FC: Karin Spaink: My house was raided by police because of Scientology

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

---

Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 19:47:37 +0200
From: Karin Spaink <kspaink () xs4all nl>
Organization: Marcab Inc.
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
CC: Zenon Panoussis <oracle () xs4all nl>
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 <oracle () xs4all nl>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,
   nl.scientology,xs4all.general
Subject: Raided again
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 12:08:58 +0200
Message-ID: <alpp45$8v9$1 () news1 xs4all nl>


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 <oracle () xs4all nl>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,
   nl.scientology,xs4all.general,nl.juridisch
Subject: Aftermath
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 12:01:30 +0200
Message-ID: <3D85ABFA.20901 () xs4all nl>


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




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