Swedish law enforcement did an initial investigation. Applied for a warrant. Was granted a warrant. Then six officers from the national police arrived to serve the warrant.
In any country in the world with a functioning government they are not just going to walk away because someone said they don’t have the materials covered in the warrant.
> In any country in the world with a functioning government they are not just going to walk away because someone said they don’t have the materials covered in the warrant.
That's probably true, but entirely unrelated to what you claimed before.
You said this specifically, and none of that is permissive anywhere in Europe.
> They can tear your house apart. Seize your property. They can withdraw your blood by force if necessary. Micheal Jackson (rich, famous, and powerful) had his genitalia examined. They can certainly (and do) go in your office and take every single thing computer or data related if those devices may contain information relevant to the warrant.
They'll only be able to take what's specifically allowed according to the warrant, and if the warrant was worded to only include servers with storage mediums, and they don't have any, then nothing could be collected until the warrant was reissued. Which would likely be done pretty quickly.
> That's probably true, but entirely unrelated to what you claimed before.
I'm not seeing how but I don't think it matters.
> You said this specifically, and none of that is permissive anywhere in Europe.
Europe doesn't have crime? Europe doesn't have law enforcement that needs to assemble and collect evidence? Law enforcement in Europe doesn't have situations where the entirety of the situation and circumstances can't possibly be known and warrants need to be extremely (almost impossibly) specific?
Again, US centric but I point to the search warrant affidavit for a billionaire former US President[0]. Page 37 and 38 include language that (from what I've seen) is fairly typical. Statements like "any and all areas that may contain XYZ". "Any and all physical documents", etc.
The US and Europe generally are very different places and US governmental overreach, infringing on civil liberties, abuse of power, etc is a popular topic on HN (I don't disagree). However, the US isn't quite the dystopian Orwellian nightmare described on HN (yet).
It may be my US blinders but I don't understand an environment like the one you describe where a search warrant from government (law enforcement and an independent judicial branch) would be specific enough to include ambiguous terms like "servers". What is a "server", really? Even the technical crowd on HN would debate that ferociously.
I think HN is giving LE and government too much credit here. I have a friend in LE in the US at the federal level who deals with a lot of electronic, crypto, etc investigations and search warrants. He frequently tells me things like "then I have to sit down with the 60 year old lawyers/bureaucrats and get them to understand what a crypto tumbler is".
Again, possibly too US centric but Sweden or otherwise the process is clearly more similar that not:
1) There's an investigation.
2) LE puts together some justification for a warrant.
3) They apply for and get one (again - there's a low common denominator here because everyone through the chain up to and including a judge needs to understand what's described).
4) The get warrant.
5) They send out six police officers from the national police organization.
6) They arrive and someone (per Mullvad's statement) says "we don't have that". If there is a single computer on site (or potentially even storage media, etc) there's no way to establish the veracity of that statement (coming from a party that is clearly under criminal investigation) without performing a search of some kind or (more likely) seizing materials for review later.
7) Per Mullvad's statement LE didn't do anything and (incredulously) walked away without taking any action whatsoever.
I'm not saying what did or didn't happen, I'm saying what they're describing is pretty fantastical.
I think you're misunderstanding me. My only issue was with the quoted examples. I completely agree that the situation is pretty unbelievable and the warrant was likely very poorly worded if they were forced to leave without taking anything.
To me, the whole situation sounds more like a local government failure which mullvad successfully capitalized on.
Swedish law enforcement did an initial investigation. Applied for a warrant. Was granted a warrant. Then six officers from the national police arrived to serve the warrant.
In any country in the world with a functioning government they are not just going to walk away because someone said they don’t have the materials covered in the warrant.