> Although it's not clear if a removal from Dropbox servers could trigger a deletion into my own Dropbox. Perhaps someone at HN knows? Please advise..
Of course it's technically possible, and Dropbox could probably be compelled by one law or another to make it happen. The question isn't "could it happen", but "would it happen".
Dropbox could definitely tell the client that all the files are gone, but in that case you have a three-day local backup in the .dropbox.cache folder. This has all the files in flat storage, and there exist scripts to put them back at their original paths.
Dropbox is probably not capable of triggering an actual immediate deletion of anything, unless they left some kind of backdoor. But any app could theoretically have a backdoor.
Of course it's technically possible, and Dropbox could probably be compelled by one law or another to make it happen. The question isn't "could it happen", but "would it happen".