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Too slow! FBI Shuts Down Hosting Service
Chope writes "If FBI agents showed up at your data center bearing a warrant, would you be able to provide them prompt access to customer data?
BZZZZT! I'm sorry, but you've taken too long to answer. We'll be confiscating all the hardware you use, er, used to use, to run your business. But we'll get it back to you 'real soon now.' Thank you for playing. CarrierHotels.com is carrying the story of a FBI raid on a web hosting company. When the hosting company didn't and/or couldn't provide the information the FBI was looking from its several terabytes of data within "several hours", the FBI decided it was more "efficient" to seize all the web servers and customer data as part of the FBI's investigation of a hacking incident."
...this is our government's "intelligence" agencies, you know, the ones who were supposed to stop things like 911 from happening.
FLR
Will they delete the 'copied' data after they have finished, keeping only the information that they originally wanted, please this is v bad...
No, this happens everywhere in the world, every time a warrent is served or equipment is confiscated.
In the United States, due process requires that the evidence collected by the warrent only be used against the people the warrent was issued against. There's no real point to keeping the data around, since they couldn't use it to convict anyone, even if they find a crime.
(There are some rules about getting warrents with regard to other material you may accidentally find, but I am not familiar with them. But it is not "whatever the police want goes".)
Now, I am not so naive as to think that it's just erased, but by and large the FBI has no particular reason to keep it hanging around. (I'm pretty sure they can get a warrent to collect more evidence but the evidence they've already collected is tainted.)
Nor am I so naive as to think that only the US has this problem, or the US has some sort of special version of this problem. Check into your laws, presumably UK from your web link. If your police accidentally encounter evidence of a crime while investigating another, what do they do with it? (I don't know.)
It's not as if the UK hasn't been more-or-less matching the US in Big Brother inventions, if not exceeding (we do not yet have entire cities outfitted with cameras controlled by the government, after all!). At least we do have some Constitutional provisions covering these things and while you may not be able to tell from this sort of isolated anecdote, the battle is pitched and far from over. My impression from the news coming out of your country is that it is pretty much is over and Big Brother has won, to the general acclamation of your public.
I appreciate your concern for us, but perhaps you should tone down your Anti-Americanism, which your leaders are using to distract you from your own very real problems (less obviously in the UK as in Germany but still an issue), and focus on those real problems you have. Perhaps if you can clean up your own country you can provide some leadership for mine; if there's one thing the US isn't afraid to do it's import ideas from elsewhere.
"This is a huge problem."
The FBI is a huge problem. The FBI is an unconstitutional federal police force:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
John Ashcroft is guilty of subversion of the constitution. I just hope Kerry has the balls to prosecute these bastards, including Shrub for stealing the last election.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
It has a ring to it, doesn't it?
I'm a Libertarian, and Nader is my biggest enemy on the political scene. He is the most anti-liberty candidate possible, and his view corrupt people into being crybabies who wants PROTECTION versus becoming self-sufficient beings who can solve their problems (and need Liberty; Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Russian Revolution, was a very clever man. One of his saying was "Freedom is realized necessity").
Nader is a front cheerleader for the REALLY evil corporation that extorts and squanders your money: http://www.triallawyersinc.com/
Enjoy!
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov