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?

Comments

Re:They were *NOT* shut down.

[quintessent]

In other words:

This article: Troll=1, misinformation=1, TypicalSlashdot=2

Re:They were *NOT* shut down.

[Patrick13]

Actually, I think that if you read the Yahoo article carefully, it says

"...many of the sites were able to start up again on other servers, while the task force continued to copy computerized information on Thursday. The office remained sealed off by FBI agents."

Starting up on another server is not nearly the same as "coming back online, fair and square".

FBI claims no bias

[firewort]

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.)

Re:What's good for the goose is good for the gande

[Steve B]

I expect this will be modded down to about -200 in a few minutes...interesting how the truth can do that.

Where's the "-1: Self-Indulgent Posing" option?

What amazes me...

[gamgee5273]

...is that the Muslim community in this country actively supported George W. Bush in the presidental campaign because they were scared of Gore's choice of Lieberman. However, when you look at the record and the campaign statements, Bush continually expressed views that were anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian, while both Gore and Lieberman were clearly on the side of following Clinton's aggressive stance on helping the peace agreement. And they're surprised that the FBI, under an Attorney General who holds some really antiquated political views, have taken these actions.

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...

Some big differences

[L-Train8]

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.

The Hacker Crackdown

[sammy baby]

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.

Re:Can you say 'Freedom of Press'?

[djrogers]

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....