{"id":52178,"date":"2020-11-11T09:05:40","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T09:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/?p=52178"},"modified":"2020-11-11T09:05:40","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T09:05:40","slug":"kim-dotcom-set-to-win-damages-over-nz-government-privacy-act-requests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/?p=52178","title":{"rendered":"Kim Dotcom Set to Win Damages Over NZ Government Privacy Act Requests"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kim<\/a>Following the raid on his Megaupload file-hosting site in 2012, Kim Dotcom and his former colleagues have been fighting legal battles on multiple fronts.<\/p>\n

Just last week, another chapter was closed after the Supreme Court ruled that while Dotcom, Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk, and Finn Batato can technically be extradited to the United States<\/a> to face charges of criminal copyright infringement, the decision came with a caveat. <\/p>\n

In 2015, the District Court made a considerable error by not allowing Dotcom\u2019s appeal for a judicial review, something which the Supreme Court insists he must now be allowed before extradition can take place. Another blunder in 2015, this time over another set of Dotcom requests that were disallowed, has today resulted in another incremental win for Dotcom.<\/p>\n

Half a Decade Ago, Dotcom\u2019s Request For Urgent Information<\/h2>\n

Five years ago, in the same year he was wrongfully denied a judicial review, Dotcom made requests to dozens of ministers and multiple government departments to urgently disclose information pertinent to his case and indeed his defense. Rather than handle these requests directly, the parties referred them to then-Attorney General Chris Finlayson. Describing them as vexatious and baseless, Finlayson denied the requests.<\/p>\n

This denial prompted Dotcom to file a complaint with the Human Rights Review Tribunal (HRRT), accusing the New Zealand Government of wrongfully withholding information to which he was entitled. In March 2018, the Tribunal ruled in Dotcom\u2019s favor, stating that the Crown was \u201cin clear breach of its obligations under the Privacy Act.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dotcom won NZ$60,000 in damages for \u201closs of dignity or injury to feelings\u201d plus another NZ$30,000 to compensate for the lack of disclosure. In response, however, the Crown appealed the decision and in September 2018 the matter was heard<\/a> before the High Court in Wellington. <\/p>\n

Dotcom lost<\/a>, with the Court siding with the Attorney-General\u2019s appeal, describing the damages award as \u201cwholly erroneous\u201d on the grounds that there was no evidence to show the information being sought was relevant to the proceedings.<\/p>\n

Of course, Dotcom wasn\u2019t done and immediately vowed to reverse a decision that in his words represented a \u201cbad day for human rights\u201d in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Court of Appeal Rules in Dotcom\u2019s Favor<\/h2>\n

After five long years, this morning the Court of Appeal ruled that Dotcom\u2019s 52 requests sent to 28 ministers and many government departments under the Privacy Act were handled incorrectly. In a 42-page decision, the Court found that the former government of John Key was wrong to transfer all of Dotcom\u2019s requests regarding his extradition to then-Attorney General Chris Finlayson.<\/p>\n

\u201c[T]he transfers of Mr Dotcom\u2019s information privacy requests to the Attorney-General were invalid and, on the face of it, an interference with Mr Dotcom\u2019s privacy,\u201d the decision reads, adding that the refusal to respond to Dotcom\u2019s requests on the grounds they were vexatious was not supportable.<\/p>\n

According to the Court of Appeal\u2019s decision, the dozens of requests filed by Dotcom, which aimed to discover what various government agencies and ministers had been saying about him, should have been handled individually by the entities targeted by Dotcom. <\/p>\n

They include New Zealand\u2019s Reserve Bank, which initially responded to Dotcom\u2019s request, and the Ministry of Defence, which also acknowledged the request for information and indicated it was preparing its response before an intervention took place. <\/p>\n

The decision to override these and other potential responses and refer them to Finlayson instead was revealed by the Ministry of Justice in a letter to the various agencies dated late July or early August 2015. The subsequent responses from the various agencies to that letter contained an error that was repeated across the board. <\/p>\n

The Court of Appeal accepted this as a clear sign that the agencies were provided with a template response by the Crown Law Office.<\/p>\n

Matter Now Headed For the Human Rights Review Tribunal<\/h2>\n

After allowing Dotcom\u2019s appeal, the Court of Appeal will now send the matter to the Human Rights Review Tribunal. It will consider the scale of the damages owed to Dotcom following the interference with his privacy rights caused by the wrongful transfer of his information privacy requests to Finlayson. <\/p>\n

On Twitter, Kim Dotcom welcomed the decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cBig Win \u2013 We\u2019ll finally find out what the National Govt was hiding for all these years unless the current Govt continues the unlawful withholding and redaction of information I\u2019m legally entitled to. This Judgement echoes what the Human Rights Tribunal ruled in my case. Exciting,\u201d he wrote<\/a> this morning.<\/p>\n

The Court of Appeal\u2019s decision can be found here<\/a> (pdf)<\/em><\/p>\n

From: TF<\/a>, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.<\/p>\n

Powered by WPeMatico<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following the raid on his Megaupload file-hosting site in 2012, Kim Dotcom and his former colleagues have been fighting legal battles on multiple fronts. Just last week, another chapter was closed after the Supreme Court ruled that while Dotcom, Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk, and Finn Batato can technically be extradited to the United […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52179,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[308],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-torrent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}