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Hosting Provider Shut Down By FBI
An Anonymous Reader writes: "An 80-strong U.S. FBI agents raided the Texas-based host of Arabic Web sites, including that of the Arab world's leading independent news channel, prompting charges on Thursday of an 'anti-Muslim witchhunt.'" The Reuters story is at Yahoo! as well. Did you know there was a North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force, or that it would be shutting down ISPs?
In other words:
This article: Troll=1, misinformation=1, TypicalSlashdot=2
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I have heard of this Arab newstation before. I saw a story about it on american television, I forget which channel.. perhaps BBC-america.
:(
The arab governments have fears that it may bring democracy.. well, not all of them. The newstation is located in Jordan. The prime-minister of Jordan, on this television documentary I watched admitted that the coming of democracy would be good and supported the efforts of this news station.
I can not see how their website was breaking American law, although they may have been breaking laws in other countries.. which shouldn't matter if it is hosted in the USA. The most the Arab countries should be able to do, imho, is to arrest the runners of this newstation.
Of course, the Arab government are afraid to do anything because they would be making martyrs of the procecuted.. I guess that is why they had the USA do the dirty work for them
This is the first direct sign that the USA is turning it's heels on democracy. This is the first time that the USA has tried to dissolve protesters cries of their corrupt, non-democratic government.
If it were a jewish ISP being shut down then this would be all over the news.
Starting up on another server is not nearly the same as "coming back online, fair and square".
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Well, this is an interesting situation:
We have the FBI, who I don't trust.
We have the Arabic news sources, who I also don't trust.
The FBI is denying any kind of bias whatsoever, and that the investigation is totally unrelated to terrorist concerns, anti-palestinian, anti-muslim, or anti anything else.
Still, until we have any better information (which I'm looking forward to) this amounts to a very short period of Government sponsored hacktivism (okay, it's arguable how much hacktivism is involved when the G-men come in and take you offline, but it's the same result as geeks taking down opressors and terrorists sites on the other side of the world.)
Where's the "-1: Self-Indulgent Posing" option?
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The talk of *BIAS* is ridiculous spincasting by the media and by people that like to constantly complain about persecution. The FBI serves warrants and searches businesses all the time. That's part of their job, like it or not. They don't sit around a water cooler and say "Let's go raid some Moslem businesses this week...that'd be a hoot. We don't like Moslems."
Come on - that's just stupid. They're working an investigation and this is where it brought them. There are NO details in either article...just journalists looking for a story they can blow out of proportion. If it had been a warehouse where large quantities of twine is stored by a couple of surly old kansas natives it wouldn't have even made the news. No FUD value. That kind of thing happens every week.
-Rothfuss
Frankly, this doesn't surprise me. George W. Bush and his administration have no problem with you being a different skin color, economic/social class, sexual orientation, etc. as long as you act like them. I'm not saying the Dems are better, but at least there's some indicator from them that you don't have to goosestep to their march exactly the way the Republicans do...
I'm seriously thinking of moving to Canada until the Shrub presidency is over if this type of action is going to become commonplace. I definitely don't want to raise my children (who will be European/Filipino) in an environment that the Bush Clan seems to think ideal if that environment means silencing dissent and allowing banks to close accounts based on religious views...
The Hindu Unity website incident is a very different situation. The site had some strong anti-Muslim views, particularly towards Muslims in India. Stuff that could be interpereted as a call for violence against Muslims in India (the current home page has a cartoon of Muslims stabbing to death a Hindu mother). And people complained to the ISP, who told the organization to take their business elsewhere. Here is an article.
The case of the ISP in Texas involves the government shutting down, albeit temporarily and as an incidental consequence of searching for evidence, lots of websites without explanation, only a sealed warrant. This includes one of the most prominent sites news of the middle east that is not controlled by a government of the region.
People get up in arms about controversial websites, like porn sites, hate sites, spammer sites, radical anti-abortion sites, etc, all the time. And sometimes, complaints to the ISP are effective in forcing the site to move to an ISP that is less concerned about complaints from the public. That isn't really news.
The government shutting down 500 mostly arab-related websites without explanation should be considered more newsworthy.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
For all kinds of great info on this topic, read The Hacker Crackdown, by Bruce Sterling. The entire text is available on the web all sorts of places. Like here, for instance. It's an excellent book.
Jeez, you even appear to have read the article, and you're still uninformed. The news agencies were not raided - their hosting provider was. A hosting provider that hosts hundreds of customers, including the arab news agencies mentioned... The warrant was sealed, meaning the press doesn't get told who the target of the search was, so the media tied the FBI angle to the arab news agency and let all the lemmings jump to wild conclusions....
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?