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by falcolas 5477 days ago
I think it's always important to remember that the first order of business in a raid is to preserve evidence against deletion or modification. This means that their first task is to remove the hardware from anybody's hands but theirs. At which point they can peruse the data as they are able.

Why did they take an entire rack, instead of a few servers? I can think of a couple of potential reasons. - VM's, which could potentially live on any physical server in a VM pool - Insufficient information on which physical servers belong to their suspects - They just don't trust the colo operators to not be involved, and thus limit the suspect data to the servers they provide.

While I wholly agree that it's unfortunate that Instapaper and Pinboard were affected, it's not an unexpected consequence of having your servers alongside (or on the same physical machines) of people you don't know.
1 comments
WettowelReactor 5477 days ago
No, the first order of business is to stay within the bounds of the law. It does not matter how solid your chain of evidence is if that evidence is illegally obtained.
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ktsmith 5477 days ago
It's doubtful the evidence was illegally obtained. The warrant was probably for the hardware, and was probably overly broad allowing for the removal of more than was necessary. That's been the routine since at least the mid 90s. There are plenty of cases where the FBI has walked into a data center shown a warrant and walked out with complete racks of equipment most unrelated to their actual search because the warrant allowed them to do so.
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WettowelReactor 5477 days ago
If the warrant allows them to do so then yes it is legal although we should hold judges accountable. Voting in responsible judges is more important than legislatures IMHO as they tend to have a more direct impact on our personal lives. That being said I just see a lot of comments mentioning the imperative to preserve evidence and chain of custody which is important but completely subordinate to staying within the bounds of the warrant. Does anyone here know if warrants can be obtained through FOIA requests? I would sure love to see the scope of the one used in this case.
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ktsmith 5477 days ago
You'll get no argument from me about holding judges accountable it's an interesting issue though. Was the warrant issued by a state or federal judge? Federal judges are appointed for life and not elected so the people can't exactly kick them out of office during the next election.
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