The FBI Has to Return Kim Dotcom's Hard Drives

It's been nearly a year and half since Kim Dotcom's New Zealand mansion was raided, during which the filesharing mogul has been continually fighting extradition to the US to face piracy charges levied by the FBI. Now, he's scored a big win in one of his many legal battles.

After ruling that the warrants used to raid his house were too broad, a New Zealand judge has ordered US police to turn over all materials deemed irrelevant to the investigation before destroying copies, and hard drives that contain data pertinent to the investigation must be cloned and handed to Dotcom's defense team.

"The warrants could not authorise the permanent seizure of hard drives and digital materials against the possibility that they might contain relevant material, with no obligation to check them for relevance," chief High Court justice Winkelmann wrote. "They could not authorise the shipping offshore of those hard drives with no check to see if they contained relevant material. Nor could they authorise keeping the plaintiffs out of their own information, including information irrelevant to the offences."

In plain terms, Winkelmann shut down the FBI for shipping Dotcom's property overseas without first sorting out whether or not it even was relevant to the case. That's a big win for Dotcom and privacy advocates because it's setting a clear precedent that prosecuting someone for alleged crimes done with computers doesn't mean that all of their computers and data are fair game.

Dotcom's still got plenty of legal wrangling ahead. Not only is his legal team still trying to figure out what evidence the US prosecution has against him, which it's required by law to divulge, except, it argues, in extradition hearings. That case is going to the Supreme Court. There's also the battle over the extradition itself. On top of that, Dotcom is battling the New Zealand government over the warrant issues ruled on today as well as a lawsuit over its illegal spying of Dotcom's activities. Oh, and he's still doing the copyright dance with Mega. So, yes, it's a great day for Dotcom, but it might be an even better day for his lawyers' checkbooks.

@derektmead