Swedish Investigator Hired By Warner Bros. During Pirate Bay Investigation Now In Charge Of IT Crime In Sweden

from the conflicts-of-interest? dept

Fri, Feb 26th 2010 4:33pm — Mike Masnick

You may recall, back before The Pirate Bay trial in Sweden, a story came out about how the lead police investigator in the case just happened to take a job at Warner Bros. movie studio while The Pirate Bay investigation was still ongoing. This, obviously lead to quite reasonable questions of conflicts of interest, and even corruption. It's hard to see how anyone could justify a police investigator agreeing to a job with a party in a lawsuit that he was currently investigating. But, for whatever reason, the police decided to protect one of their own, and saw no reason for an investigation.

The job at Warner Bros. only lasted (as originally intended) for six months, and then the guy, Jim Keyzer, went back to work for the police. TorrentFreak is reporting that he's now in charge of the IT crime unit, which has the mandate to investigate file-sharing cases.

At the very least, this raises extremely serious conflict of interest questions. The guy was involved in an investigation, hired for a "temporary" job by one of the parties in that investigation -- and then after the job is over, he goes back to work for the police on other investigations that will almost certainly involve the company he took money from for six months. I can understand people taking jobs back and forth between the public and private sector, but the timing of all this seems very suspect, and it seems like the Swedish police should at least set things up so that the conflict of interest is removed, and someone else is in charge of such investigations for the time being.

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Filed Under: conflict of interest, copyright, police, sweden
Companies: warner bros.

14 Comments

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Grammah Correction Specialist, 26 Feb 2010 @ 4:51pm

I can grammah, and you can too! Here's more fixes:

1.) Warner Bros. should be fully spelled out, or simplified to just "Warner"
2.) It was said that something lead to a quite reasonable." consider replacing quite for a more accurate adjective.
3.) Contractions shouldn't be used in formal riding, you should replace "He's" with "he is" next tiem.
4.) "one of the parties" can be simplified and re-written to simply "one party."

For the dopiest grammah tips, tricks, help, and training, join the hottest Facebook group-
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Taylorsville-UT/Daily-Grammar/36339933998
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- Grey Ferret, 26 Feb 2010 @ 4:59pm
  
  Yeah, you really must be careful with those contractions during formal riding. The horses really hate that.
  
  I hear that they're not to happy when you tiem up either.
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- Anonymous Coward, 26 Feb 2010 @ 5:25pm
  
  Re:
  "1.) Warner Bros. should be fully spelled out, or simplified to just "Warner" "
  
  Simplifying it improper. For instance, it could confuse people into thinking it's Time Warner or some other company with the name Warner inside it. Even Warner Bros own website is WarnerBrows.com not WarrnerBrothers.com . Warner Bros is in fact the correct way to simplify the company's name.
  
  "2.) It was said that something lead to a quite reasonable." consider replacing quite for a more accurate adjective. "
  
  For example?
  
  "3.) Contractions shouldn't be used in formal riding"
  
  should read
  
  "3.) Contractions shouldn't be used in a formal riding"
  
  Plus, this is a blog, nothing formal about it.
  
  "4.) "one of the parties" can be simplified and re-written to simply "one party.""
  
  It can be but it doesn't have to be. So first you complain that Warner Brothers should be spelled out because it's too short, then you complain that this is too long and need to be simplified. Excellent.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 26 Feb 2010 @ 5:27pm
    
    Re: Re:
    oops, sorry, their website is www.WarnerBros.com . My mistake about the typo.
    
    oh, and it's needs to be simplified. But I'm not the grammar nazi here, so I'm allowed to make typos.
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- Alan Gerow (profile), 26 Feb 2010 @ 5:47pm
  
  Re:
  1) "Warner Bros." is the name of the company. You are incorrect on your advice on this point. "Warner" is not the name of the company as is not used as a reference to the company. The company's formal name is "Warner Brothers", but is more commonly referred to as "Warner Bros."
  http://www.warnerbros.com/
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros.
  
  2) That's not even usable advice. You're just making stuff up now.
  
  3) This is not formal writing (notice my use of the correct word). Contractions are acceptable.
  
  4) No it can't. "One of the parties" and "one party" are saying two different things. You are changing the meaning of the sentence just so you can add one more bullet point to your list of non-errors.
  
  For the worst grammar advice you can ever get, and horrendous spelling to boot, join the lamest Facebook group-
  http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Taylorsville-UT/Daily-Grammar/36339933998
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Feb 2010 @ 6:52pm

Ummm, yeah .. about the swedish guy and conflict of interest and stuff. That is messed up.
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ant anti mike, 26 Feb 2010 @ 7:33pm

The ultimate court case
It's christmas time and hte poor familly downloaded
the grinch that stole christmas
and a christmas carol

maybe a bambi movie form disney

take that too a jury
GREAT PR
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harbingerofdoom (profile), 27 Feb 2010 @ 6:14am

so let me get this straight.

....allegations of impropriety and conflict of interest involving a law enforcement organization and so far most people are worried about grammar...

the world truly is doomed isnt it...
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Anonymous, 27 Feb 2010 @ 7:57am

Actually what's worse than the whole grammar nazi thing is that they're trying to get people to join their Facebook group.
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Shaun Wilson (profile), 27 Feb 2010 @ 11:11am

The incompetence & corruption of government
Over time I have been fairly convinced by arguments of mostly an economic nature as to the greater efficiency of private organisations as opposed to government ones as reasons for dismantling and privatising government functions, but it is cases like this that really do it for me. Can you really imagine a private investigative organisation getting away with this sort of thing? If they wanted to keep any customers at all they would hold an intensive investigation, with the likely result being that even if the guy was cleared it would almost certainly result in his being fired for the blatant appearance of corruption if nothing else, even with this they would take a major hit. But since the police is government funded there is no chance of them loosing customers and going out of business like any incompetent private organisation would.

This just gets me really annoyed when I see what appears to be such blatant examples of corruption. If it's not this it's politicians letting their biggest campaign contributors essentially write their speeches and policies for them rather than bothering to look into it themselves.
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- Joe Perry (profile), 28 Feb 2010 @ 9:37pm
  
  Re: The incompetence & corruption of government
  I completely agree. Most people (at least the sensible ones) would agree that monopolies are for the most part a bad thing that limit progress and efficiency. People tend not to question things like the police being government controlled because it's "always been that way." For the government there is no risk of losing power so it is able to maintain a monopoly over many sectors and industries that could benefit from privatization.
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- TtfnJohn (profile), 1 Mar 2010 @ 7:52pm
  
  Re: The incompetence & corruption of government
  Regrettably it's all too easy to imagine a private investigative organization get away with this sort of thing and a number of other private "security" organizations.
  
  Then again what's going on in Sweden right now is close to the height of hypocrisy and has been from the start.
  
  No one is calling this man's competency into question just a small matter of known bias know before hiring which calls into question the competency of the person who hired him.
  
  As for bought and paid for politicians. well, what was good enough for ancient Athens should be good enough for us shouldn't it?
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Nastybutler77 (profile), 1 Mar 2010 @ 11:34am

This brings to mind the expression about putting the fox in charge of the hen house.
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