I left open a proxy by mistake on an ovh server years ago, for 4 days. People found it and used it for fraud.
A few months later, all my personal gmail account are seized and I reveive an email (that I could read after changing my password) from a police department in god fuck knows where middle of nowhere countryside asking me for data on the proxy usage.
Sadly I had revoked the server subscription since I didnt need it anymore (and probably hadnt kept any logs anyway since I was just playing aroud with a server) but I really really wanted to help.
I mean, it s rare the police would call you for a legitimate usage and political suppression. They call you for fraud with damage and it s awful being responsible in small part but unable to help... I was not mad they read all my emails, I was sorry someone lost money because of my mistake.
Getting a reputation for handing customer data over to the government without a fight seems like the sort of thing that would damage a hosting company.
It’s probably better than you think. You’ll need a competent lawyer but beyond that you’ll depend on the court system, which attempts to put you and the government on equal footing.
Depending on the legal issue at stake, it might also be possible to access additional legal expertise pro bono, or through an organization like the ACLU.
What guarantee do you have that Amazon will delete it when you tell them to, though? It doesn't even necessarily come down to whether you trust Amazon ethically and legally, but also whether you trust their internal processes.
Shredding the data on your own hard drive gives you a pretty good guarantee. Drilling a big gaping hole through it afterwards gives you an even better one.
Sure, but my ability to stop them is probably substantially smaller than, say, Amazon’s legal departments capabilities.