“Headlines from Britain to Malaysia, France to China, Germany to Brazil, Australia to the US. An apology can go a long way,” said Kim Dotcom in a recent tweet. It’s true. This comes after the New Zealand Prime Minister John Key issued a rather frank apology to the internet mogul saying, “I apologize to Mr Dotcom. I apologize to New Zealanders because every New Zealander… is entitled to be protected from the law when it comes to the GCSB, and we failed to provide that appropriate protection for him.”
PM John Key is of course referring to the spying conducted by the New Zealand government which lead to the dramatic take-down of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. As it turns out, members of the New Zealand government conducted the invasive investigation under the pretense Dotcom was a foreign nationalist when in fact he had acquired residency status, thus affording him the rights of the country.
As TorrentFreak points out, a report issued by New Zealand’s Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Paul Neazor found that a NZ security service did indeed wrongfully spy on Kim Dotcom and associate Bram van der Kolk. Apparently there was confusion about Dotcom’s residency status.
“As this matter went along what was discovered in the case of Dotcom and associated people was that resident status had been obtained on their behalf under the Immigration Act 1987 and carried forward under the later 2009 Act. It was understood incorrectly by the GCSB that a further step in the immigration process would have to be taken before Dotcom and associates had protection against interception of communications,” Neazor wrote. “The illegality arose because of changes in the Immigration Act wording and some confusion about which category Dotcom was in thereafter.”
It’s unclear where this leaves the case against Dotcom and Megaupload. The US is still seeking extradition however as time passes, this seems even more unlikely. Dotcom took to twitter following the apology and called on President Obama to “be good, fix the Megaupload mess, be the Internet hero, win another term with Mega users & I help Hollywood.”
As the trial sits in the court, it’s been said that Megaupload is about to relaunch its service. Once the most popular online data lockers, Megaupload will no doubt attempt to regain its swagger and users; Megabox will no doubt be a big part of the new Megaupload.