
According to
MSNBC, up to 50 million Megaupload users could lose their data by Thursday. They haven't been able to access their data since surprise US government raids early this month. None of these users has been charged with any crime. This continues the US trend towards expanded use of
forfeiture laws to arbitrarily seize and/or destroy private property without due process. The US Constitution's
5th Amendment states
"No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty or property without due process or law; nor shall private property be taken... without just compensation." The situation raises questions both about the reliability of cloud services for data storage and the
end of due process in the United States.
Member since:
2005-12-02
People would not be able to backup that much data to the cloud anyway. Not only is the time required well beyond what anyone would wait for, which would take weeks, but also the monthly bandwidth alotments by some ISP's. For example, Comcast customers are limited to a total of 250GB per month transfer, or lose internet access for a minimum of 6 months. That limitation alone says the cloud is not the place to store a backup of your machine, let alone the privacy issues involved.