Quote:
Originally Posted by rebusknebus
No one will be able to run the site if he gets busted. The main serverd/site is not in the USA,
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Hmmm. Geeky stuff follows.
The IP address for indys.com is:
nslookup indys.com
Server: 10.10.0.1
Address: 10.10.0.1#53
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: indys.com
Address: 67.227.183.94
The netblock that 67.227.183.94 sits in belongs to a hosting company called Liquid Web. That company has data centers in Michigan and Arizona. While it is possible that a server there then contacts another server 'out of the US' for data, that's not likely. And does not matter much, since the data still must pass over the server(s) at Liquid Web on the way to your web browser.
Since the site is now part of a 'pattern of corrupt activity' case, the contents of the site itself are potential evidence.
Posts to a bulletin board, even a private one, are not private in the sense of say, your mail, or the contents of a safe. They are considered public statements.
PMs are considered basically, a type of email. Emails themselves from a legal standpoint, have little privacy protection.
So unlike tapping your phone, or reading your mail, which needs a warrant, now that the site is potential evidence in a pattern of corrupt activity, a simple subpoena is all that is needed to legally access that data.
If the subpoena is served to Liquid Web directly, site owners would never know unless Liquid Web informed them. There are a number of issues that come into play when determining if Liquid Web has any legal obligation to do so. They may or may not.
While ham fisted cops have used subpoenas and warrants to just yank a server out of the rack, it is also possible to copy the server without stopping its operation, and the site owners would not know.
Whether or not information can be extracted from the copy depends on how securely the setup of server was done. But, knowing a bit about php-bb and databases, unless the entire server were encrypted, the data is easy to extract.
It's also simple to put a tap on the network, and get a copy of all data going in and out of the server.
Has this gotten big enough for that effort? Who knows?