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Just a tangential thought, but I can't imagine seizing Australian assets based in the US would make for a particularly comfortable diplomatic position to be in

Just a tangential thought, but I can't imagine seizing Australian assets based in the US would make for a particularly comfortable diplomatic position to be in (although I suspect our current government doesn't care). To say nothing about the fact that we've already shown our hand (and upset most of our allies) by way of the Manning leaks, the Assange manhunt brought about largely by US political pressure, and, more recently, the NSA scandal. I've mentioned it elsewhere but it's worth repeating here. Finding established case law dealing with foreign assets seized (possibly illegally) on US soil and the repercussions would make for an interesting exercise. I feel like there's one instance in particular that was especially noisome that happened recently, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. If you don't mind my asking, what contingencies do you have in place in the event of a seizure of hardware assets? It's unlikely, but the FBI has been known to take anything that vaguely looks like a server...

robn_fastmail 13y ago
We currently have a complete copy of all user data in a secondary (non-US) data centre. In the event of a loss of our US-based servers, we would get this secondary copy up and running as quick as possible (likely in a reduced capacity) while sourcing new equipment and getting a new primary centre up as quickly as possible. This would be a catastrophic event, no doubt about it, and there would be significant disruption for our users. But it wouldn't mean the end of FastMail.
- brongondwana 13y ago
  We also have a second (1-2 week old at this point) backup set of most users' data sitting in boxes on my loungeroom floor. Encrypted of course. It came back in my suitcases from New York a week ago. Bootstrapping from that would be significantly more painful though, and a lot more "gappy".
PeterisP 13y ago
NSA eagerness to intercept personal emails of Brazilian president and EU citizens shows that noone cares about comfortable diplomatic positions, they'd just do it anyways.

robn_fastmail 13y ago

We currently have a complete copy of all user data in a secondary (non-US) data centre. In the event of a loss of our US-based servers, we would get this secondary copy up and running as quick as possible (likely in a reduced capacity) while sourcing new equipment and getting a new primary centre up as quickly as possible. This would be a catastrophic event, no doubt about it, and there would be significant disruption for our users. But it wouldn't mean the end of FastMail.

brongondwana 13y ago
We also have a second (1-2 week old at this point) backup set of most users' data sitting in boxes on my loungeroom floor. Encrypted of course. It came back in my suitcases from New York a week ago. Bootstrapping from that would be significantly more painful though, and a lot more "gappy".

PeterisP 13y ago

NSA eagerness to intercept personal emails of Brazilian president and EU citizens shows that noone cares about comfortable diplomatic positions, they'd just do it anyways.