[IvoDankolov]

Was there really a need to put "legitimate" in quotes every single time?

More seriously, though, it shows that the legal system has put itself, perhaps unwittingly, in unexplored and potentially very volatile territory.

Most times, a warrant does not affect at lot of people in the grand scheme of things. Potentially inconveniencing an innocent household is, all things considered, not a big deal. But a warrant that affects quite literally millions of people, which cannot possible be all guilty - dangerous, that.

I wonder if this will force some changes in the way seizure of property is handled. I suppose it depends on how much of a "shitstorm" it continues to cause.

[fl3tch]

Yet another problem created by cloud storage. If instead of putting everything on a community storage service we took Eben Moglen's suggestion of storing everything in our homes (which would require better bandwidth and ISP AUPs, of course) our data would be in the best legally protected place in society. It won't happen. The cloud will win because it has bigger corporate backers, but this is another example of how technology solves one problem while simultaneously creating another.

[Shivetya]

Yet another example of a too powerful to care government agency which cares nothing for the collateral damage it causes, nor does it have too.

To be blunt, they should be required to release within a timely manner all non offending assets. They claim bad precedent which is more than annoying, its insulting. In other words, as long as they get who they are after they could care less who suffers in the process. Worse, those caught up in the crossfire are not entitled to any assistance whatsoever.

So the moral of the story is, do not keep your data anywhere but on systems you own. I wonder how much Apple and Google have to pay to keep the DOJ at bay? I would assume it is whatever the cost of lawyers are whose entire job is to convince the DOJ all things possible are always done.

[squidpie]

I agree that keeping your own data on your own property is a worthwhile endeavor. I speculate though about how proficient most people are at keeping truly decent security for that data. If I build a small server rack at home and allow all of my mobile devices to connect to that server from out in the wide world, and if then lots and lots of other people do that as well, how does the nature of security change?

[jellicle]

If it were rich people's property, perhaps.

But what's the average net worth of a Megaupload user?

[freehunter]

Reminds me of the Cold War discussions on "megadeath". If we fire this missile, how many millions of people would die? It's dehumanizing, and "two megadeaths" sounds a lot more appealing to the eyes and ears than "two million deaths" or "2,000,000 people dead".

We're only hurting 180 megausers, not 180,000,000[1] users.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload#Statistics