Fortunately, from what we know about the case, that information is on the same servers that are alleged to have been hacked illegally by the FBI which would make their contents inadmissible and thus, a boom for DPR.
The Silk Road server in question, after all, was located not in the United States but in a data center near Reykjavik, Iceland. And though Ulbricht is an American citizen, the prosecutors argue that the server’s location abroad made it fair game for remote intrusion. “Because the SR Server was located outside the United States, the Fourth Amendment would not have required a warrant to search the server, whether for its IP address or otherwise,” the prosecution’s filing reads.
In a footnote, the memo adds another strike against Ulbricht’s Fourth Amendment protections: The Silk Road was not only hosted in a foreign data center, but also rented from a third-party web hosting service. And because Ulbricht allegedly violated the company’s terms of service by using its computers to deal in narcotics and other contraband, that company was exempted from any obligation to protect his privacy.
Finally, prosecutors argue that for the 30-year-old Texan to claim privacy protections for Silk Road’s server, he would have to declare that it belonged to him—a tricky Catch-22. Ulbricht hasn’t claimed personal possession of that computer’s data, as doing so would almost certainly incriminate him. But because he hasn’t he can’t claim that his privacy was violated when it was searched, according to the prosecutor’s reasoning. “Because Ulbricht has not submitted any affidavit alleging that he had any possessory interest in the SR Server—let alone one that would give him a reasonable expectation of privacy—his motion should be denied,” reads the prosecutors’ filing.
Or maybe the decision by a US Magistrate Court which said private information is fair game, even if its located on servers in other countries, given a valid search warrant. Considering federal agencies tend to get a lot of leeway in such cases in regards to what exactly is contained in the warrant, and what they're searching for. So even if they had or needed a valid warrant, it's still within the governments authority to seize the data:
In a detailed ruling on Friday, US Magistrate Judge James Francis said that US companies, including Microsoft and Google, must turn over private information when served with a valid search warrant from US law enforcement agencies.
"Even when applied to information that is stored in servers abroad, an SCA warrant does not violate the presumption against extraterritorial application of American law," he concluded.
I don't think this matter has been settled enough to call it "debunked." From Wired: "Whether Judge Forrest, who’s presiding over Ulbricht’s case, takes a similar view will only become clear in the coming weeks."
> Or maybe the decision by a US Magistrate Court which said private information is fair game, even if its located on servers in other countries, given a valid search warrant.
Sounds irrelevant to me -- isn't it part of the argument here, that the agents did not have a warrant to search the Icelandic server?
