U.S.-based genomics scientist Kevin McKernan says he has lost an estimated $200,000 worth of research data after his account on file hosting service MEGA was deleted overnight.
It appears that McKernan’s account was deleted by MEGA in response to an urgent injunction granted to New Zealand’s (NZ) Ministry of Health (MOH) to prevent the sharing of anonymised data leaked by whistleblower Barry Young.
Young, a 56-year-old database administrator and former employee of the MOH, leaked data from a ‘pay per dose’ Covid vaccine database to NZ journalist Liz Gunn and U.S. tech millionaire and Substacker Steve Kirsch.
Both Gunn and Kirsch claimed that the data showed conclusive proof that the Covid vaccines are killing people at high rates. Kirsch publicly uploaded the data on Friday December 1st, the same day the injunction was granted to the MOH.
McKernan had ‘mirrored’ Kirsch’s data upload on his MEGA account to make it easier for people to download and analyse after international confusion broke out following the sensationalised release, which brought the integrity of whistleblower’s data into question.
Having heard that an injunction had been granted to the MOH to prevent further distribution of the NZ data, McKernan says that he texted Kirsch to get clarity on Monday December 4th, but did not hear back.
In a thread posted to X on Tuesday December 5th, McKernan says he woke up to find that his entire MEGA account, including medical genome sequencing and vaccine sequencing data, with an estimated value of $200,000, had been suddenly deleted. McKernan is one of the leading scientists involved in researching DNA contamination in the mRNA Covid vaccines.
“There is pure irony in this. Private company who puts sequence data public of medicinal plants and fungi to help the world, gets attacked by a public health agency that won’t share the taxpayers’ data… Wrong side of history,” wrote McKernan, who heads up medical cannabis company Medicinal Genomics.
McKernan also warned that some of the deleted files were related to criminal court proceedings. “We are assessing the damages… this should get very interesting,” he wrote.
On December 2nd, Kirsch reported that the site where he was hosting the NZ whisteblower data, Wasabi, had turned off his account without notice, speculating that “maybe it was because the New Zealand Ministry told them to take down my site as noted in this article”.
Concerned parties report that despite requesting to see the wording of the injunction since it was granted late last week, their requests were refused. The injunction was only made publicly available at 6pm on Tuesday December 5th, NZ time.
The injunction was awarded by the Employment Relations Authority, which Voices For Freedom NZ Head of Legal Katie Ashby-Koppens suggests has “acted outside its remit” and therefore does not have the power to make such orders against third parties or in other jurisdictions.
“There are grounds for challenging this injunction,” says Ashby-Koppens, noting Kirsch’s public assurances that the released data have been anonymised and so pose no threat of breach of privacy.
Conspicuously, in the flurry of New Zealand media articles reporting on the data leak and the injunction, no Ministry of Health representative has suggested that the data leaked by Young is fabricated or in any way false.
Young has reportedly been charged with “accessing a computer system for dishonest purposes” and was scheduled to be released on bail at 1pm today.
MEGA has been contacted for comment.
This article was originally published on Dystopian Down Under, Rebekah Barnettt’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
Stop Press: Steve Kirsch warns: “The law doesn’t matter to hosting providers such as Wasabi and MEGA. These firms will disable access to your data and destroy your data based on their opinion and they are not liable for the loss of your data. … MEGA judges Kevin to have made a gross violation. It never spoke to him. You are guilty if its staff think you are and MEGA does not want to hear your side of the story. Nuke first, no need to ask any questions. … Avoid MEGA and Wasabi. They can terminate your account and refuse to give you access to your own data. If you are using them, cancel your account now and move to a different provider.”
Update: Kevin McKernan’s MEGA account has now been restored, minus the New Zealand Covid vaccine data. But will anyone trust the company again?
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