Roughly a fortnight ago, MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom revealed that there were many government employees among the file sharing site's users. Dotcom said that, while investigating a way to provide users with access to files stored on MegaUpload's servers, they discovered a large number of Mega accounts from US Government officials including the Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate. However, when you add the number of accounts from members of the U.S. military, that 'large number' gets even larger.
According to TorrentFreak, the government accounts are not limited to the Senate, Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and NASA. Apparently roughly 15,600 members of the US Military were also using the service. Kim Dotcom told TorrentFreak from domains including af.mil, army.mil, centcom.mil, navy.mil and osd.mil etc, a total of 15,634 users are registered with Megaupload and a whopping 10,223 of them paid for premium accounts. All told, they have uploaded 340,983 files for a total of 96,507,779 MB.
If MegaUpload is unsuccessful in its bid to allow users access to their files, those files (a little over 94,000 GB) could all be deleted and lost forever. The site's legal representation is working to give users access, but, at the same time, the hosting company storing it all is itching to be free from the $9000/day it's costing to hold onto the data and others, such as the MPAA, want the data retained for future suits. In short, no one knows what's happening to their data, 15,600 members of the military among them.
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