The FBI took -- and mysteriously returned -- their server • Hacker News Board

Re: The FBI took -- and mysteriously returned -- their server

#51

Post by corin_ » Fri, May 11, 2012, 8:41 PM UTC

patrickgzill wrote: post #50

corin_ wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely even then the rental contract would specify the equipment they rent, not the space - the data centre could move their rack to a different physical location at any time.

I will tell you that unless something is on fire in my rack, no one from Level3 will even touch anything - and even then they would hit the fire suppression button and leave the room. They do not touch anything in a customer rack. (I have two racks in a local facility owned by Level3). The contract I signed, had a clause that said if they had to move me somewhere else, they would pay all costs of doing so. I don't kn…

OK I simplified a little, but if there was ever any reason to move a rack and it could be done with zero downtime, the arguments against it are never going to be "but that's my space I rented".

I rent a furnished appartment, and while the company that owns it would never touch it without my permission, the contract is very specific about it being this building, they would never say "mind moving next door?" whereas with a rack in a data centre, not only does the contract not specify exactly where the rack is placed, it makes very little difference about it's exact location.

Re: The FBI took -- and mysteriously returned -- their server

#52

Post by CWuestefeld » Fri, May 11, 2012, 9:25 PM UTC

RyanMBoland wrote: post #29

CWuestefeld wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up-vote because many people feel this way, so it's important to discuss. But I strongly disagree. From that point of view, this seems like a perfectly fine action to take. There's certainly an argument to be made in support of your statement. If we were to work in a purely utilitarian manner, there would be little room for argument. But the design of the structure of civil rights we have in America doesn't work that…

I think that you've taken this too far. We can't make blanket statements about peoples rights and expect them to be applicable in every situation. In this case, a legal authority made the decision to interrupt a service for a small period of time in order to investigate a terrorist act that was disrupting the lives of thousands of people daily. If this was, say, a service that was providing medical assistance to elde…

You're right that legal precedent doesn't take rights absolutely. For example, there's the "clear and present danger" test for speech rights.

However, weighing against such a determination is what the OP explained: any competent mail anonymizer is going to be a dead end in the investigation, so the chances of a payoff is small. I'd be curious to see the actual warrant, to see what the judge approved them to look for.

And on the other side of the coin, I expect that the rights of those using the anonymizer (as opposed to those of the company offering the service) were not weighed, because the FBI never inquired as to who would be affected (at least as far as I know).

Those users of the anonymizer are not directly injured, but are collateral damage. However, the same is true of you: you're neither the threat-maker nor the target of the threats, you're just inconvenienced by the actions that the victim was forced to make.

Re: The FBI took -- and mysteriously returned -- their server

#53

Post by GoodIntentions » Sun, May 13, 2012, 3:42 AM UTC

ShabbyDoo wrote: post #38

patrickgzill wrote: post #26

Here is my question... If you rent an apartment, even though you don't own the building, you have "rights of tenant in possession". Basically the apartment is "yours" and you have rights. If a search warrant is to be served to search your place, it gets served on YOU, not the owner of the buildng. If you rent server space, like a rack in a datacenter, that space is "yours". So should the search warrant have been hono…

What are the US laws in regard to search and seizure of rented storage facilities? This seems like an interesting point on the continuum between an apartment and a data center rack.

IMHO, just avoid the whole question and rent outside the USA.

Re: The FBI took -- and mysteriously returned -- their server

#54

Post by ttt_ » Mon, May 14, 2012, 11:17 AM UTC

BryanB55 wrote: post #49

ttt_ wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I still don't see any reason that I would not give up my private information on a server in order to protect our country and thousands of lives. In the case of the service disrupted, that private information on the server could be what's protecting other lives in a country where basic rights are being disputed in blood.

Right, but who is to say that the FBI would release that information into the wrong hands? If that is the case then it sounds like the problem is with the way confidential information is handled by our intelligence agencies.

I'm not talking about the actual content, just that they had made the service unavailable to people that might direly need them. If you're fighting for democratic rights in a country with severely restricted freedoms, it might not be a matter of just checking back for the service to be up, probably you'd have limited windows to of oportunity operate. You may just have missed the chance to warn a fellow activist in time to save his life, or your own.