This issue is not at all about child pornography, or any kind of pornography for that matter, nor about the very different area of international banking, which has its own regulations and hot buttons. In those much higher priority areas there are many active prosecutions worldwide, and the foreign countries are often not at all sympathetic, especially with child exploitation.
The specific point here was about locating servers for escorts, agencies, and directories in a nearby country where escorting is fully legal, and the US is considered backwards for its puritanical laws, for example Canada, or virtually any place except Ireland and inside the Vatican.
The question is whether an agency is better off with its servers, database, and information safely out of reach in for instance Toronto or Vancouver, or sitting in the agency's office in, say, Tampa, all boxed up for the friendly Baptist Gestapo.
The question answers itself. Duh!
Servers are big pieces of evidence that prosecutors consider almost essential to making a major case. They come in unannounced with search warrants. Servers, computers, all records & documents are at the top of the list, right up there with donuts.
Escorts and agencies simply have no reason or duty to make it easy for prosecutors to charge and convict them, and to expose every person in the database. Is that what you want? No thanks.
That is what LE would like, and you - nonposter of reviews - seem awfully willing to help the sheriffs get evidence.
I have received numerous e-mails from experienced lawyers, law professors, and hobbyists praising the idea of offshore hosting, including persons who were busted and their servers confiscated.
Yours is the sole opposition. I wonder why?
Hosting in Canada is wise anyhow because of lower costs and the exchange rate. It's similar to taking advantage of NAFTA for manufacturing or other services that can be performed more cheaply abroad.
Judges and LE get annoyed too when people refuse to incriminate themselves and give up all of the evidence against them.
That is no reason to hand over evidence to them. It would be truly dumb. They already were pissed off enough to prosecute, and making it easy for them is counterproductive and unethical.
I checked out your website www.xxxlaw.net. The lawyers advising on this offshore project, however, have much more federal white collar criminal defense experience and better qualifications by far, thank you.
Most importantly, however, the logical reasons for having a server in a friendly different country far outweigh any supposed advantage of handing the server over to LE.
You've certainly offered no intelligent strategic analysis to the contrary. I'm not quite sure where you are coming from, but I'll not go there. You did post exactly what LE would want on the subject.
I have to conclude it is you who is dead wrong, or missed the point, or maybe you don't know enough about defending major criminal charges to have any clue of what you are talking about.
-- Modified on 6/24/2002 10:05:42 PM
-- Modified on 6/25/2002 5:14:48 AM
-- Modified on 6/25/2002 8:43:09 AM
