Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

current.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 77 posts

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#61

Post by anonymars »

judge2020 wrote: post #51
dylan604 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the bank goes belly up, your deposit is FDIC secured up to the account limit which is tiny in the scale of things. The FDIC is meant to protect individual people from loosing all of their money from the collapse of a bank, currently at $250k. If you have more wealth than that yet have it all as cash in a single account, then, you're pretty much an ID10T. For regular mere mortals, that's a helluva lot better th…

> If you have more wealth than that yet have it all as cash in a single account, then, you're pretty much an ID10T. SVB collapse has shown that the 250k limit is basically not relevant. Maybe if a big consumer bank like Chase failed then 250k would be the max paid out, but we haven't seen that. And OP is referring to Synapse, where the FDIC could not help any of the americans who lost their savings because the underl…

> SVB collapse has shown that the 250k limit is basically not relevant

Only as long as you're too big to fail...

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#62

Post by cyphar »

Barbing wrote: post #56
s1artibartfast wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is unfair? It seems completely normal and what courts are for sorting out. Iron mountain is acting exactly how I would want them to if they were storing data for me. If you are wharehousing data, you dont just let your customer's customer come in, look around, and take whatever they want. Even if they have a sob story. You ask for a court order with specifics.

How about before the company went out of business? Wasn’t there an avenue for the CEO to send a letter to Iron Mountain mapping the data and its owners or make an arrangement to legally transfer the data or something? It's unfair when you do the best you can and suddenly you have to talk to lawyers.

> It's unfair when you do the best you can and suddenly you have to talk to lawyers.

Well, PBS didn't do the best they could. Aside from the whole "one backup is no backup" problem, they should've immediately made a new backup as soon as Open Source Storage didn't want to renew their contract and stopped responding to them.

That's the most screaming-red, horn-blaring, strobe-flashing warning that they were about to go under and it was the job of the PBS CTO (who makes $180k/yr) to recognise that and respond immediately (i.e., send an intern the nearest Best Buy to buy 70TB of HDDs, they'd probably still have enough space in their bag to do a coffee run on the way back).

> Wasn’t there an avenue for the CEO to send a letter to Iron Mountain mapping the data and its owners or make an arrangement to legally transfer the data or something?

And if they made a mistake in providing the mapping (given they were a company going bankrupt, they might have trouble getting staff to do a complete audit of their customer data)? I would be surprised if the CEO would not be personally on the hook if they violated HIPPA or some other privacy requirement by allowing PBS access to something by accident.

Once a company is in dire straits like this, sussing out problems like this is one of the main purposes of the legal system. Ironically, 70TB of HDDs probably cost less than the first demand letter PBS sent to Iron Mountain.

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#63

Post by scosman »

> William Cravens, the attorney representing Iron Mountain, told the judge his client doesn’t know the format of Nine PBS’ materials that were stored by OSS. He expressed concern about whether Nine PBS’ archival material is lumped together with data from other OSS clients. Iron Mountain wants to avoid potentially corrupting the other data, Cravens added.

> Elliff ordered the immediate return of any physical devices that hold Nine PBS’ data once access to OSS’ storage system is granted…

> Once Nine PBS retrieves its data, the station must work with a third party to ensure that no data from other OSS customers is among those materials.

I don’t love this call. Handing over any disk has several problems. It could easily contain very sensitive data from another client. It’s inherently one-sided (another client can’t make the same request if the disk is already gone). And it’s being handed over to a PBS station that doesn’t seem to have the technical chops to manage data backups/security.

I want them to get their data back, but this needs a technical intermediary that handles all client data equally.

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#64

Post by ikidd »

This station was clearing over a million dollars after expenses, and they couldn't be arsed to take a backup of their data on this cloud service. I have a hard time feeling much sympathy for them. And now Iron Mountain has to referee the data being recovered without handing over others data in the process.

The utter cluelessness all around from start to finish is impressive.

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#65

Post by ikidd »

cyphar wrote: post #62
Barbing wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about before the company went out of business? Wasn’t there an avenue for the CEO to send a letter to Iron Mountain mapping the data and its owners or make an arrangement to legally transfer the data or something? It's unfair when you do the best you can and suddenly you have to talk to lawyers.

> It's unfair when you do the best you can and suddenly you have to talk to lawyers. Well, PBS didn't do the best they could. Aside from the whole "one backup is no backup" problem, they should've immediately made a new backup as soon as Open Source Storage didn't want to renew their contract and stopped responding to them. That's the most screaming-red, horn-blaring, strobe-flashing warning that they were about to g…

This is so much their own damn fault. I have no idea what level of utter incompetency it takes to think that a cloud storage system is a safe way to store the only copy of your data. And as you said, on top of that all the warning signs were there that you need to take a backup right away.

Holy hell, I wanted to see them get this suit dismissed just to rub it into their faces what mindless idiots were in charge of this fiasco.

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#66

Post by rcxdude »

ameliaquining wrote: post #50
kmeisthax wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you talk to a lawyer (or, worse, a legislator, many of whom are also lawyers and all of whom are surrounded by them), they will insist up and down that this is a pretty standard custodial arrangement dispute and that the system worked as intended. And I would, very begrudgingly agree with that. The legal system is perfectly capable of recognizing stolen property no matter how many layers of abstraction you put it…

IIUC "FDIC insurance doesn't cascade into your customers' accounts" is not true in all cases, pass-through deposit insurance is a thing ( https://www.fdic.gov/financial-institution-employees-guide-d... ). The problem in the case of Synapse was that they said they were doing that stuff, but were lying. (I think. The details of what happened there are apparently still not public. Also their bank seems to have been doin…

The biggest mess with Synapse seems to be the ledgers disagreeing: The banks, Synapse, Synapse's customers, and Synapse's customer's customers don't all agree on whose money is whose, and worse, the totals don't seem to add up.

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#67

Post by knollimar »

ggm wrote: post #46
Hobadee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF, a solid 50% of regulation is probably government overreach. The problem is that it's intrinsically tangled with the other 50% (crossing various specializations/laws/departments) that isn't; you can't undo one without undoing both.

love the use of "solid" when both numbers (50, and the other 50) are pure unobtanium pulled out of an orifice. "a lot" would be less rhetorically satisfying, but probably more appropriate. I suspect the number is in fact, far less than 50%. In mining engineering, I'd be amazed if a significant majority of the rules don't stem from a significant accident or death, or forseeable need to avoid them. In medicine, the sta…

In building codes, sometimes there's a tragedy that causes government overreach. A death with big public support often causes regulation that "does something" even if the rule itself doesn't help or make sense.

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#68

Post by harshreality »

scosman wrote: post #63

> William Cravens, the attorney representing Iron Mountain, told the judge his client doesn’t know the format of Nine PBS’ materials that were stored by OSS. He expressed concern about whether Nine PBS’ archival material is lumped together with data from other OSS clients. Iron Mountain wants to avoid potentially corrupting the other data, Cravens added. > Elliff ordered the immediate return of any physical devices t…

Is that statement by Iron Mountain's attorney believable, though?

If cage or server access was shared between Iron Mountain customers, how can Iron Mountain not have a record of what's in what cage or what's on what server?

If Iron Mountain customers like OSS were free to add or remove things without Iron Mountain's knowledge, then their (OSS's) access would've been limited to cages or servers dedicated to their (OSS's) own clients' data. Allowing an OSS ex-employee the same access they previously would've had should be a non-issue, from Iron Mountain's perspective.

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#69

Post by msandford »

harshreality wrote: post #68
scosman wrote: post #63

> William Cravens, the attorney representing Iron Mountain, told the judge his client doesn’t know the format of Nine PBS’ materials that were stored by OSS. He expressed concern about whether Nine PBS’ archival material is lumped together with data from other OSS clients. Iron Mountain wants to avoid potentially corrupting the other data, Cravens added. > Elliff ordered the immediate return of any physical devices t…

Is that statement by Iron Mountain's attorney believable, though? If cage or server access was shared between Iron Mountain customers, how can Iron Mountain not have a record of what's in what cage or what's on what server? If Iron Mountain customers like OSS were free to add or remove things without Iron Mountain's knowledge, then their (OSS's) access would've been limited to cages or servers dedicated to their (OSS…

What iron mountain does know is which drives are owned by oss. What they don't know is which drives owned by oss have the station's data on them. Hopefully nothing is comingled and drives are dedicated to a customer. Seemingly only oss knows and they went bankrupt so who knows what shape the records are in.

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#70

Post by vel0city »

recursivecaveat wrote: post #25
ww520 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever claims "your deposits are FDIC insured" needs to be prosecuted as fraud and scam artists. “Your” the company’s deposits in the bank is FDIC insured. My deposit with you the company is not. When the bank goes belly up, your deposit is FDIC secured up to the account limit which is tiny in the scale of things. When your company goes belly up, my deposit is gone.

My understanding is that they split the accounts to keep up with the limit. Otherwise though yeah, FDIC will only step in for the extreme minority scenario of failure by the underlying bank. You absolutely should not be allowed to advertise FDIC insurance unless it goes all the way to the consumer.

> they split the accounts to keep up with the limit

You're right about that, they (and other fintechs) have tons of accounts split across a ton of tiny little banks. All of those accounts and banks are FDIC insured.

But, those aren't the end client's accounts. They're shared pools of money from all the clients. When Alice and Bob both give the fintech $100, the fintech may split up that total $200 across dozens of different accounts. When Alice wants $20 back, it might not even come from accounts where her initial $100 landed, that money probably got sent to Charlie when he wanted his $1,000 back.

The fintech's money was FDIC insured. If any of those banks failed, all the fintech's deposits would be guaranteed. But if the fintech mismanaged their client funds and suddenly their outstanding balances in their client databases are larger than the sum of all the balances of all their hundreds of FDIC bank accounts, their clients are SOL.

Post reply on HN