[BLKNSLVR]

True story: my house (in Australia) was raided by the police in 2022. 8 months later when they said I could collect all the gear they seized the officer in charge told me that the following are things they consider to be suspicious:

1. Use of MEGA (it's apparently used to share CSAM)

2. Use of virtual machines

3. "Having Tor on my computer" (I had to put that in quotes because whilst it doesn't make sense, that's what they said).

They're fucking clueless, don't underestimate how little they understand. An explanation of how something is harmless likely sounds to them like an admission of guilt.

It was an eye opening experience. I (and many members of my extended family) have very much less respect for the competence of law enforcement as a direct result of this experience.

[trumpdong]

Everyone should encrypt their hard drive. At all times. Even if your country has password disclosure it forces them to get a warrant from a judge for your password and the worst case is the same as the best case from not encrypting it.

MEGA is indeed used to share CSAM and pirate stuff. That is its primary use actually but it's one of those institutions that maintains plausible deniability. Remember it was started after MegaUpload was shut down for being obviously designed to reward copyright infringement - the new one isn't obviously designed for that

[BLKNSLVR]

I only ever used MEGA a handful of times, and it was only for Android ROM downloads. The police commentary about MEGA was notable to me precisely because of how infrequently I'd used it despite their mention of it. They kinda tipped their hand with that. If they hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't have known it was a red flag at all.

There's also a large chasm separating copyright infringing material and CSAM, and putting them together as "the primary use" as you did is, in my opinion, questionable agenda pushing.

I agree with your first paragraph, but your second one leaves me wondering about your motivations for commenting in the first place; MEGA and Kim Dotcom embarrassed US law enforcement for a long, long time.

I happen to think that KDC is a piece of shit. But it seems that would make him perfect tech-bro material, except that his copyright infringement wasn't seen as 'US preferential' at the time.

[trumpdong]

CSAM and pirated material are both illegal file sharing, exactly the same from a technical perspective like how file sharing software works. Of course Mega would like you to pay to use it for backups, but I don't think anyone actually does. Their E2EE is there for a reason - they don't want any information about what you're hosting.

[BLKNSLVR]

Which is exactly the same as legal file sharing from a technical perspective.

Which is exactly the same as leading corporate secrets or international espionage or hosting a copy of The Satanic Verses, from a technical perspective.

It's also no different from hosting a blog or any other website from a technical perspective.

[trumpdong]

Yes, yes, no. Except that legal file sharing has easier ways like direct HTTP download, or Google Drive.