any American owned service.

  • Anonymous

    OFFTOPIC: ACTA has been signed into law by the EU today excluding 5 member states.

    Anonymous has taken down europarl.europa.eu today to support the thousands of ACTA protesters on the streets.

    • Guest

      Anonymous = Script kiddies with DDOS tools.

      • Predator

        Gov pay troll.

      • Anonymous

        Yes many are skiddies but this MegaUpload matter beyond Anonymous also got the support of LulzSec and many pro-hackers; Dozens of websites have been hacked and defaced, many documents have been ripped and thousands of passwords made public.

        There is also serious ground support like yesterday over 10,000 people protested in Poland over ACTA. Their ministers response was “we shall not be blackmailed” WTF?

        It is all about people helping when they can in whatever way they can. You don’t need to be a genius to take down a Gov. website in protest.

        • ash en

          Anon=legion, its not so much a “group” as the collective of the internet, so in a sense we are all part and yet not part of this group.

          Its a funny situation, where I watch people try and target anon and classify anon, without getting that its not a set group, its a composite entity made of internet users the world wide….trying to track down all of anon would be a waste of money…(dont tell the govt or mafiaa that tho….with would say your wrong…lol)

        • Anonymous

          Yes Anonymous has no leadership or fixed structure where individual Anonymous groups (or legions) spread out around the world with little overlap beyond their announcements and exploits.

          Trying to maintain a group without leadership is even more perplexing with chaos running rampant under some general majority order. You can begin to wonder how they get anything done.

          Yet they do and quite successfully when each person tends to find their place and to do what they are good at. Fear the day the whole of Anonymous has the same idea.

    • Guest

      Anonymous = Script kiddies with DDOS tools.

      • Anonymous

        Tell that to Sony

        • Anonymous

          Not to forget what they did to ACS:Law and Andrew Crossley.

          Following their second DDoS attack the email database leak occurred and uploaded by Anonymous to TPB. Now that was an orgasmic weekend as we pulled their data apart.

          We can certainly say that was the turning point when now everyone had enough data to not only understand their operation but also to take them down. The whole speculative invoicing scheme then began to fall apart.

          Now the UK has been purged of this scam that was abusing the law and Andrew Crossley certainly met his fate. All thanks to Anonymous.

          I do believe Anonymous does do a lot of good. Many people do not like the DDoS aspect but they are iconic enough to make the news and the site usually comes back on-line unharmed when they stop hammering it. So it is really a disruptive form of on-line protest that does not usually cause damage.

          They of course can do a lot more with hacking and defacing websites which can work better like in cases of Hadopi.

        • Anonymous

          @Violated0

          I am well aware of the other actions the collective called anonymous have done to Andrew Crossley (could not have happened to a nicer guy) and other interesting things.

          I chose to refer to Sony however as it’s not something a DDoS alone can do and also had a very public impact on the company while at the same time keeping the message short and simple (a more effective means then a long essay on why anons are not all skiddies =) ).

      • Predator

        Gov pay troll.

      • Anonymous

        And you’re next on their list! ROFL! Funny how they all ain’t nuthin’ until they point their guns at you.

        • Anonymous

          If you want to see FUNNY look at this…
          http://i.imgur.com/dk7VI.jpg

          The Polish Parliament signed ACTA today. Members of Parliament who were opposed protested using Anonymous “V” masks. LOL

        • Anonymous

          DELETED

    • Ball Juggler

      Son of a BItch! … those fucking traitors! … this isn’t a democratic law at all… it’s not valid! … we don’t live in fucking kingdoms anymore.

      • Anonymous

        The fight is not over yet. This trade agreement has been signed but there are more stages before it becomes law.

  • sheen4

    good, i expect megaupload to be back up under a new domain by this evening.

  • http://twitter.com/ZippoS Zippo

    Insane… you provide online storage space and sharing, run it in a different country, Skype lets the US wiretap your calls, the US extradites you to their country, and treats you like a fucking terrorist.

    What the fuck is wrong with this world. I mean, aside from corporations running the US government. Ugh, sickening.

    Perhaps it’s time we boycott Skype.

    • Anonymous

      Skype did turn over to them your “private key” so they could spy on what should have been encrypted and secure VoIP traffic.

      If you value your privacy then Skype is trash.

  • Anon

    Looks like Skype have just lost a few thousand customers.

  • Asd

    For confidential use of emails, use hushmail with VPN at all times when connecting.

    • Laquita

      nah reserarch hushmail, they bend over to the feds too

    • iCry

      NOT Hushmail.

      Use Countermail or DragonCrypt (mansmail.ru)

      • Guest

        nah reserarch Countermail and DragonCrypt, they bend over to the feds too

  • http://twitter.com/YabbaDabbaTru YabbaDabbaTru

    Remember your text messages are stored as well. Privacy is a farce an if you don’t realize that you deserve to be spied on.

    • Sargasso

      I’m appalled by the annihilation of the cyber locker ecosystem, but I’m also quite happy to see greedy scumbags like Dotcom getting trapped.

      • Anon

        i don’t agree. it just shows that there is still room for greedy people in new ecosystems that are better for the user.

        that’s a lever to get the industry to change it’s view.

  • Gu357u53r

    Guess I’ll be setting up my own chat server for my family, and email server so I rule it not someone else. Bye bye ease dropping weirdos.

    • Anon

      Only criminals need to take extreme measures like you.

      • Privacy Concerned

        No, people who care about their privacy may feel the need. And setting up their own e-mail server is more common than you think about (most medium-size business have their own).

        Anyway, stop with that stupid rhetoric of “You have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide”. People doing the right things (activists, opinionated people, watchdogs, among others) benefit from hiding their identities.

        It’s an stupid idea from police states that stomps over the principle of “presumption of innocence” (innocent until proven guilty) which is one of the basis for modern democracies and one of the Universal Human Rights and is part of many constitutions around the world (in US’s it’s granted by the 5th, 6th and 14th amendments).

        Beside, the government doesn’t need to know where I’m going to spend my next vacations, what I plan to buy on a grocery store or what I’m planning to give as a gift to my girlfriend.

      • Gu357u53r

        Says the person with the alias Anon, hypocrit. You left yourself wide open for that one idiot.

      • Gu357u53r

        You could have left the personal attack out of it. It’s not like I’m going to drop my emails that I’ve had for years, I was just making a point. If you were trying to make a point with your statement then I retract my comments about you being a hypocrit. What’s so bad about a father trying to protect his family? This would keep his children under his control, and not all over facebook or myspace being harassed by people who they don’t even know. It’s not to hard to ease drop on lines, even for hackers. And yes to your comment it could be used for criminal activity as well. So you are for an internet where it is heavily monitored with abolished encryption and VPN? This has to be for all devices connected, no special treatment should be given to businesses. Are you going to be the one to set behind a machine that captures trillions of bits, and parse it? Who’s going to pay your salary for that undertaking?

      • Anonymous

        What a stupid comment! Only someone that doesn’t want to share their private conversations with the world would want privacy! And that’s not an extreme measure. What a dick. I agree with Gu357u53r about the person with the alias ANON! What the fuck are you hiding from? Enjoy your ‘privacy? Anonymity? Hypocrite is right!

      • Guest

        Holy fuck you are really a fucking stupid troll.

      • Anob

        Dildo Shilldo…

  • http://twitter.com/ithinkitisayit Heidi

    I find this amusing because I work for basic customer service at a well-known cell phone company. While yes, it is true the text messages are stored on our server even if you delete them, we actually don’t have the ability to see what you texted or even print out your texts. We have the ability to see what number you texted (or what number texted you) and when, but that’s it. We’d need a supeona in order to give out that information and it’d have to go further up the line above my boss and his boss. At basic customer service, we’re actually prohibited from giving out any information about the user’s account without verification of the passcode or the SSN over the phone. In store, you have to go in with ID.
    I actually have cell phone service with our competitor and am a bit leary of how easily they tell me my account information in the store after I give them my phone number. Granted, I’m on a single line plan, but I could still be anybody.

    • Moose

      Of course they don’t let button-pushing tier1 support monkeys like you read your emails and texts, that’s even more a privacy violation than retaining and logging them.

      But I guarantee the tier3 technicians – the types who DESIGNED the network can go in anytime and retrieve your records for days or weeks past and/or log new activity on-demand. The only real question is what legal controls there are, and today that answer is ‘as little as possible’.

      • Guest

        How do they get to my emails if I encrypt them as a package?
        They can’t.
        You and they lose. So long goof ball.

    • JaredLeeLoughner

      Just because low level shmucks like yourself (no offence) don’t have access to the contents, don’t think for one second anyone there on six figure salaries can’t see it.
      All the data is retained, by law, whether you are from EU, or the US.
      FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

  • Reborn

    I honestly don’t buy that their Skype was captured. Yes Skype is proprietary closed source, etc but the crypto is believed to be strong. Per call keys are generated and exchanged, and thrown away after call end. Its also p2p so its difficult to capture the entire encrypted stream. it’s not beyond Skype inc. being able to grab these I guess.

    Remember Germany resorted to client level audio capture to defeat it on ”lawful interception” orders. If this is indeed true Skype was considered reasonably resistant to eavesdropping until now.

    Your an idiot if your doing crime with Skype tho, I guess mr dotcom didn’t honestly believe he was breaking the law. This massive takedown is really the deathsong of a failing industry.

    • Anonymoose

      No, Kit “Dotcom” is actually just a lazy, ignorant moron.

      A) he is a greedy f***. Noone paying kickbacks to users posting pirated material on your hosted servers can possibly believe that’s legal.
      B) He’s no tech or hacker. He wouldn’t have a clue that Skype could/would just roll over and give it up for the DOJ.
      C) They were stupid and greedy enough to put those servers IN US territory. THAT’S THE FUNDAMENTAL REASON why they’re on trial here at all.

      Read some of his actual history. He’s no hacker, he’s just a CON MAN. He’s been charged with insider trading and various other financial schemes in the past and his only ‘legitimate’ business success was selling a tech company to TUV Rhineland- a company dealing with cellular tech that had nearly no commercial value and went bankrupt a year later, leaving TUV holding the bag. But ‘Dotcom’ skipped out with millions in cash from it. He’s been a scammer ever since.

      At a basic level he’s just the same as every other criminal, only louder and more flashy- how do you think he keeps attracting more interest to his scam of the moment?

      The admins of TPB are/were clearly FAR more intelligent than the greedy and lazy fucks of Megaupload. TPB has never had any physical assets in US territory, and they’ve never solicited payment or paid the infringing parties (users) for any of the things they have been accused of encouraging. Those are the two most important differences right there. And that’s why I hope Kim ‘Dotcom’ gets his bubble popped by some big fat guy in prison just like the economy.

      • Truec

        As someone who tried to get in on that kickback scheme, I can assure you that nobody got anything for pirated materials. Points were only awarded for downloads of files smaller than 1MB.

        • Guest

          @Truec

          Get your facts straight idiot. Points were awarded for files smaller than 100MB. You could also get points for each view on Megavideo irrespective of size of the video. With those stipulations, it was just too easy to rack up points and get monetary rewards.

      • WTFFFFF

        Yes but the conman made 175M USD “allegedly”…I would put it way above that if you can go ahead and spend $8M on a 2 months trip to Monaco/elsewhere with yacht and stuff.

      • Guest

        Wish I could be a moron worth £50 MILLION dollars.

    • Guest

      “the crypto is believed to be strong”

      Do not believe, try to understand. If you can’t reach to a conclusion that you have to believe which leads to ignorance. Think about religion.

      • Guest

        *than

      • Anonymous

        The problem with the Skype crypto is that Skype themselves generate the key and not the users. We can now see that it only takes one court order for Skype to turn over as many keys as they ask for.

        Skype encryption is plain stupid and flawed to the extreme.

        • Guest

          There needs to be ways available to track down criminals you see. So its not that bad.

  • JaredLeeLoughner

    HE WASN’T BREAKING THE LAW YOU FUCKING IGNORANT CHILD.

  • Beatles_Suck

    All these chat logs and emails are from around 2008. While the possibility of Skype turning over the logs and transcripts is a possibility, I feel this is more the work of some MU insider malcontent who got a hold of some emails, went to the authorities and came back to do a Bradley Manning on Megaupload with the blessings of the feds..

    • Anonymoose

      They’re all from 2008 because that’s clearly how far back THEY KNEW and expressed that their entire business model was built on encouraging people to engage in copyright infringement, and that they would profit from it.

      If you think this is a disgruntled insider than you’re only fooling yourself. You really think the US DOJ can’t get Skype to cough up some encryption keys to listen in on specific users? You really think they can’t get a New Zealand or Hong Kong ISP to log emails being sent and received between known users and accounts?

      SHIT, _I_ CAN DO MOST OF THIS, and I’m just an average sysadmin.

      • Noghost

        What the hell has a sysadmin got to do with the Hong Kong ISP? A real Hong Kong ISP won’t be giving up those logs period, because Hong Kong is currently part of the Republic of China. In case you didn’t know, China and the USA aren’t exactly friends.

        Letting the FBI get their hands on internal anything would be a threat to China’s national security.

        • Anon

          Wouldn’t it be funny though if somehow America were caught doing what they deride China for doing. Would almost be worth the Chinese helping them just for the lulz

        • WTFFFFF

          Actually Hong Kong bends for the US authorities. There’s extradition treaty setup and the Hong Kong ISP WOULDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD hand over details to the US.

        • Anonymoose

          …

          This post shows such a depth and breadth of ignorance of international politics and police work I don’t even know where to start, and it’s only 4 sentences long.

          If the FBI comes to an ISP in basically ANY UN member country with a subpoena for surveillance of economic crimes vetted by Interpol or their local police, that ISP will say “Yes sir, how high sir?”

          And if Megaupload has been under investigation for OVER TWO YEARS in New Zealand CLEARLY THEN WITH THE COOPERATION OF THE NEW ZEALAND POLICE, I think even the FBI can follow proper legal procedure in that time.

          Hong Kong IS functionally a western country, they do treat economic crime quite seriously- being an international centre of commerce means you need to keep your reputation high- and no local ISP giving it up on a client is ‘a threat to China’s national security’.

          .. you fucking retard.

      • Noyoucant

        No you can’t.

      • Noyoucant

        No you can’t.

    • WTFFFFF
  • Anonymous

    Dude, thats some pretty scary stuff when you think about it.
    vpn-privacy.tk

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PXX4S66KOUIGIKTTIMV3CBGO7Y Colin

      Flagged again, for the 999th time you nasty little spammer.
      Is it beyond your feeble brain to realise that you are not welcome here. You’re even more UNwelcome here than the trolls!

      • Guest

        We, TorrentFreak users, will not give up “fighting” spam.

  • Barf

    shh.. I think they put a mic in my rear…

  • Steve

    Where is everybody???? Megaupload with 150 Million members and 50 million unique users per month is gone. Filesonic & Fileserv which also are hugh are gone (can’t share files)…..Most big upload sites have taken away the ability to share files.

    After all these things happening and ten of millions of users unable to download from all these sites you would think that alternatives like torrents would explode in usage.

    However, by looking at the statistics for peers and unique web pages shown for sites like The Pirate Bay, Kick ass torrents & BT Junkie the stats have actually gone down a little since the takedown of all these DDL sites (Megaupload etc.) My simple question is…Where is everybody….Has everyone stopped downloading now…The statistics for Torrents have not increased…..Where is everybody ???

    • Barf

      For the moment, I think people might be afraid and censoring themselves..

    • STUPID-PM

      fileserve u can download. there arent any files however

    • PastTense

      You can get some website traffic data at
      http://www.alexa.com

      Look up a bunch of the smaller sites like Filefactory–that site has increased 66% in 7 days. After you (or someone else here) gets the results report back.

    • PastTense

      You can get some website traffic data at
      http://www.alexa.com

      Look up a bunch of the smaller sites like Filefactory–that site has increased 66% in 7 days. After you (or someone else here) gets the results report back.

  • Fsf

    Yes Kim Dotcom would flee to germany… great idea. He is a criminal not fuckig stupid.
    If he would flee my best guess would be dubai.

    • Anonymous

      Alleged criminal…..

      • JFK

        A confirmed criminal.

        • Anonymous

          I was referring to this latest case. Apologies and clarification. He hasn’t been found guilty of anything to do with the Mega case. Hasn’t been dragged back to the US yet.

  • MeepMeep

    Come on bring on the movie :D

  • Free

    Maybe they switched to other means of filesharing, file hosts and torrents are not the only two ways of getting content, Copyright infringement is nothing more that a civil matter,and should never be treated any different, extradition orders, jail ect ect, WTF is going on????
    Take away the ability to share files be they non copyright protected or protected , will put have a knock on effect on ISP’s (customer numbers will decrease) and if the Music and film industries think that they will see a rise in sales,then they are in for a shock, a bit like obamha serving a second term , not a chance he decided that by passing this bullshit

  • foff

    I think what has happened is all the people that were downloading from the cyberlockers are taking a wait and see approach. Almost nothing is available anymore and all the links in any site that archives them are dead. Most sites might as well delete all archives prior to Jan 23rd as virtually all links are dead.

    I think like me everyone believes the party is over and it is time to take a break. I really haven’t decided how much torrenting I will do because the risks are higher.

    The FBI moved in on megaupload but were they ready to move against all the other filehosts that shut down? What put the fear of god into them? It would be nice to hear a few thoughts from the other hosts that shut down overnight.

    • FBI-IS-LULLING

      when you put jail time into the equation then it suddenly doesnt pay off to run a service like that in which you believed the worst was to fight a case in court (e.g. HF & RS) …think that was a wake up call to everyone and anyone in the business.

      seeing how fsc, fs and the others are banning accounts, wiping data and so on i would think theyre trying to do a clean slate and start from the beginning again. of course there are a lot of pissed off people out there but who in their rightful mind will EVERRRR use freakshare, filefactory, depositfiles, letitbit and the list goes on?

    • Guest

      Tosser.

  • Anonymoose

    Reading the comments here just amazes me.

    I’m glad to see Kim ‘Dotcom’ (OH THE LULZ) go to jail, and I’m glad to see Megaupload destroyed if any of the FBI’s charges and information are true.

    Kim Schmitz is a CRIMINAL. A CON MAN. His 15 minutes of fame and fortune should have been up long ago since I doubt he’s ever done a legitimate day’s work in his life.

    Megaupload, according to the FBI was blatantly attempting to profit from its ‘power users’ who were uploading and hosting pirated material. The entire business model meant they were paying them kickbacks for doing so and then they leveraged those files to attract the paying schmucks who subscribed. That’s like setting up your booth of pirate DVDs across the street from the White House and then wondering why you got arrested.

    ‘Information wants to be free’.

    Cyberlocker services are for the ignorant, unskilled and lazy internet user who think they should be entitled to commit piracy simply by throwing money at it. It’s just like the people who PAID for p2p clients. ‘Piracy’ has always been the domain of those who actually understand the Internet and their computer, and were not doing so to turn a profit. Making it as easy as Megaupload means being as incompetent and greedy as Megaupload. And the fact that I see so many people posting here who clearly display such a lack of knowledge about the capabilities of surveillance and law enforcement, or even how the Internet works makes me depressed. None of these services are deserving of support or press because they never cared about changing digital rights, or breaking up media monopolies, or making information available to the masses, or anything other than generating profit. Their intent was purely to replace one paid middleman (the retailer) with another- themselves.

    Crushing the biggest cyberlocker service means (as we see) all the other rats scurrying to abandon ship. Suddenly they’ve realized they never had a legal leg to stand on. Meanwhile, torrent sites continue unabated because the legal status is quite clearly defined. And other methods that require technical knowledge and skill to implement (various darknet and other networks) continue undisturbed too.

    …and nothing of value was lost.

    • sheen4

      Kim Schmitz is a honest man that had the best cyber locker service.

      • Anonymoose

        trolololol

    • FBI-IS-LULLING

      Paid off shill …Or just someone from the scene pissed off their files trickled down to a “simple” service like Megaupload. Im pretty sure it took them some time to perfect a system like that to make it that “simple”

      • Guest

        Corporate trolls are infesting TF these days. They are trying to change the mentality of regular TF readers.

        • Guest

          Not much chance of that. We know the Truth isn’t out there. It’s here.

      • Anonymoose

        Yes, perfect the ‘Bigger Idiot’ theory.

        A system of PAYING PEOPLE TO UPLOAD INFRINGING FILES. Which in turn attracts a far bigger group of idiots who will pay small sums of money to access those infringing files. Highly technical and very complex amirite?

        This whole issue officially has nothing to do with Joe Sixpack paying $9.99/mo to download pirate movies. It’s about Megaupload PAYING Joe Sixpack to upload more and more pirate movies, and apparently blowing off the copyright holders.

        If you aren’t a complete MORON- which it appears many here are – you realize the minute you provide a financial incentive to piracy, you become liable for it. But how else would Kim Dotclod promote use of a file-storage system if there was no way to convince people they should pay to use it??

      • Anonymoose

        Oh no, not THE SCENE!! *ominous music*

        And this comment just shows how ignorant you are about the workings of the internet and any file-hosting system. Go back to your free AOL dialup and leave the grownups to talk, ok?

        I’ll just say this:
        If you don’t understand how the internet works and even the simplest of legal issues regarding its use, then you don’t deserve to get content for free. Just shut up and pay the middlemen- that’s what they’re there for. Yes, it’s elitist. But that’s the point- if you aren’t smarter or better equipped than the people delivering the content for profit then you don’t deserve it. THAT’S WHY A MIDDLEMAN EXISTS, in any industry.

        • DANNY

          HAHAHA AS TBP says “stolen music sounds better”!! now fuck back to your paid trolling corps, is 50 ct not able to buy the latest pimped golden car?? aaaaaawwwwwww!!! BONER!!

  • Radler

    With all the uproar over this supposed BILLIONS lost by the ONLY lucrative AMERICAN industry — probably the only one left that’s not outsourced IMHO — one wonders if these BILLIONS being claimed by these GREEDY SLOBS can be properly investigated.

    I’m under the assumption when any idiot claiming BILLIONS lost due to some idiotic excuse will require some token investigation to insure the accuracy of this claim.

    I guess if you’ve paid your way through the i-sheep of CONGRESS, you don’t have to worry about anyone disputing said claims of BILLIONS lost.

    Seriously…. what ever happened to laying down an investigation to see the accuracy of said claims before the US government sheeps can even be bothered with raising such bills like SOPA or other laws.

    Sigh. Not surprising. Given the amount of money being paid to these fat sheeps in CONGRESS…. having to be bothered with doing an investigation would be a waste of time.

    One also wonders….. if the PIRATE community paid off US CONGRESS… you think they can side with them? I mean.. really.. with all the money the pirate community is supposed to have made off with that BILLIONS claim by them……… oh wait…. we really can’t provide a VALID claim to these BILLIONS.

    Someone in their PR LAW offices figured it was a staggering enough number to force CONGRESS into believing their claims of lost revenue.

    Can we have someone raise a request for OBAMA.. who is under a re-election year… investigate these BILLIONS in lost revenue and if it is untrue, jail the bastards who claimed these.

    I know I would be jailed ASAP if I claimed if I sued the gov’t for billions of lost revenue because I couldn’t do a good job in my chosen industry.

  • Guest

    why all the other cyber lockers have shut down public downloads is pretty much stupid. If they were not “money laundering, conspiering to criminal copyright infringement, and racketeering” they should not be worried of anything as long as they run the DMCA and complie with the take down notices. Scanning files on their network for keywords would be pointless because what if some one had made a little video of their kids dressed in their favorite cartoon like bugs bunny, or the simpsons and name the file for example “the simpsons kids” because it has the keyword “the simpsons” that persons original content would be removed. That is sick censorship at its worst. what about my niece drawing a picture on photoshop or ms paint my little pony and wanted to show it off to me and named it “my little pony picture” that would be gone too.

    • Anonymoose

      No, they’ve all shut down because they used the exact same business model as Megaupload. And they’re taking the money and running before they get hit next.

      What most of you here appear to deliberately and willfully ignore- I knew Torrentfreak was full of morons but really, this is painful to watch the frothing ignorance- is that PAYING PEOPLE TO COMMIT PIRACY IS A CRIME. And a very different crime than just ‘downloading your favourite movie off the Internet’. This isn’t the RIAA suing your grandma for using Kazaa, it’s FRAUD. It’s functionally the same as punching out pirate DVDs for sale in stores, and EVERY international government in the Western world will come down on fraud like a ton of bricks. Giant-evil-industry-conspiracy-anti-piracy-act or not, FRAUD IS FRAUD.

      • Chronoss2008

        wrong again its society saying we had enough of greedy labels and for hte cost very affordable you culd do a what you wanted when you wanted

        there is a huge difference to your american propaganda then some guy faking counterfeit levi jeans.

        we in society grant these rights and as this younger generation grows older it will tolerate these abuses less, if term rates were more sane aka under ten years then you’d have an argument as they are over 75 years plus life almost everywhere now SCREW YOU, IM NOT PAYING 40$ for a cdr of music sorry

      • Chronoss2008

        wrong again its society saying we had enough of greedy labels and for hte cost very affordable you culd do a what you wanted when you wanted

        there is a huge difference to your american propaganda then some guy faking counterfeit levi jeans.

        we in society grant these rights and as this younger generation grows older it will tolerate these abuses less, if term rates were more sane aka under ten years then you’d have an argument as they are over 75 years plus life almost everywhere now SCREW YOU, IM NOT PAYING 40$ for a cdr of music sorry

  • Chronoss2008

    wrong again its society saying we had enough of greedy labels and for hte cost very affordable you culd do a what you wanted when you wanted

    there is a huge difference to your american propaganda then some guy faking counterfeit levi jeans.

    we in society grant these rights and as this younger generation grows older it will tolerate these abuses less, if term rates were more sane aka under ten years then you’d have an argument as they are over 75 years plus life almost everywhere now SCREW YOU, IM NOT PAYING 40$ for a cdr of music sorry

  • ash en

    for those who dont get it, anybody can be part of anon, infact most people who come here likely have been at one time or another.

    the ddos stuff is done by people world wide who grab
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/loic/
    and load up a page that tells them what site/link/info to put into the program….not hard really.

    I dont agree that DDoS is the best way to deal with this crap,but its not like its a group of scripters and hackers doing this, many times its people out for lulz OR people who are just sick of how things are who decided it was time to do SOMETHING.

  • http://twitter.com/akuma_river Brandelyn

    Tell me again why we don’t have the FBI going after the banksters who make hundreds of millions off of ruining other people’s lives and taking their homes?

  • Guest

    The F****ING GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO FUCK OFF !!!!!!

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  • bamfan5520

    At least 2 people are free…Who knows, maybe when Kim Dotcom is released on bail, he can create a new site and NOT have it active in the US!!! Here a though, GO TO GERMANY!!! Rapidshare is based in Germany and we all know how their courtcase turned out…THEY WON!!! This means if megapload was to come back soley based in Germany like rapidshare, then we can get back to normal and just forget anything ever happened…I prey for you Kim Dotcom and hope for you release soon…Us file-sharers have you in our thoughts…

  • Hotmaillulwut

    I wonder how the G-Men feel about all this, they do not serve the law, but the politicians and corporate greed.

  • Jason

    The truth is in the below link, thanks DoJ for illegally destroying our files on Thursday:

    http://pastebin.com/iquHfjBa

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