If you rent an apartment, even though you don't own the building, you have "rights of tenant in possession". Basically the apartment is "yours" and you have rights. If a search warrant is to be served to search your place, it gets served on YOU, not the owner of the buildng.
If you rent server space, like a rack in a datacenter, that space is "yours". So should the search warrant have been honored?
Generally speaking you aren't renting server space, you're renting server equipment i.e. the rack, hardware, power, networking, so I would imagine that would or at least could be the difference.
I read the article, they do say "colocation"; besides which, XO Communications does not rent servers as far as I know. So that seems to point that they were renting the physical space that their servers are in.
Would it make a difference if they were just renting a partial rack, or a full rack that goes all the way down to the floor and is enclosed? I don't know ...
Surely even then the rental contract would specify the equipment they rent, not the space - the data centre could move their rack to a different physical location at any time.
I will tell you that unless something is on fire in my rack, no one from Level3 will even touch anything - and even then they would hit the fire suppression button and leave the room. They do not touch anything in a customer rack. (I have two racks in a local facility owned by Level3).
The contract I signed, had a clause that said if they had to move me somewhere else, they would pay all costs of doing so. I don't know how standard a clause this is.
OK I simplified a little, but if there was ever any reason to move a rack and it could be done with zero downtime, the arguments against it are never going to be "but that's my space I rented".
I rent a furnished appartment, and while the company that owns it would never touch it without my permission, the contract is very specific about it being this building, they would never say "mind moving next door?" whereas with a rack in a data centre, not only does the contract not specify exactly where the rack is placed, it makes very little difference about it's exact location.
What are the US laws in regard to search and seizure of rented storage facilities? This seems like an interesting point on the continuum between an apartment and a data center rack.
If you rent an apartment, even though you don't own the building, you have "rights of tenant in possession". Basically the apartment is "yours" and you have rights. If a search warrant is to be served to search your place, it gets served on YOU, not the owner of the buildng.
If you rent server space, like a rack in a datacenter, that space is "yours". So should the search warrant have been honored?