The authorities apparently got tired of asking and just went in themselves.
Canada-based Windscribe, a VPN provider, just said that one of its European servers has been allegedly seized by Dutch authorities without a warrant. According to the company’s post on X, law enforcement said that they will return it to the service provider after they “fully analyze it.” It’s unclear why law enforcement impounded just a single rack from Windscribe’s cabinet, but the VPN provider said that it only uses RAM disk servers, meaning anyone who would look through the installed SSDs would only find a stock Ubuntu install on it, so the servers shouldn’t hold any trackable data.
You really can make it illegal if there’s the political will to do so, but it’s a hot potato, so the likelihood of of the practice being formally reigned in is unlikely. You make fruit of the poisonous tree absolute and create laws that make illegal search or seizure kill investigations without the possibility of future charges for a given criminal act.
Obviously that would also have practical drawbacks as well, but it is certainly legally possible.