[strken]

"Hi SchemaLoad, I'm Officer John from the Department of Not Letting Children Be Abused. I'm following up on something one of your users posted three years ago. Can you tell me the IP address(es) associated with the following deleted posts: A B C D"

[antonvs]

“Hi Officer John, that data is deleted and is no longer possible to access.”

Unless there’s a regulatory requirement (which there currently isn’t in any jurisdiction I’ve heard of), that’s a perfectly acceptable response.

[SchemaLoad]

You'd be required to show what you have but you aren't required to store everything forever just in case someone years later asks for it. Would be like showing up to fingerprint the scene 3 years after and being surprised it's too late.

[direwolf20]

Think of the children! We can't have privacy because children might be abused if we have privacy!

[strken]

This argument applies equally to anything else that needs digital forensics, like SBF's personal banking history, or which user deployed a crypto-miner to some random staging server back in 2023.