--- Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 19:47:37 +0200 From: Karin Spaink <kspainkat_private> Organization: Marcab Inc. To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private> CC: Zenon Panoussis <oracleat_private> Subject: My house got raided: Scientology and the prosecutor Hi Declan On Thursday, September 12, I got raided. Two uniformed cops, two criminal investigators from the copyright protection organsiation Buma/Stemra, and two members of the Diguital Expertise division of the Amsterdam police were at my doorstep, armed with a search warrant and a power to take away all computers in the house. I was informed that, through their lawyer's offices (Nauta Dutilh), the Church of Scientology had filed 'a number of complaints' about Zenon Panoussis (who is my lover), spreading copyrighted material from his computer (which is located at my house) or perhaps from mine. We negotiated about the search. Yes, surely they could take the computers, but without our assistance that would be useless since we use encryption. On the other hand, them taking the computers would be pretty annoying for us as well: all our work, mail and private data is stored on them. In the end we all agreed that they would search the computers on the premises and that we would co-operate as best as we could. It transpired that they did not know what *exactly* they were looking for: which documents? what spreading? The machines were portscanned to see whether any ftp servers or webservers were running from here, we showed them all services running, they went through mail and archives, browsed files and directories, in short, they investigated everything. All they found were a few copies of documents that are probaly copyrighted by the CoS that I need for my own defense and/or Zenon for his (both of us are being sued by Scientology; actually, a ruling in the appeal in my case had been expected on Sept. 5 but was postponed). After 2,5 hours they left empty-handed. (Well, not completely: I gave them copies of the t-shirt with a nice cartoon and an OT3 quote that I had given to friends and supporters for one of my court sessions. I still had a few of them.) Only today, Monday Sept. 16, we learned that the prosecutor who had signed the search warrant didn't know the details of the complaint and that the criminal investigators of the copyright office had had only a *complaint* from Scientology, but he had not received, *nor had he asked*, *any* material to substantiate this claim. Alex Woord of Buma/Stemra literally told us this morning that he would make an appointment with Nauta Dutilh this week to look at the evidence that they claim to have. Basically, that means - that I was raided on the grounds of an uninvestigated claim, and that moreover, I was raided before the complainant's claim was investigated; - that I was raided to prove or disprove a complaint that the proesecutor himself hadn't assessed the scope of; - that the prosecutor signed a search warrant and a power to break my door and to take my computer on the basis of a mere *claim* of a third party, - moreover a third party who is suing me and Panoussis; - and most of all, a third party who is know for abusing the legal system to intimidatee and harass its opponents. Meanwhile, we have contacted a lawyer. We think we might need one. Here are two postings by Zenon; one about the raid and about today's discussion with the prosecuyotor and the copyright investigator: === fwd 1 === From: Zenon Panoussis <oracleat_private> Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology, nl.scientology,xs4all.general Subject: Raided again Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 12:08:58 +0200 Message-ID: <alpp45$8v9$1at_private> Half an hour ago a team of copyright infringement investigators and computer experts, four in total, left Karin's place after finishing scientology's latest raid against me and the very first one against Karin. They had arrived two and a half hours earlier in the company of two policemen, with a search warrant signed by the public prosecutor. The cause: scientology's repeated and persistent complaints that we are spreading OTs, NOTs and god knows what nots. The "evidence": http://search.freewinds.cx/skriptures.html . Yes, indeed, a webpage saying "you won't find any OTs and NOTs here" is clear evidence that the OTs and NOTs are being spread from that site. If you don't get the logic, you haven't been a scientologist long enough and you need to work harder on your bridge. Anyway, we had the choice between co-operating and not co-operating. If we did co-operate, we would be voluntarily subjecting ourselves to an invasion of privacy, but get the whole thing done and over with for both parties. If we did not co-operate, they would be left empty-handed (encrypted drives, as one should have expected), but we would be left equally empty-handed while they took the computers for a year-long futile investigation. We decided to co-operate and gave them full access, with the agreement that they wouldn't nose closely on what obviously, at their own judgement, was not what they were looking for. Fine. They found nothing. There was nothing to find. Our own private copies of the OTs and NOTs, of course, but those are part of the evidence in our respective lawsuits and several courts have already ruled that even if we may not spread them, we may possess them. So those copies don't count. To make the search complete and avoid having to go through the same procedure once again, I offered the search team to search on the freewinds webserver too. They gladly accepted and arrived at the same results: nothing illegal there. The net result is that I now have an official statement from the authorities that there is nothing illegal on the server, which I can use when the CoS complains to domain registries and search engines and upstream providers about that same server. As for the intimidation and harassment value of the search, we are thinking about a suitable revenge. A few pickets, better organised and more spectacular than what we have done so far, seems appropriate. Better ideas are welcome by e-mail. Z === fwd 2 === From: Zenon Panoussis <oracleat_private> Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology, nl.scientology,xs4all.general,nl.juridisch Subject: Aftermath Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 12:01:30 +0200 Message-ID: <3D85ABFA.20901at_private> A few minutes ago I phoned the prosecutor, Wouter van Schaijck, to ask for a copy of the file and, specifically, the exact suspicion against me. I have already been told that I am suspected of copyright infringement in works that belong to the church of scientology, but that's like telling somebody that he is suspected of killing someone. You need to be much more specific than that; suspected of killing whom, when, how? Thus, I want to know which works I have allegedly infringed upon, when, how. Well, the prosecutor who ordered the raid doesn't know what exactly I am suspected of. He "doesn't have the file" because the investigating officers have it, so he can't tell me anything. When I pointed out that he can just pick up the phone and tell the investigating officers to give me this information, he started singing on the "it is not usual for a suspect to get the file while the investigation is still pending" tune. I told him that the investigation is pending an interrogation with me and that I will under no circumstances subject myself to any interrogation unless I know specifically what I am suspected of and thus what the subject of the interrogation is. Thus, if he is not telling me what I want and have a right to know and I therefore refuse the interrogation, then the investigation is no longer pending and we get back to square one and he can give me the file. The prosecutor gave me an evasive answer to this and with that we closed the discusssion. Subsequently I phoned Alex Woord, the investigating officer at Buma-Stemra. I asked the same questions. He said that he can't tell me the exact details of what I am suspected of because he is still waiting for some documents from scientology. I pressed the question and then got to hear that scientology claims to have downloaded some of their material from something that belongs to me, but Alex Woord needs to make an appointment with Nauta Dutilh, scientology's lawyers, to get the copies of what they allegedly downloaded. Only then will he know exactly which materials I am supposed to have spread, from where and when. In other words: the prosecutor based his decision to raid us on a "grounded suspicion" that was only grounded on the word of scientology's lawyers. Neither the prosecutor nor the investigating officers know which works I supposedly infringed upon, thus at the time of the raid they didn't know what they were looking for. Thus, the raid was nothing more than a fishing expedition. Bart Middelburg wrote in Saturday's Parool that "they must be out of their Xemu at the public prosecutor's office" and that the prosecutor let himself be mislead by scientology. He was far more right than I ever thought he could be. I imagined that that scientology had lied to the prosecutor, but now it turns out that the prosecutor simply based hos decicion to raid us on scientology's mere allegations, and never made his own assessment of whether there was indeed a *grounded* suspicion or not. Swell. I'm phoning the lawyer now. Being misled is one thing, but allowing scientology to make the decisions of the prosecutor is quite another. Z === end fwd === - K - -- I didn't love her and I didn't want to love her. I didn't desire her and I could not imagining desiring her. These were all points in her favour. - Jeanette Winterson: Written on the Body ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan CNET Radio 9:40 am ET weekdays: http://cnet.com/broadband/0-7227152.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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