The United States government performed a search and seizure last year on the Megaupload US hosting facility. Over 1100 servers were taken in the U.S. raid; however, 32 of Megaupload’s servers were housed in Canada at the Equinox datacenter. The U.S. government was unable to immediately seize the servers in the Canadian facility.
Megaupload Claims the Servers Are Irrelevant
The U.S. government was seeking evidence for a lawsuit against Megaupload, when it requested the remaining 32 servers from the Canadian government. The U.S. has suspicion to believe that the servers in Canada hold data that is critical to the success of their case. Megaupload contends that the servers should be inadmissible, because they were only used to house information irrelevant to the U.S. government’s case.
The court in Ontario, where the hearings took place, sided with Megaupload and declined the request to move the servers to the U.S., without first reviewing the contents of the servers themselves. An independent forensic server specialist will review the servers’ contents, before a determination to ship the servers to the U.S. or not is made.
Megaupload Views This as a Victory
Megaupload claims the servers contain the private information of private citizens, and that it would be a violation of these citizens’ privacy rights, if the U.S. government were to gain access to the information on the servers. Megaupload hopes that Canada’s refusal to send the servers will force the U.S. government to be more considerate of its citizens’ privacy rights in the future.
