So, there's an overblown police operation, using two helicopters, 5 paddy wagons, AR-15s, dogs, and a forceable takedown of a suspect deemed to be "low-risk", to serve an illegal warrant by a unit that NZ Police themselves describe [1] as "[providing] Police with the means of effectively and more safely responding to and resolving situations in which there is an actual or threatened use of firearms or other weapons against members of the public or Police." All of this was done so that K.C "couldn't destroy evidence" that he didn't have access to, in the first place.
Forgive me, but who the hell planned this? It sounds so incredibly American, but I don't see why the NZPD would allow the FBI to dictate tactics like that.
As we know the entire thing was a staged PR-move, to show them filthy pirates what they're getting themselves into ("We will track you down and get you anywhere!").
The overblown Raid was likely part of the script - or it happened out of anticipatory obedience.
Try to see the positive in it; old money in the media mafia is literally kicking and screaming by now. They're in their death struggle.
After this public humiliation it seems unlikely they will be able to pull similar nonsense at such a scale again. It must have cost them a fortune to pull those strings, and not only are they running out of fortunes, but the involved puppets will probably also ask double next time, due to the now obvious risk that something might fling up and stick to their name.
> They've destroyed Megaupload and got away with it. I' not sure I'd call the result "public humiliation", at least not for them.
Megavideo was replaced by a dozen video streaming sites (many with Indian .in domain names) within a week. Only ones who lost anything were the people using it to store personal files.
They had grounds to destroy Megaupload properly, law enforcement agencies (and governments) loose a lot of credibility when they ignore the law, especially when they are not doing anything time-critical.
I don't agree. A message to those filthy pirates would have been to shoot his kids dead. At least that's what the US does to Islamic clerics with terrorist connections (in this case via a drone strike).
I wouldn't be surprised if the whole operation used a movie director (seeing how it was done on behalf of MPAA) as a "consultant" on how to make the biggest PR impact.
I would take a bet that the FBI just handed New Zealand some warrants, told them what they wanted and paid them a bunch of money for expenditures.
The local PD probably got giddy over the idea that the US was footing the bill to use all their fancy hardware and tactical training so they went all out.
Police love having an excuse to put on the swat team gear and bang on doors, regardless of what country they live.
I was thinking the exact same thing as I watched. It seemed ridiculous that any of that was needed, but I was like "I bet those cops are having a blast!". Hell, it made me want to strap on the kevlar and go kick a few doors in.
More seriously, it was interesting to hear Dotcom say he (smartly) decided to let the cops find HIM rather than go to them as he didn't want to startle them and get shot or something.
"...but when we got to the
Scene of the Crime there was five police officers and three police cars,
being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to
get in the newspaper story about it. And they was using up all kinds of
cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer's station.
They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and
they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each
one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach,
the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not to
mention the aerial photography."
Ignoring all of the other nonsense comments below which have no relevance besides 'America is bad mmmkay', it was known Dotcom had gun(s) at his house. Also he has been convicted of crimes previously. Not that his hacking crimes make him a hardcore armed felon, but he did have weapons in his house at the time of the raid.
Also the overblown raid? Yeah probably a scare tactic to show him who he is messing with...
>but he did have weapons in his house at the time of the raid.
All of which is taken into account in the risk profile, and he was judged to be of low risk. Besides, who cares if he has legal guns? I have guns, doesn't mean I'm going to shoot someone who comes to serve a warrant.
>probably a scare tactic to show him who he is messing with
It's sad that people (particularly Americans, but also citizens of more brutal regimes) are so used to such tactics by police that they seem normal.
There are a lot less guns in NZ than Amurrica, so it is probably more of a big deal over there than here. But I'd let someone from NZ chime in on that to be sure.
I'm an expat Kiwi now living in Canada. Gun control is much stricter in NZ - you need a firearms license with different endorsement, and restrictions on the types of guns allowed http://www.police.govt.nz/service/firearms/
A fair percentage of farms out in the country would have a license for dealing with farm issues (possums/live stock etc). As a teenager growing up in the country, you would likely have a friend and go possum hunting. And/or things like Scouts where you would be shown how to safely handle a gun. However it was always in a safe light - for farming reasons. In Coatesville, the area where his mansion is, it wouldn't be out of the norm to have a rifle on hand. I can't comment on the last 7 years, but police officers (do, or did) need to have guns locked in a lock box in the back of their cars, they're not carrying them around in public. Members of the public with pistols and semi-auto style weapons are very rare indeed. When I moved to Auckland from the country I didn't know of a single soul that would have a gun.
As always the gang element would have some serious guns but it's really not as prevelant from both an anecdotal when I lived there, or statistical view point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence). NZ 15% of homicides with guns vs 65% in USA. (Source UN, 2000 per the entry). That's a staggering difference.
It was 16 years ago my first trip to the US, but I was shocked/stunned seeing guns in public. Texas of all places. Being a company owned by kiwis, our "culture shock" of the year was going to a gun show. Abso-frigging-lutely mind blowing. I don't care what potential use case you put it under, some types of guns are for one reason, and one reason only.
All guns are for one reason only - shooting bullets. Also, most firearm-involved homicides in the US are committed with handguns, a fact routinely ignored or brushed aside by those trying to keep the focus on the guns that are 'scarier', but usually less effective for criminal purposes. Knives kill more people per year than all other gun types combined.
The gun control debate in this country is effectively screwed because of the fact that there is a second amendment whose purpose is to ensure civilians remain armed well enough to defeat military occupation, and 'well enough' is being argued about by extremists who set tone of the entire debate.
It is true that while the US army might have the most guns in the world, the US public seemingly isn't all that far behind. Even if your armed forces were not allowed to take part, you'd still probably win in a land war against Canada or Mexico.
I don't necessarily disagree, though I seriously doubt Canada or Mexico would ever invade the US, as there would be too much to risk and too little to gain for the cost. The sad thing is, and I feel really strange saying this as a former member of the US military, we also are supposed to be able to combat our own military should they one day be used against us. Though the US military has not been used against the people of the US since Posse Comitatus (excepting recent drone strikes in foreign countries), history (and present day) is full of examples of this not always being the case.
I don't think you can talk about the point of the second amendment completely without mentioning the fact that it was envisioned to apply against both foreign invasion and domestic tyranny. I'm pretty sure 'self-defense' was a given to the founders, and did not enter into the thinking for it - they were explicitly laying out out the need for civilians to be able to rise up against their own government.
Jefferson's famous quote, "the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" is actually a smaller snippet of a quote which speaks directly to this:
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Hollywood movies do a pretty good job of reminding the US public of the facts of the cruel world out there. Well, the paying US public. Hold on a mo', perhaps there's a case here for allowing unrestricted access to such movies to those who can't afford it, or would rather buy something else. Unrestricted access via, say, Megaupload.
Are you saying Kiwi gun control laws are stricter than America's, or Canada's? Here in Canada there are two basic classes of firearms a citizen can acquire: restricted and non-restricted. Non-restricted guns include shotguns, bolt-action rifles, center-fire rifles, and most semi-automatic rifles. This requires a safety test and license to acquire. Restricted firearms include handguns and some semi-automatic rifles such as the AR platform. This requires just a further test and different license.
The reason I ask is that some states, namely California, Mass., and the like have far greater restrictions than Canada, yet gun crime is generally not an issue here. Hell, in Switzerland, every male does mandatory military service and is given a fully-automatic assault rifle to keep at home upon completion, and they have a very low rate of gun crime.
>some types of guns are for one reason, and one reason only.
Not necessarily. The vast majority of what most people call assault rifles (which aren't; assault rifles are by definition select-fire) are used for sporting purposes only. The fact that they could be used were there ever to be a fecal-fan collision doesn't detract from the fact that almost all owners use them for hobby shooting.
This is what the default posture for a domestic raid looks like because the men who trained these troopers were most likely veterans who specialized in urban operations over the last decade of conflict.
The line between military and police is blurred beyond distinction at this point. It is more jurisdictional than much else. As I watched the raid footage it was clear that I was watching a familiar routine. Probably rehearsed several times but not exclusively for this particular raid.
Some argue that conflict is universal and the tactics of SWAT, for example, naturally resemble those of the military. Close quarters battle (CQB) is made up of a dynamic that has few enough variations that a universal approach might make sense. Rather than asking how a Ranger unit should clear a mansion versus how SWAT should do it, the idea seems to have been that there ought not be a difference. This wasn't always the case. To prepare for urban operations in Iraq, many units trained according to police tactics (CQB in particular). There were fatal flaws in the method and it cost lives. Better methods were developed and later became SOPs shared with the police.
There are a handful of contracting outfits that employ recently retired operators from Special Operations to train international elements in tactics. Special Operations operators have experience working in small teams and training other elements. This model is not only effective at lowering costs for Defense, it also resembles the size element a police unit might have at its disposal. Operators with experience working under austere conditions could provide a lot of value to an organization with a comparatively limited budget. The training given to Special Operations is without rival. Being trained by the retired SOF is the next best thing to being trained for SOF.
The NZPD definitely planned the execution around the SOPs. The contingencies their plan prepared for did not seem to be the most likely course of action they expected from Dotcom's two man security element. I felt like they started with a more excessive template and stripped out what they could according to the risk assessment. This is radically different from building the concept of operation from the risk assessment.
For example, consider the M4's used. It was said these were standard issue. These had optics for engaging at a distance between 150 - 300 meters. Each trooper had a 9mm side arm. An MP5 or UMP9 as their primary would make more sense given that it also uses the 9mm. Sure, those are limited in engaging distance targets but what were they expecting? A shootout at the perimeter? Not with a helo infil.
This tactic is called a show of force. It is very consistent with American tactics but not uniquely so. It is exactly what it sounds like- an exhibition. The justification is typically "force protection". A trooper is more valuable than equipment so spare no expense to protect the trooper. That's the line, anyway.
I think the most interesting aspect here is the decision to execute with downgraded armor. The mentality of the operators was that they could make compromises in their defensive load but not their offensive load. But their plan was to breach a huge mansion. They have some idea what's inside but who knows what Dotcom might be doing on the other side of the front door at the moment of breach (or any other door thereafter). These men certainly weren't expecting that he was sitting on the other side with a weapon or they never would have conducted a breach with light armor. The first guy in is guaranteed dead if he isn't wearing a chest plate that can stop 7.62. The chances for the second guy are slim. Their infil was by helo meaning the weight of heavier armor would not matter much. They had to sprint about 100 meters from touchdown to the front door. The light armor is the most damning aspect of the testimony, in my opinion. It is the clearest indication to me that these guys were very confident that they would catch Dotcom sleeping or reading the paper in his underwear. These guys began the mission confident that they could walk right through the front door and scare the piss out of Dotcom. So why not do just that? Why was this level of force the default posture? It only increases the likelihood of unnecessary casualties.
Forgive me, but who the hell planned this? It sounds so incredibly American, but I don't see why the NZPD would allow the FBI to dictate tactics like that.
[1] http://www.police.govt.nz/service/aos/