Megaupload User Asks Court for Files Back. Again. | Hacker News Reader

Megaupload User Asks Court for Files Back. Again.

eff.org

88 pointsbond15 comments

"Cloud" is not the future, with governments like these. All you entrepeneurs better take note.

Also, it's probably just a matter of time before PaaS and SaaS servers are taken down because the political winds shift against a few apps located at Rackspace or Amazon or wherever.

If I were in this game, I'd host everything locally and secure the crap out of it. In fact, securing your data and services against governments is likely to become a big business soon.

If I were in this game, I'd host everything locally and secure the crap out of it. In fact, securing your data and services against governments is likely to become a big business soon.

Business depends on the acceptance (or at least tolerance) of government. Expect anything that slows down the government to be outlawed.

The problem with the Internet is it can be difficult to know which governments you have to be tolerated by. And that is where hosting your own and securing it might be helpful.

Business has rockets these days.

Only because the government allows it.

No reason to make anything easier for them than you legally have to. Plus the issue here isn't the government wanting anything from you. The problem is when you have no legal issues with the government but unfortunately the cloud provider you choose does.

Good call. I think others have sensed this is where the puck is going and begun skating towards it already as well. Examples like the Tahoe-LFS project. Obviously two of the key elements for any solution are (1) redundancy, and (2) personal control over the encryption. Though adding things like hidden storage and plausible deniability can be important for certain folks as well, if they need ultra paranoid-level security. But just having off-site, redundantly located, personally encrypted storage, seems like the bare minimum to not "lose" any data to government shenanigans, especially as innocent collateral damage.

You nailed it.

I've always been against "the cloud" for precisely these reasons.

I've considered offering "de-clouding" services over the last year i.e. move your stuff to internal services and moving to a managed model i.e. I'll manage your internal systems remotely.

This highlights the core question of property rights applied to private data.

Surely individuals must have the same rights in this regard as governments and large corporations whose database may have been stolen?

The wisdom of the decision about where to store that data should not be important in law, as long as there was a reasonable expectation not to have it stolen.

We are not even talking about just unauthorised access to private data but about deleting it altogether! Once they get away with this, no data will ever be safe again.

Isn't this just grandstanding by the EFF? IANAL but during most physical trials the evidence stays under seizure until the case is over.

Perhaps, but how does evidence handling work when it's of crucial importance for the defense?

This isn't actually related to the defense, it is for a random Megaupload customer.

The defense cannot get the data, either.

The problem is that most of the data they seized is non-infringing. MU had something on the order of 19 petabytes; a fraction of that is actually "evidence", the rest just went along for the ride.

They don't want their files back, they just want the FBI share them. ;)

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