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View Full Version : FBI Raids Servers Hosting "Read Later" Service Instapaper, Likely Illegally Copied Data




Kludge
06-24-2011, 11:08 PM
"We recently wrote about the FBI's server seizures in the hunt for LulzSec, noting the collateral damage that took down servers of a few different popular websites. One of the seized servers was a backup server for the very popular service Instapaper, which many people use to save web pages and other info. While Instapaper's Marco Arment notes that the FBI did return the server relatively quickly, it's possible that the FBI now has a copy of pretty much everyone's Instapaper data, which could reveal a lot about some people.


Possibly most importantly, though, the FBI is now presumably in possession of a complete copy of the Instapaper database as it stood on Tuesday morning, including the complete list of users and any non-deleted bookmarks. ...

...

So the FBI now has illegal possession of nearly all of Instapaper’s data and a moderate portion of its codebase, and as far as I know, this is completely out of my control.

Marco is quite reasonably pissed off at the hosting company, DigitalOne, who never contacted him about this (before or after the raid, including up until the blog post, days later). Frankly, that's unconscionable. For an ISP to simply not tell their customer that a server has been seized? Marco is also upset that DigitalOne didn't do anything to stop the seizure. Now, on both of those accounts, it's possible that DigitalOne's hands were tied. There's not much they can realistically do if the FBI shows up with a seizure warrant, even if it's super broad. And we have seen the FBI use gag orders barring ISPs from talking about what was seized.

But, really, that just goes to show, yet again, the problems of such government seizures with no prior adversarial hearings. ..."

Full story with hyperlinked cross-references & comments @ http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110624/15282814850/so-fbi-can-just-take-copy-all-instapaper-user-data-with-no-recourse.shtml

kah13176
06-24-2011, 11:12 PM
If you're behind a handful of overseas proxies and don't do anything stupid, then you don't get caught. They'll never find Lulzsec unless they screw up bigtime and release an email or forget to use proxies when logging into something.

I'm pulling for another WikiLeaks.

tropicangela
06-29-2011, 11:32 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ0iAycm0sE&feature=player_embedded