Why do they need humans looking at files? Can't a program be created that scans disk contents and classifies them in whatever way they need it analyzed?
If they use a program they have to deal with Kim's legal team objecting and forcing the prosecution to convince a judge that they have a way to sift information with a 100% guarantee of not mistakenly taking anything it is not legal for them to take.
Easier to just hire a bunch of interns to do the work.
Hiring one Canadian is prohibitively expensive, so instead they fight a legal battle to be able to send a team of Americans? That seems like a red flag to me. Even computer forensic professionals can't be that much more expensive than police officers and lawyers.
I've interviewed with him once for a job in his Munich based company DataProtect back in 2000 when his name was still Kim Schmitz. Back then it was unclear where his money came from (insider trading and before that credit card fraud) and the engineering community thought he was just that much of a successful and technically knowledgeable guy. I don't hold a grudge for not getting the job as a security engineer because the personal impression I got was more than shady and the following years proved that it good that I didn't.
You're downvoted because your comment implies that "just following orders" at companies with morally questionable business models might reflect back on the one taking orders.
For more downvotes, try suggesting that working for an adware and spyware based company could (and should!) lower your social status, even if not yet in the eyes of other people working for adware and spyware giants. But with growing awareness in the wider population, the outcome is inevitable.
Interesting, so I could work for the NSA or CIA and still get all the street-cred with you guys? Sorry but this is exactly the reason why I'm running my own business since 18+ years and never looked back since. If being "sheep" is what this job is now all about please kill me now.
EDIT:
actually your comment is exactly what I despise because thinking like this makes you a non-free person. I'm sure people who worked for the Stasi or currently justify the actions of their employers (Google, Facebook and other FVEY collaborators) would exactly justify their existence with similar reasoning.
Point being, if you feel that your employer does something shady it's up to you to change it. If this process makes you unemployable or an outcast in your current environment then I'd still have more respect for you serving me at McDonalds than doing what you do.
> On Jan. 18, 2012, an Ontario judge granted a search warrant to seize 32 servers in Canada — equivalent to the amount of data stored on 100 laptops, according to Megaupload lawyers.
Wait what??? Neither servers nor laptops have any sort of "average HD size". This comparison seems quite stupid. It's not only apples and oranges to compare the two but provides no meaningful data at all....
> both servers and alptops obviously do have an average HD size
Ok what are those numbers? And how long are they valid for? I've got 35TB on one of my servers, and 20GB on 2 other ones. My Laptop is 256GB but my last one was 1TB... These numbers mean nothing at all. It's a stupid comparison. I doubt the averages would last for ever a year without changing pretty drastically.
Edit: deleted parent comment:
> both servers and alptops obviously do have an average HD size, so the average may not be all that meaningful -- for servefs especially. But i suspect they used the actual size of the servers, not an average, though implicitly they used something like an average for laptops.
Ok, how large is an average HD space on a server? Are we assuming servers have an average of 750GB - 1.5TB? That is not correct either. I'm not being dense, both servers and desktops have WILDLY different HD sizes.
You seem to be ignoring the meaning of average. It's a statistic that you can create to characterize a numeric property of any well defined category. If you agree that there are laptops, and that there are servers as categories, then we can take a sample of each category, and calculate an average HDD size for each, regardless of the standard deviation.
It is true by definition that there are average HDD sizes for servers and laptops. If you disagree with their estimates, do you have reasoning to show that they are wrong?
I don't discount that there EXISTS an average but I don't think it would line up at all with their numbers. I fully understand the meaning of "average" and I also understand that there are a LARGE number of times that the average is completely useless due to the input data. In most of those cases it's better to use the MEDIAN not the MEAN (average). For example if you are looking at the following data set:
$20,000
$30,000
$25,000
$35,000
$100,000
The mean is $42,000 but the median is $30,000 which is a better representation of the data IMHO. Same with servers, you have servers that are massive for storing data and small <10GB App servers that sit behind a LB. What I'm trying to say is the numbers don't make sense and it's a BAD comparison. It would be a little better if they gave numbers for either laptops or servers but they way they have it phrased they just as well could have said "They seized 35 apples that is equivalent to 100 oranges". Lastly while there EXISTS averages no doubt I challenge you to FIND these averages, a quick couple google searches produces no such knowledge. Not to mention that while an average exists I believe it to be incalculable unless you want to use sampling due to the fact that the VAST majority of companies do not share that type of information.
I'm actually not really sure. I'd probably say that for app servers the HD size for laptops is greater than that for servers but that's my core problem with the comparison. Both servers and laptops vary wildly in HD sizes. Backblaze has hundreds of TB's in one box whereas my digital ocean VM is 20GB. < 100GB HD for laptops would be ludicrous but for servers you only want to allocate what you know you will use which for everything I've ever worked with can be done in under 20GB easy if not under 10GB.
If you aren't sure then you are saying that you don't understand the situation well enough to have a view.
You can reasonably ask that they state their assumptions or clarify their categories, but beyond that it seems to me that you just don't know enough to critique their illustration.
Um, I know what I'm saying. I'm saying that a Laptop HD to Server HD comparison is stupid. It is and I feel that I have more than enough knowledge to make that statement and stand but it. I'm unsure as to what I've said that makes you think that I don't know what I'm talking about. Their illustration is bad and I called that out. I stand by that and if people want to call it pedantic then that's their right.
What I DO know is that it is 100% IMPOSSIBLE for ANYONE to calculate the median HD size for laptops vs servers. There simply DOES NOT exist the data needed to do the calculations. Period. Not sure how not knowing an impossible to know stat somehow makes me unqualified to discuss this topic. Using your logic I'm expecting a response with the median sizes as you must possess this knowledge or else you wouldn't have commented given your statement.
> Ok, how large is an average HD space on a server?
Average on a server is irrelevant, since the report was of specific servers, and the storage of those specific servers was compared to a number of laptop drives (implicitly invoking some "average laptop" to warrant the comparison.) No idea of an average server HD size is necessary in that comparison.
Of course, it would have been more useful to people who actually know anything about the field just to have had the actual size of the seized storage reported, rather than a comparison to laptop hard drives, but that's a different issue.
> Average on a server is irrelevant, since the report was of specific servers
This is true, unfortunately I somehow missed the sizes when I read through the article the first time around. For that I am sorry. I found my mistake only about an hour ago due to another comment. That said I stand beside both the fact there there is no such thing as an average server/computer HD size (not one anyone can calculate at least) and the fact that it's still a stupid comparison to try and make.
While the numbers are only valid for this moment in time, its possible to get a list of laptops from a price comparison web service and do average on it.
Doing a very hasty lookup (the site I use got diagrams that represent number of products with each drive size), cheap <1000$ laptops got in average 600G and 1000$ and up got an of average 800G or 1T if you include SSD's.
If that were the case the number of PEOPLE's personal data would be a far more compelling number. 100 laptops worth of data may be equivalent to the servers but they still don't represent the only thing that should matter: innocent's people data being unlawfully searches/seized.
Lawyers are constrained, in that they cannot knowingly tell outright lies, and any intentional misrepresentations they may make are limited by the forbearance of the judge.
I'm quite certain that lawyers for the defense would have preferred to say that the seizure and search of the servers was the equivalent of kicking down the doors of 100 homes in your neighborhood, and taking 100 of your neighbors' laptops, merely on the suspicion that they might have unlicensed copies of movies and music on them. And your neighbors are good, hardworking people who already have piles of legitimately purchased CDs and DVDs next to their laptops. They care for their cute babies, and refrain from kicking puppies and kittens at all times. The smell of fresh-baked apple pies frequently wafts across your lawn from their windowsills, along with the sounds of the neighborhood kids playing sandlot baseball. But why would a wookiee live on Endor? It makes no sense!
At that time, the judge reminds the defense that Kim Dotcom is the accused, and you stop that crap right now, or you'll get sanctioned.
> Lawyers are constrained, in that they cannot knowingly tell outright lies
Lawyers may have greater professional consequences if they are caught knowingly telling outright lies in certain contexts, but it is absolutely not the case that they cannot knowingly tell outright lies.
Let's just say that they cannot expect to win a case if it depends upon contradicting established facts. Much of a lawyer's work is therefore preventing the inconvenient facts from being established in their case.
The article states quite clearly (in the fourth paragraph) that the amount of data in question is 25TB. It later mentions that the data was spread across 32 servers and that lawyers compared it to the amount of data in 100 laptops - which would fix the lawyers' estimate for the average amount of data in a laptop at around 250GB. I haven't bought a laptop recently, but that sounds like an entirely reasonable guesstimate to me. The comparison seems like an appropriate way of conveying the order of magnitude of the amount of data that needs to be searched to a non-technical audience.
This thread adds nothing interesting to the conversation. Please just stop.
Its before my morning coffee so maybe I am missing the reason but why can't it be indexed by Canadians? Is it because its an American case and they are only permitted to hold potential evidence, not assist in the investigation?
More to the point, why didn't the original warrant specify what data they were looking for? Finding out what files exist on a server is technically easy.
If the authorities don't know what constitutes incriminating evidence it raises serious questions about why the warrant was issued in the first place.
All those tax dollars, bought for around $100M/year[1]. I wonder if they are seeing exponential returns on their lobbying investment, and that's why it went from $25M to $100M in less than a decade, or if it is an attempt to staunch the losses brought about by file sharing. I'm guessing the latter.
His "business" that made about $200,000,000 off obviously copyright infringing material. Kim Dotcom is as sleazy as they come. I think he deserves to sit in a prison cell. Other folk may disagree with me, and that's fine, but he very much deserves to face a jury so that they can decide.
Personally, I agree with you but how Dotcom gets there is very important. We cannot tolerate methods that are not only illegal but violate the basic of principals of our legal code and society. Kim Dotcom is as sleazy as it comes but he does have rights and if he loses his, we will lose ours.
I know plenty of people who host non-infringing copyright items at Megaupload. What I mean is that they share personal files, which themselves have the copyright to. So I'm pretty sure not all of that money comes from hosting Big Corporates copyrighted material.
I don't understand why you put "business" within quotation marks, as a business is a business if it generates money - regardless of the legality of the business.
The site is shut down so the people involved have achieved their goal. I doubt that the defence is claiming that there was no copyrighted material in the users data stores. The case is really about refusal to pursue copyright enforcement. All the prosecution needs to do is drag this out to win.
So if you don't toe the line all your equipment gets seized. If you ever get it back it will be obsolete. You will also be tied up with legal stuff for a long time. That is the real message being sent here. The facts of the case don't matter.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threadEasier to just hire a bunch of interns to do the work.
So "notorious" sounded right to me too.
For more downvotes, try suggesting that working for an adware and spyware based company could (and should!) lower your social status, even if not yet in the eyes of other people working for adware and spyware giants. But with growing awareness in the wider population, the outcome is inevitable.
EDIT: actually your comment is exactly what I despise because thinking like this makes you a non-free person. I'm sure people who worked for the Stasi or currently justify the actions of their employers (Google, Facebook and other FVEY collaborators) would exactly justify their existence with similar reasoning. Point being, if you feel that your employer does something shady it's up to you to change it. If this process makes you unemployable or an outcast in your current environment then I'd still have more respect for you serving me at McDonalds than doing what you do.
Wait what??? Neither servers nor laptops have any sort of "average HD size". This comparison seems quite stupid. It's not only apples and oranges to compare the two but provides no meaningful data at all....
Ok what are those numbers? And how long are they valid for? I've got 35TB on one of my servers, and 20GB on 2 other ones. My Laptop is 256GB but my last one was 1TB... These numbers mean nothing at all. It's a stupid comparison. I doubt the averages would last for ever a year without changing pretty drastically.
Edit: deleted parent comment:
> both servers and alptops obviously do have an average HD size, so the average may not be all that meaningful -- for servefs especially. But i suspect they used the actual size of the servers, not an average, though implicitly they used something like an average for laptops.
It is true by definition that there are average HDD sizes for servers and laptops. If you disagree with their estimates, do you have reasoning to show that they are wrong?
You can reasonably ask that they state their assumptions or clarify their categories, but beyond that it seems to me that you just don't know enough to critique their illustration.
What I DO know is that it is 100% IMPOSSIBLE for ANYONE to calculate the median HD size for laptops vs servers. There simply DOES NOT exist the data needed to do the calculations. Period. Not sure how not knowing an impossible to know stat somehow makes me unqualified to discuss this topic. Using your logic I'm expecting a response with the median sizes as you must possess this knowledge or else you wouldn't have commented given your statement.
If you are claiming that estimation is 100% impossible, then you are indeed unqualified to discuss this topic.
Average on a server is irrelevant, since the report was of specific servers, and the storage of those specific servers was compared to a number of laptop drives (implicitly invoking some "average laptop" to warrant the comparison.) No idea of an average server HD size is necessary in that comparison.
Of course, it would have been more useful to people who actually know anything about the field just to have had the actual size of the seized storage reported, rather than a comparison to laptop hard drives, but that's a different issue.
This is true, unfortunately I somehow missed the sizes when I read through the article the first time around. For that I am sorry. I found my mistake only about an hour ago due to another comment. That said I stand beside both the fact there there is no such thing as an average server/computer HD size (not one anyone can calculate at least) and the fact that it's still a stupid comparison to try and make.
Doing a very hasty lookup (the site I use got diagrams that represent number of products with each drive size), cheap <1000$ laptops got in average 600G and 1000$ and up got an of average 800G or 1T if you include SSD's.
The comparison is entirely for the purpose of converting the numbers to a scale familiar (and shocking) to the median member of the jury pool.
I'm quite certain that lawyers for the defense would have preferred to say that the seizure and search of the servers was the equivalent of kicking down the doors of 100 homes in your neighborhood, and taking 100 of your neighbors' laptops, merely on the suspicion that they might have unlicensed copies of movies and music on them. And your neighbors are good, hardworking people who already have piles of legitimately purchased CDs and DVDs next to their laptops. They care for their cute babies, and refrain from kicking puppies and kittens at all times. The smell of fresh-baked apple pies frequently wafts across your lawn from their windowsills, along with the sounds of the neighborhood kids playing sandlot baseball. But why would a wookiee live on Endor? It makes no sense!
At that time, the judge reminds the defense that Kim Dotcom is the accused, and you stop that crap right now, or you'll get sanctioned.
Lawyers may have greater professional consequences if they are caught knowingly telling outright lies in certain contexts, but it is absolutely not the case that they cannot knowingly tell outright lies.
This thread adds nothing interesting to the conversation. Please just stop.
If the authorities don't know what constitutes incriminating evidence it raises serious questions about why the warrant was issued in the first place.
Guilty until proven innocent.
That's why many companies try to avoid getting there, by lobbying for OPPOSING major parties, for instance.
1. https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=B02
I don't understand why you put "business" within quotation marks, as a business is a business if it generates money - regardless of the legality of the business.
So if you don't toe the line all your equipment gets seized. If you ever get it back it will be obsolete. You will also be tied up with legal stuff for a long time. That is the real message being sent here. The facts of the case don't matter.