In recent weeks the battle has continued to save the data stored at the now-defunct site Megaupload. Contrary to the image painted by the entertainment industries, untold numbers of people used the file-hosting service for completely legitimate sharing. Today we can reveal that not only did people at the Senate, Department of Homeland Security, FBI and NASA hold Megaupload accounts, so did more than 15,600 members of the US Military.

Ever since Megaupload was dismantled in January there have been concerns about data being held on the site’s servers.

While the MPAA and RIAA insist that the site was simply a huge piracy hub, the facts point to a much bigger picture of people using the site for countless legitimate transfers of files simply too big to email.

As mentioned earlier this month, Megaupload’s legal team is working hard to reunite site users with their data, an aim also shared by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) with their MegaRetrieval campaign.

As part of this process, Megaupload discovered that a large number of Mega accounts are held by US government officials. Today, thanks to fresh information provided to TorrentFreak by Kim Dotcom, we can reveal more details.

From domains including dhs.gov, doe.gov, fbi.gov, hhs.gov, nasa.gov, senate.gov, treas.gov and uscourts.gov, the number of accounts held at Megaupload total 1058. Of these, 344 users went the extra mile and paid for premium access. Between them they uploaded 15,242 files – a total of 1,851,791 MB.

While a couple of million megabytes of lost data is bad enough, another group – the ladies and gentlemen of the US Military – stands to lose much, much more.

From domains including af.mil, army.mil, centcom.mil, navy.mil and osd.mil etc, a total of 15,634 are registered with Megaupload. Of these an impressive 10,223 people paid to upgrade to a premium Megaupload account and between them they uploaded 340,983 files – a total of 96,507,779 MB.

There is no suggestion that any of these military operatives or government employees were using Megaupload for infringing uses but it is almost guaranteed that documents, photographs and videos are now at serious risk of deletion.

More on Kim Dotcom’s response to the US indictment is published in our feature article.