I think the problem is the lack of accountability on the govenrment's part. If the leaders of FBI field offices routinely went to jail for raiding data centers unnecessarily (etc.), you can bet that they'd be more careful. But since there is no punishment for ruining someone's life, they are just going to continue to ruin lives. The false negative rate doesn't matter, as long as they occasionally stop a real crime, everyone gets promotions.

(That's my understanding anyway.)

Also, it is unacceptable that nobody will represent this guy in court. As far as I know, the Constitution guarantees a trial and representation at that trial. If he can't get either, then his civil rights are being illegally violated. (Judges may not understand the Internet, but they do understand the Constitution. Well, except for a few people on the SCOTUS that really need to learn how to read...)

I think a lot of people will be moving their hosting out of the US because of this.

Unbelievable abuse of power and a total lack of understanding of the nature of this business.

To do this much damage without a shred of evidence is absolutely unforgivable.

The fact that the guy basically assumes that he'll go to prison because he refuses to admit guilt to stuff that he didn't do is quite telling. So much for justice.

This reminds me of the Steve Jackson Games raid.

I think over the next 10 years alot of people will be moving themselves out of the US because of this. I thought the bush years were over?

Not really. If you look at the details today, it seems as if Obama has started to embrace policies by Bush and even expand them (while simultaneously still criticizing Bush).

This is one example: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/27/preventive...

If your servers are hosted overseas, the FBI can probably ask local law enforcement (via some treaty) to seize everything.

http://www.eff.org/cases/indymedia-server-takedown/

I highly doubt that the dutch police would seize an entire datacenter on some trumped up charges. Such cowboy actions are very rare here, in fact I don't recall a single instance of such a thing.

An employee of mine once did some very stupid stuff from our corporate network and premises and the police was very reasonable about it.

The quote you give is about some log files from a server in Italy (and fails to detail whether or not they were handed over), we're talking about seizing an entire datacenter here including all the customers machines (plenty of which were government boxes). Hundreds of businesses were ruined on the say so of some junkie.

Disproportional doesn't even begin to describe it.

Depends on _where_ you are hosted overseas. I'm sure a host in Iran wouldn't be so eager to comply with the FBI.

Are you saying your data would be safer in Iran?

Seems like a bit of a toss-up, really.

Hacker News is really not the right place for a serious conversation on this topic, and jokes would only lead to a flame war, so I will rather abstain.

At FOWA Edinburgh, Stefan Magdalinski mentioned that MOO had moved their hosting to the US (from the UK) in order to improve google rankings. I guess you can't have your cake and eat it.

That's surprising. Taking your data outside of the EU can lead to all sorts of Data Protection Act complications.

If you own an apartment building and you are suspected of committing crimes, the government cannot search or sieze the entire building without a warrant for each individual apartment. Each renter has 4th amendment protection and the courts have consistently ruled this way. So if I'm a renter, and you're the police or FBI, you can't get a warrant to seize my property from a judge until you can convince a him that you have probable cause to believe I am involved in a crime (the fact that another renter in the building or the property owner is a suspect is not justification). This same premise applies to storage lockers and other rented space. You can't simply seize an entire rental property. Co-location data centers should function the same way. Our servers are in locked cabinets at our co-lo. We have an SLA and a contract lease with the host. The property in that space is legally ours. Let's hope we never have to convince a court of that.

Lesson: The US Government can and will completely fuck you over for any arbitrary reason at any time with no possibility of recourse. I'm sure that's exactly what the founding fathers had in mind.

in utter fairness this seems to be the the mission of one FBI officer (though in spirit I agree).

Lesson: Do not live in the US. Just Don't Do It.

Agreed. That story sucks.. :-(

It sounds like the FBI "acted stupidly" but the guy was no saint. In this thread he gives customer service that actually makes AT&T look good:

http://voip.yuku.com/reply/421/t/Re-premiervoice-net-aka-pvo...

I don't think his post is that bad. Not nice, but sometimes you need to fire your bad customers.

So he deserves to have all of his life's work yanked out from under him based on a lie and then sent to jail for 5 years for no crime?

If this is a clear cut case of an innocent victim why not call the eff this seems like it is right up their ally?

His story is, sadly, very plausible. Has anyone made a serious case that he's lying?

Some of the (extensive) reddit comments on the story cast a reasonably amount of doubt on his claims. Unfortunately there's just too many of them for me to be able to quickly summarise the various bits and pieces.

On a side note, I only stopped by to see if reddit had reached digg parity - not there yet, but I'm increasingly glad that I left.

(I nearly used "e-migrated" instead of "left" - and that's just from 5-10 minutes of exposure)

"e-migration" is a form of migration done over data lines, right?

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

No, its a form of migration done when high on E.

It'd be nice to see the "other side" of the story first. Perhaps that is just the cynic in me :)

It does seem an extreme approach!

This was on Wired last April:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/data-centers-ra/