You may have seen the headlines going around: ” Drug charges dropped because of too much evidence “ or ” Charges dropped against fugitive doctor, because evidence is using too much space on federal servers .” It may sound incredible, but it’s—at least partially—true. The DEA might really be that crunched for space, with only a 40 terabyte storage system—smaller than a few projects managed by  Ars Technica readers . Ars tracked down the original motion to drop the case against Armand Angulo, a doctor living in Iowa who had illegally sold millions of dollars worth of prescription medication online. The DEA started its investigation in 2003, and indicted Angulo and about two dozen other accomplices in 2007. Problem was, Angulo fled the country to his native Panama in 2004, and Panama has been uncooperative in extraditing Angulo to the US. In the 5 years since Angulo’s indictment, the DEA amassed, “two terabytes of electronic data (which consume approximately 5 percent of DEA’s world-wide electronic storage capacity), several hundred boxes of paper documents, and dozens of computers, servers, and other bulky evidence

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Drug Enforcement Administration only has 40 TB of electronic storage worldwide