FBI Ordered to Copy 150TB of Seized Megaupload Data

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Anyone got a few floppies laying around? The FBI is going to need them. :D

The US government has been ordered by a New Zealand High Court judge to immediately prepare to copy the 150 terabytes worth of data held on Megaupload servers seized by the FBI in order to turn it over to indicted founder Kim Dotcom. According to an affidavit by FBI agent Michael Postin, copying just 29 terabytes had taken the agency 10 days.
 
150 TB, holy wow... That's gonna take a good while.

At first glance, I read 150GB and I thought, that's quite a small and a easy feat. Guess I'm wrong :D
 
10 days to copy 29TB? I just copied 2TB last night in 3 hours...WTF are they using?

Copying to 32MB CF cards then copying those to floppy disks then copying that to 300MB IDE drives then to the final 1GB SD cards where they are permanently stored?

I mean, reallllllllly...TAX PAYERS MONEY HARD AT WORK AS ALWAYS! THANKS UNCLE SAM!
 
150TB.....lol. My at home little media server is 12TB, with only 9TB useable (3TB parity). Thats a lot of data to copy.

"Don't copy that...uh....4TB SATA hard drive!"
 
I'm surprised the MPAA/RIAA haven't filed suit claiming that governments are colluding to make another copy of their content.
 
No kidding. Has the FBI been granted permission by copyright holders to make a copy of this data and provide it to Dotcom? How many counts of copyright infringement is this, exactly? If I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure it's a-fuckin'-lot.
 
Didn't the fbi say it already copied it once? Doing it a second time shouldn't be that hard.
But for reals all they need is to use the chinese harddrive that was on the front page the other day problem solved.
 
10 days to copy 29TB? I just copied 2TB last night in 3 hours...WTF are they using?

Copying to 32MB CF cards then copying those to floppy disks then copying that to 300MB IDE drives then to the final 1GB SD cards where they are permanently stored?

I mean, reallllllllly...TAX PAYERS MONEY HARD AT WORK AS ALWAYS! THANKS UNCLE SAM!

They probably have no way of rebuilding the server that held the data, so they are just decrypting and pulling direct from the drives.
 
Probably took that long because they're unregisterd users and have to wait each time before they download :D
 
They probably have no way of rebuilding the server that held the data, so they are just decrypting and pulling direct from the drives.

This.

Just because the data is there doesn't mean the FBI can snag it like your home hard drive.

Server drives often run software/hardware raids and can be a real bitch to rebuild. I'm actually surprised it isn't taking them longer.
 
It's also about data integrity; they don't want to fuck anything up. It's kind of like burning data to a disc - you can do it quick, or you can run the burn at a slow speed to ensure the data is good.
 
it took 'em that long 'cuz they were "examining/watching it"

FBI agents are humans after all
 
Damn, that's a lotta warez!

(and, of course, perfectly legitimate data as well ;))
 
uhh how can the New Zealand courts order the US to do anything

Order is an overstatement. Ask nicely, and the US complies to keep up a good relationship for the next time they need some random extradition out of NZ.
 
I've uploaded family photos to share with other on MediaFire. But before I uploaded the files I encrypted the WinRAR file. Seems kind of stupid to put out information that is attached to you without any kind of security. Sure my passwords weren't the toughest but at least they have one.
 
uhh how can the New Zealand courts order the US to do anything

International treaties, thats how. Contrary to popular belief, we still do have the rule of law here in this country, and that includes living up to our obligations to other friendly countries.
 
I'm guessing this is a discovery win? Defense has a right to see/examine evidence against them. I'm guessing similar laws exist in NZ.

In this case, I hope the defense does every little trick to make this as inconvenient to the US government as possible.
 
My personal opinion is that the FBI should just hand over the drives that MegaUpload's data are on. They should not be able keep what is not theirs.
 
I'm guessing this is a discovery win? Defense has a right to see/examine evidence against them. I'm guessing similar laws exist in NZ.

In this case, I hope the defense does every little trick to make this as inconvenient to the US government as possible.

Yep I hope so too.

This case is completely BS. A country should not be able to attack another country's business just because they think that business is against their interests. I just hope that in the end, Dotcom wins.
 
10 days to copy 29TB? I just copied 2TB last night in 3 hours...WTF are they using?

A few big files would be a fast copy, but considering the near infinite quantity of small files in all of that data would take far longer to copy due to seek-time, the file system, and latency overhead of the drives the data is being copied to.
 
Am I the only person who thinks that the existence of this Megaupload service was wrong. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against those who download stuff without paying for it. My issue is; that when money is exchanged for distributing someone’s property, then the owner of that property should get a share.:mad:
 
Am I the only person who thinks that the existence of this Megaupload service was wrong. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against those who download stuff without paying for it. My issue is; that when money is exchanged for distributing someone’s property, then the owner of that property should get a share.:mad:

Depends on the license agreement, but I do agree with you.
 
Anyone heard what the stats are on how much data in total was actually hosted at Megaupload? Surely MUCH more than 150TB.

I mean, come on. LOL
 
Or a shit-ton?

Jurassic%2BPark%2B20.jpg
 
150TB is very modest considering today's data storage. Heck, I have more than that at home for professional photo storage (no, not porn, really!). I was expecting MegaUpload to have way more than that, maybe in a petabyte realm or more. Copying 29TB in 10 days is really weaksauce, even if they do data verification, redundancy, storage, etc.
 
150TB of space is a lot for internet space though. It's easy to setup large arrays at home, not so much on the internet, because it cost so much more money to lease server space and bandwidth is much more limited than at home when you got gigabit links to everything and unlimited bandwidth allocation.

I have maybe 500GB of space on my online server, using maybe 100GB. Would take me a week to download all that if I had to. Months if I had to upload that much.

I'm guessing lot of the files on megaupload were things like <1MB documents, then maybe <100MB multimedia, and the occasional 1GB+ file such as a movie.

But yeah I would imagine the FBI would have the ability to move that data WAY faster. Guess it's limited by the Megaupload drives themselves (guessing that's what they have on hand) and not their own systems though. I would have figured they had already copied everything to their own servers by now though. If I was in their shoes and I had confiscated someone's data the first thing I'd want to do is copy it to my own storage device so I can store the original in a locked location as a backup.
 
little does everyone know, the FBI agents already made 150TB backups of the pron for "work at home - inspection" and are just now making the backup for NZ.
 
uhh how can the New Zealand courts order the US to do anything

Kim Dotcom is in New Zealand. US wants Kim Dotcom to be extradited. New Zealand court decides if he can be extradited or not. New Zealand court can ask for anything relevant to the case from the other side wanting him, and that is FBI (US).
 
Am I the only person who thinks that the existence of this Megaupload service was wrong. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against those who download stuff without paying for it. My issue is; that when money is exchanged for distributing someone’s property, then the owner of that property should get a share.:mad:

So following this logic, when the CD/DVD/BR media for the latest music/movie is made in China, you expect following companies to pay for distributing someone's property :
1) transportation company delivering the goods from the manufacturing plant to the shipyard in China.
2) transportation company which takes the goods in containers on ships from China to US.
3) transportation company delivering the goods from US shipyard to distribution center(s)
4) transportation company delivering the goods to sellers
5) if the item is sold through eshop, then USPS/UPS/Fedex/DHL/... should pay too.

Because saying Megaupload should pay for the illegal content users uploaded is equal to this logic of distribution (transportation) fees paid by transportation companies.

Money was not exchanged for "distributing someone's property". You paid for a service which allowed you to upload and download files to your digital locker without any waiting. Or if you need an analogy - couriers are paid for taking something from point A to point B. It is up to you, an user of said service not to try send prohibited/hazardous items, and it is you, the user of that service who is responsible for the consequences if you do so.
 
I would not be surprised if they got one guy writing it to box(s) of DLT tapes. The .gov may have allot of resources, but they do allot of stuff backwards - which is why the spend an awful lot of money.
 
FBI must be using a godamn etch-a-sketch.. I did a complete system & data swap last year of just under 12 TB and it took me less then 12 hours... WTF GOV???
 
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