FBI Seizure of Mastodon Server is a Wakeup Call to Decentralized Platform Users and Hosts
"The Kolektiva raid should be an important alarm bell for everyone hosting decentralized content. Police raids and seizures can be difficult to predict, even when you’ve taken a lot of precautions."
- "Last May, Mastodon server Kolektiva.social was compromised when one of the server’s admins had their home raided by the FBI for unrelated charges. All of their electronics, including a backup of the instance database, were seized."
- "To make matters worse, it appears that the admin targeted in the raid was in the middle of maintenance work which left would-be-encrypted material on the server available in unencrypted form at the time of seizure."
- "Most users are unaware that, in general, once the government lawfully collects information, under various legal doctrines they can and do use it for investigating and prosecuting crimes that have nothing to do with the original purpose of the seizure."
- "It’s a chillingly familiar story which should serve as a reminder for the hosts, users, and developers of decentralized platforms: if you care about privacy, you have to do the work to protect it."
