Dotcom search warrants a 'fishing expedition', Supreme Court hears
By Paul McBeth
Aug. 25 (BusinessDesk) - The search warrants executed in the high profile arrest of internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom in
2012 were invalid and nothing more than a "fishing expedition," the Supreme Court heard today.
Dotcom and his co-accused Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk want the country's top court to rule the
warrants were invalid in their latest legal attempt to head off the US Federal government's bid to extradite them to the
US, where they face charges of conspiracy to operate websites used to illegally distribute copyrighted material.
Counsel for Dotcom, Paul Davison QC, told the bench the warrants needed to be more specific and identify what within the
vast amount of information stored on the electronic devices seized in the raid was relevant. That was to recognise the
right to privacy an individual could expect under the Bill of Rights Act, he said.
"This was a general warrant and a fishing expedition - it was no more or less," he said.
Davison said the case warranted "a more surgical approach based on recognition of privacy, rather than a broad-brush,
broad opening up of data that might be relevant," given the amount of information the authorities gathered in their
long-running investigation into Dotcom and his associates.
Earlier this year the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of Crown submissions the search warrants were valid, with their
deficiencies a matter of form rather than substance, and not great enough to declare them nullities.
Davison said the issue of an individual's right to privacy was fundamental to the functioning of a democratic society,
and that the authorities didn't have the right to withhold Dotcom's property and information to use for a lawful
purpose.
The Supreme Court hearing, before Chief Justice Sian Elias and Justices John McGrath, William Young, Susan Glazebrook
and Terence Arnold, is set down for two days in Wellington, and is proceeding.
(BusinessDesk)