NYT article about exactly this situation[0]. Despite the generally technical competency of HN readership, I imagine there would be a lot of people who would find themselves completely fucked if this situation happened to them.
The tl;dr is that despite this man ultimately having his name cleared by the police after having his entire Google account history (not just cloud) searched as well his logs from a warrant served to ISP, Google closed his account when the alleged CSAM was detected and never reinstated it. He lost his emails, cloud pictures, phone number (which losing access to prevented the police from contacting him via phone), and more all while going through a gross, massive invasion of his privacy because he was trying to do right for his child during a time when face-to-face doctor appointments were difficult to come by.
This should be a particularly salient reminder to people to self-host at the very least the domain for their primary and professional e-mail.
The tl;dr is that despite this man ultimately having his name cleared by the police after having his entire Google account history (not just cloud) searched as well his logs from a warrant served to ISP, Google closed his account when the alleged CSAM was detected and never reinstated it. He lost his emails, cloud pictures, phone number (which losing access to prevented the police from contacting him via phone), and more all while going through a gross, massive invasion of his privacy because he was trying to do right for his child during a time when face-to-face doctor appointments were difficult to come by.
This should be a particularly salient reminder to people to self-host at the very least the domain for their primary and professional e-mail.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil...