Not a lawyer, but let’s say the cops were searching my house. If I threw the keys to my unbreakable safe out the window, such that they could never be found, I doubt a judge would care for the distinction. That the evidence exists but cannot be accessed is still going to find you in contempt.

If you haven't seen superpumped or read the book and are interested in Uber's story, it's worth a read/watch, though it's dramatized for tv.

I meant they have redefined the bar for crazy to be so high no one will ever cross it. They are the GOAT for crazy.

History is written by the winners sadly enough.

> if they lie to the state when filing taxes

In general this is not what they do. What they do is read the tax code carefully and structure their operations in such a way as to minimize taxes, e.g. because tax is paid on "profits" (revenues minus expenses) so they shift more expenses into jurisdictions with high tax rates etc., causing "profits" to go down in those jurisdictions and up somewhere else.

Then they don't pay any taxes in the jurisdictions with higher tax rates and politicians go on TV and complain about the companies following the laws that the politicians enacted. Because if they actually fixed the laws, the taxes would be paid based on the extent to which the company does business in that jurisdiction, and then companies could only avoid taxes by not doing business there (costing the country jobs) or, for taxes associated with local sales, by raising prices there. Neither of which the politicians actually want to do, so instead they pass laws that allow companies to avoid taxes and then complain about it when the companies do it.

The law was always there to step on the little man, the VIPs always had it easier. Stop thinking too much about it.

> They have databases...fancy filing cabinets. Just because the company is famous shouldn't preclude their filing cabinets from being searched (presuming legal processes are used and not abused).

That analogy doesn't work, because the "filing cabinets" are actually sitting somewhere else, possibly in another country/continent. It's not obvious that authorities in one country has authority over documents stored in another country.

I and many others think the government should have 0 business in my filing cabinet. That difference in world view might be what makes this topic more complex than you seem to think.

The real issue is that technology has rendered office raiding useless. People are welcome to explore alternatives.

The problem is deeper than that. When a physical space is raided, its scope is obvious. Digital spaces don't have that characteristic. There can always be hidden indexes.

Hard to see how a company can imagine it can do business in a country and not follow that country’s record keeping laws and be subject to criminal and civil statutes in that country.

If a company is doing business here, the actual location of file is irrelevant.

Also when the government is really motivated, he can arrested the founders or executives directly (Pavel Durov). Which is what they should do to Netflix execs if they are doing business illegally.