Privacy - New York City Server

[portal9]

New York City is located in the U.S. and possibly
subject to U.S. laws.

Possibly search and seizure.

physical layer threats - preliminary and draft.
obviously area has LONG HISTORY including 9/11,
floods, etc.
floods - AT&T or other data center, near Canal Street.

Canal Street used to be a canal??
much of Wall Street area and other typical telephone company
buildings WHICH ARE THE PHYSICAL BASIS of the internet
is low lying and EASILY FLOODED.

electric outage by electric utility - Con Ed. plenty of public
reported outages. possibly some NOT reported.
very old equipment. Possibly poorly maintained according to
ratings.

simple check of veracity. ASCE rating in Popular Science is
D minus of America's Infrastructure.

Most of Wall Street and BIG BANKS data centers are NOT in
New York City. In Jersey, etc. Bear Sterns, now bankrupt
center may be located in Whippany, NJ. Plenty of cheap locations
in New Jersey or even Pennsylvania.

On search and seizure. Obviously, the fastmail account prefers NOT
to have encryption and should not be linked to any worldwide
'strange addresses.'

Scenario (see how many times). Alleged violations of law.
THERE ARE close to million laws in the U.S., with courts saying
some are contradictory. Never send any photos of children, including
your own! - child porn??

Easy to seize the physical equipment even apparently without a warrant. Is this true? Simply contact (at your risk) INDYMEDIA
anywhere in the world.

So, the fear is some ALLEGED violator using the e-mail and thus
ALL ACCOUNTS ARE FROZEN or subject to search or physical
equipment is held by authorities.

Split the mail.
Make it easy to automatically erase mail after certain date.
Avoid tracking IP address or keeping logs of IP.
jump up and down and touch your nose - this is fiction.
1st amendment and other legal insert here. other items.

general rule: please don't send any e-mail that EVER, EVER might
be embaressing. Laws are apparently not presently RETROACTIVE,
so those photos of children, your own children WHO LOVE YOU
will not be used against you.

Note: no claim of expert, nor lawyer, nor international lawyer, etc.






use of PGP and other authentication?

use of multi-factor authenticate including text message sent
to mobile devices.

extra expense of backup.

[JeffK]

portal9, it is not clear what you are trying to say. Could you please clarify your post, remebering to abide by the forum rules?

Jeff K.

[ChinaLamb]

This is a curious post. I agree with some parts, but am not sure what you are trying to accomplish. If you are looking for fastmail to adopt certain changes, I suggest you modify your approach a little. Still, you have some interesting points.

Originally Posted by portal9

New York City is located in the U.S. and possibly
subject to U.S. laws.

Yes, NY City is subject to US laws, as much as if the data centers were located in Australia, Canada, England, China, Iran, etc. the servers would be subject to the laws of those countries as well. The great thing about the US is that you have the most developed system of law in the world. Due process is very important.

You most likely will never have a problem unless you are intentionally involving yourself in illegal activity. You are assured the right to a fair trial if anything happens. This is very important as well.

Originally Posted by portal9

physical layer threats - preliminary and draft.
obviously area has LONG HISTORY including 9/11,
floods, etc.
floods - AT&T or other data center, near Canal Street.

There are risks with having data centers located anywhere. Locating in small towns offer other disadvantages.

I strongly suggest to any email user-if their data is important to them, they need to have their own redundant backups. This applies to any user of Gmail, Fastmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, COTSE, or any other email service. In the end, I never trust any one backup, no matter who is managing it. Even Microsoft had problems with backups as was evident in their "Sidekick" fiasco a few months back...

Originally Posted by portal9

Canal Street used to be a canal?? much of Wall Street area and other typical telephone company buildings WHICH ARE THE PHYSICAL BASIS of the internet is low lying and EASILY FLOODED.

Yes, for 10 years, from about 1800 to 1811, there was a canal that was dug to drain a pond... That pond has been gone for 200 years now. Searching for flooding on canal street does not result in any hits that deal with NYC, only Italy.

Though the name brings up a certain connotation, I doubt you have much to worry about.

Originally Posted by portal9

electric outage by electric utility - Con Ed. plenty of public
reported outages. possibly some NOT reported.
very old equipment. Possibly poorly maintained according to
ratings.

The data center has state of the art electricity with backup power. Pleanty of other large companies have their data there too and I can assure you that power backup is a major concern for them all. Being in New York, at such a server farm does have specific advantages in these areas.

In the event of a major power interruptrion, resumption of power to some place like New York takes prescidence to a small town in Pennsylvania.

Originally Posted by portal9

Most of Wall Street and BIG BANKS data centers are NOT in
New York City. In Jersey, etc. Bear Sterns, now bankrupt center may be located in Whippany, NJ. Plenty of cheap locations in New Jersey or even Pennsylvania.

Again, there are advantages and disadvantages to any location. You could have asked why they chose these locations, instead you just assumed you knew the best answer and began shooting arrows. Asking for the rationale for having the servers in that particular server farm may be a better way at engaging the issue in a positive manner.

That said, I don't think many users are particularly concerned where the server farm is, except that it has good access to fast internet pipes, as well as reliable power and maintenance. Being in New York, over a small town in PA offers the advantage that if anything fails, there are thousands of qualified technicans, and almost any server part is available at moments notice any time day or night.

Originally Posted by portal9

On search and seizure. Obviously, the fastmail account prefers NOT
to have encryption and should not be linked to any worldwide
'strange addresses.'

I am not sure what your comment means.

Originally Posted by portal9

Scenario (see how many times). Alleged violations of law.
THERE ARE close to million laws in the U.S., with courts saying
some are contradictory. Never send any photos of children, including
your own! - child porn??

If another user is involved in something this sick and disgusting, I am sure that Fastmail would comply offering access to the relevant authorities to prove the individual's guilt. Anyone involved in such activities deserves their punnishment and more, in my opinion.

If it requires me to not have access to my own email for a week, just so that one child can be saved from such abuse, I would gladly sacrifice my email. But that's just me.

Originally Posted by portal9

Easy to seize the physical equipment even apparently without a warrant. Is this true? Simply contact (at your risk) INDYMEDIA anywhere in the world.

So, the fear is some ALLEGED violator using the e-mail and thus ALL ACCOUNTS ARE FROZEN or subject to search or physical equipment is held by authorities.

I am not an expert on the situation, however a quick read of Wikipedia reveals that the issue is not so simple. It also appears that several world governments participated in the issue, and that warrents were apparently issued through italy? But I am not an expert on it... Here is more information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indepen...rvers_seizures

Is there any case of a large for-profit email service that is is taken down by some government organization? That would probably draw better parallels than comparing with an independent news agency site.

Originally Posted by portal9

Split the mail.
Make it easy to automatically erase mail after certain date.
Avoid tracking IP address or keeping logs of IP.
jump up and down and touch your nose - this is fiction.
1st amendment and other legal insert here. other items.

Remember, deleting email to cover up a crime is also a crime, and punnishable by prison time.

Originally Posted by portal9

general rule: please don't send any e-mail that EVER, EVER might
be embaressing.

Good rule. Anyone who has ever written an email in haste has probably learned their lesson.

Originally Posted by portal9

use of PGP and other authentication?

use of multi-factor authenticate including text message sent
to mobile devices.

extra expense of backup.

You can presently use some types of the text message authentication to your mobile phone, if you desire. It does not override your master password though. Still it is a step in the right direction.

I personally wish that Fastmail did not store passwords in Plain text. Still, I think that their current system of SSL authentication is adequate, if they were only to solve their password storage system....

[qwertz123456]

VOTE: Encryption for FM! Privacy is NOT a crime!