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Just a tangential thought, but I can't imagine seizing Australian assets based in the US would make for a particularly comfortable diplomatic position to be in (although I suspect our current government doesn't care). To say nothing about the fact that we've already shown our hand (and upset most of our allies) by way of the Manning leaks, the Assange manhunt brought about largely by US political pressure, and, more recently, the NSA scandal.

I've mentioned it elsewhere but it's worth repeating here. Finding established case law dealing with foreign assets seized (possibly illegally) on US soil and the repercussions would make for an interesting exercise. I feel like there's one instance in particular that was especially noisome that happened recently, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was.

If you don't mind my asking, what contingencies do you have in place in the event of a seizure of hardware assets? It's unlikely, but the FBI has been known to take anything that vaguely looks like a server...

We currently have a complete copy of all user data in a secondary (non-US) data centre. In the event of a loss of our US-based servers, we would get this secondary copy up and running as quick as possible (likely in a reduced capacity) while sourcing new equipment and getting a new primary centre up as quickly as possible.

This would be a catastrophic event, no doubt about it, and there would be significant disruption for our users. But it wouldn't mean the end of FastMail.

We also have a second (1-2 week old at this point) backup set of most users' data sitting in boxes on my loungeroom floor. Encrypted of course. It came back in my suitcases from New York a week ago.

Bootstrapping from that would be significantly more painful though, and a lot more "gappy".

NSA eagerness to intercept personal emails of Brazilian president and EU citizens shows that noone cares about comfortable diplomatic positions, they'd just do it anyways.

  "We've made our position public, and we're satisfied that
 its an accurate reflection of our position and our
 understanding of Australian law. You must not rely on it as a legal basis
 for anything though"

I'm not sure if I see the value of you saying it, then. Why not get a lawyer to provide you with a position that can be relied upon?

Because its our advice. It was developed for us, taking our concerns into account. You need to get your own legal advice relevant to your own situation.

Or put another way, I don't think "Your Honour, FastMail's lawyer said it was ok" is valid defense for anyone except us.

Who said that that would be a defense we would use?

My point is that you have given advice, with the implication that it would soothe some of our concerns. And then, in the very next sentence, you've said, in effect, it's legally worthless.

So, how exactly does your own advice to us help in any way whatsoever?

Even if that post was written entirely by lawyers, that still wouldn't make it legally binding.

Indeed.

So, the point remains: what value does this advice have over against the advice from Google, etc? It's a rhetorical question, by the way.

It's as useful as the degree to which you trust the company giving this advice. And that's always going to be the case regardless of who the company is and what they say.

Thanks Rob. Yes, it has been updated. Your post makes sense now.