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Comment by benjamincburns | Hacker News Reader

> It's because of stuff like this that Cloud Computing is not a very good solution

I think it's important to note that it's not the technology's fault that this is happening, it's built into the way that we execute it. What if cloud storage wasn't just disk or datacenter redundant, but it was provider redundant as well? That way when one provider goes out of business, users aren't affected.

It's still way too early for this to happen (nobody likes turning into a commoditized service), but I think (hope) some day it will.

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Or maybe it's the way the law is executed by law enforcement, interpreted by courts, and legislated by legislators.

Sure. That was envisioned as a problem too back when the Internet was created (or maybe I'm just giving too much credit after the fact), so they structured the technology in such a way as to circumvent the problem.

Technology should be made to be resilient to bad laws. The Internet should protect us from government overreach, not magnify the effect of it.

What technology should do seems to be open to interpretation - it's not surprising those in power have a different interpretation than those who are not.

This is the whole "Innocent until proven guilty" thing is being replaced with "Guilty until proven innocent" in the world of web services.

One itch I would like scratched is a cloud service that protects against the Insanity of the legal system. I have a dream that a program or set of hardware can stay online until a judge has ordered its termination. You can't take the thing offline with an ax first, and then give the broken pieces back to the defendant (without anti-static bags) after the judge clears you of wrong-doing. That's not right.

A service where the judicial system can rape your data centers and get all the information they need to convict you, while your income streams remain intact, UNTIL the judge decides you are illegal.

The notion of having a business destroyed upon accusation, and then giving the broken pieces back to the defendant after the judge says: "No wrong-doing here", makes me sick to my stomach. I don't want to give my kids a world that works like that.

I imagine step one for prosecutors will then be to get the judge to specifically order the service shut down, due to hard caused to third parties or some other reason (whether valid or not). It's a common and vital tactic for prosecutors to seize funds of defendants so they can't mount an adequate defense.

I think the only way around that is to get laws changed, or have provisions in place to illegally host your service after it's been ordered shut down. The latter will probably just cause more legal problems.

> It's a common and vital tactic for prosecutors to seize funds of defendants so they can't mount an adequate defense.

I've heard about this tactic on more than one occasion already. It sounds horrible, and I think it should be made illegal.

As a side note, why can't the feds get all the mob bosses this way, for example? Do they only use this tactic against people like Dotcom?

As I understand it, the trouble is that money isn't evidence, necessarily (while Dotcom's server data would be) and civil seizure of money only applies to the proceeds of a crime. If you're a mob boss, you probably have lawyers and accountants working to keep the illegally-earned money out of your legitimate bank accounts.

I've heard about this tactic on more than one occasion already. It sounds horrible, and I think it should be made illegal.

I agree. More accurately I could have said "It's a common and to their belief vital tactic..."

This only applies to criminal cases, where the evidence can take months. For civil cases it's closer to "a preponderance of evidence leans towards guilt unless proven otherwise."

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