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Too slow! FBI Shuts Down Hosting Service
Chope writes "If FBI agents showed up at your data center bearing a warrant, would you be able to provide them prompt access to customer data?
BZZZZT! I'm sorry, but you've taken too long to answer. We'll be confiscating all the hardware you use, er, used to use, to run your business. But we'll get it back to you 'real soon now.' Thank you for playing. CarrierHotels.com is carrying the story of a FBI raid on a web hosting company. When the hosting company didn't and/or couldn't provide the information the FBI was looking from its several terabytes of data within "several hours", the FBI decided it was more "efficient" to seize all the web servers and customer data as part of the FBI's investigation of a hacking incident."
someone had to say it..
and who says they abuse their power? (I wouldn't...)
Oh my, which one our corporate overlords were offended this time?
I'm sure there is more to the story than what we are hearing...
I wonder what the FBI was looking for.
The poor hosting company probably has ToS to live up to. This will ruin them.
If nothing is found, will they have any recourse against the FBI or are they screwed?
And what if you run your website on those servers for commercial use? Will the FBI refund the finanial damage you suffered (e.g. when you run a webshop or smthing)?
Ok, so it's faster to have to unplug all of the servers, carry them out of the building, put them on a truck, drive them several (dozens?) of miles, unload them from the truck, put them in a warehouse, re-plug them all in, and now have to datamine without the assistance of the people who operate the systems.
Was I abducted by aliens and brought to Bizarro world while I slept last night, or am I just missing something here?
Chris Knight is my hero.
or something like that? I wonder how their other clients feel?
If the FBI shoed up at my door... there would be a hell of an international incident as I live in Sweden (you insensitive clod!)
A little planning goes a long way...
I think this will not feel too good for the american public.
if CIT might have been uncooperative. This article is very one sided and if it was taking hours and they weren't seeing it get anywhere then there might have been a legitimate problem. I don't know if taking the servers was the best solution but if they did it then there must have been something going on.
Evolution or ID?
Aren't there rules on how the FBI can act in these situations?
I thought there actions could not significantly damage a company's business if that company wasn't the one under the kosh.
It's not the ISP's fault in this case and they are the ones getting screwed.
So the FBI took the machines and were able to copy and peruse all data on the system, not just the data the warrant was for. Welcome to 1984!
Trolling is a art,
Yeah, that's bullshit. I know people who run small isps and hosting environments, and if they suffered anything like that, the cost of downtime would probably put their business in serious trouble. Oh, and who do the customers complain to? Not the FBI, that's for sure! Unless someone's life was in danger, there's no need to hurt someone's business like that. Yeah, fuck a bunch of FBI. Let's just hope someone pees in their coffee.
Last year I found the a controller of the proxy that was installed on a NT workstation happened to be controlled out of the same data center that was shut down. That machine was telling the NT box to send out massive amounts of spam.
This is about the last data center on earth where script-kiddies can get free shell accounts.
This is a case were many servers got caught in the crossfire aginst the script kiddies and spamers.
Only if you welcome an eventual police state, not my choice.
I'll bet (IANAL) that have absolutely no obligation to compensate anyone for any financial damages. I would gues (not knowing who the company is) that all the people hosting with them signed an agreement to not hold them liable (hosting provider). And it's almost impossible to sue the FBI.
--Mike--
Nazis? - I hate Illinois Nazis
There has to be more to this story. From what the article says, the FBI just walked in and shut them down. While that might have happened this story seems to be extremely one sided and a little short on the detail.
Initially, I don't like the sound of it at all given that I host several domains and don't want the FBI coming in and taking all of my servers. But, we don't know what led up to the seizure....maybe it was a legitimate action? We shouldn't judge too harshly until we have all the information. I'm trying to play devil's advocate here.
"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it." -Albert Einstein
First their webserver farm gets seized by the FBI, then you post their story on /. ??? Give these guys a break!
I would be more worried about the fact that rather than being supplied with the data that they originally requested, they now potentially have the logs/records/recordings/information of all the transactions and customer records and IRC conversations ever hosted by this...
Will they delete the 'copied' data after they have finished, keeping only the information that they originally wanted, please this is v bad...
Thank God i dont live in the US
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
FBI Shutters Web Host
By Rich Miller
Carrier Hotels Editor
Posted Feb 19, 2004
If FBI agents showed up at your data center bearing a warrant, would you be able to provide them prompt access to customer data? How long would it take?
That's an important question in the wake of an FBI raid of Columbus, Ohio hosting company CIT Hosting last Saturday. Federal agents wound up shutting down the entire operation, seizing all the company's web servers and all customer data as part of its investigation of a hacking incident.
CIT Hosting, also known as FooNet, markets itself as "the leader in the IRC and DDoS protection business for the last 5 years." The company posted a web page informing customers that its data center was shut down, and instructing customers to contact the FBI if they needed access to their files.
"The FBI executed a search warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio regarding the IRC network that we host," the company said in its statement.
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a live chat system that allows users to create private discussion rooms. While IRC has a lengthy history of legitimate use, it is also a medium for discreet communication between hackers. CIT said the FBI was "investigating whether someone hosted on our network hacked and attacked someone else."
"After several hours of attempting to track down, inspect and audit the terabytes of data that we host, the FBI determined that it was more efficient (from their point of view) to remove all of our servers and transport them to the FBI local laboratories for inspection," the statement continued. "The FBI has assured us that as soon as the data has been safely copied and inspected, the equipment will be promptly returned. Unfortunately, the FBI has not been able to tell us when they will be completed with their inspection."
The seizure isn't standard procedure, and there's no way to know exactly what prompted it. CIT's account suggests the FBI may have lost patience with the process. The IRC-focused nature of CIT's business may also have been a factor.
But if you're a data center operator, you want to avoid any scenario in which the FBI gets impatient and starts hauling away your servers. Just one more item on the contingency planning checklist for the times in which we live.
Its worth reading this thread
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
IDNRADC (I do not run a data center), but don't let that stop me from making a completely unqualified comment ;) ....
Perhaps just as important, or more important, are you storing customer data that could/should be regularly deleted? Not that burning everything when the FBI shows up is the best option, but having a sensible scheme for what needs to be stored, and what would be better deleted and overwritten, seems to me to be important...
We lost our rights and our liberty a long time ago, when most of you bowed down before the war on drugs.
I'm slowly getting used to it. You should too.
Gosh, all of us guys that bowed down before the war on drugs are mighty glad you're so forgiving and stoic in the face of our failures. We will try, like you, to get used to the new tyranny, but I fear that we just haven't your courage in the face of adversity.
Anyway, thanks for the advice!
-- signed, The lowly yellow-bellies unworthy to stand in your shadow.
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.
That's peachy
In this day and age with the nations confidence in our government dropping lower than ever before, how can the FBI do something like this?
I mean obviously they were trying to cater to their customers and the FBI at the same time, but the FBI were impatient bastards and instead of working with the company, they've decided to ruin the companies business.
I would have loved to been one of the hosting customers that got their sites yanked as I would be all over the FBI like a fat kid on a cupcake.
As someone said in an earlier post, I'm now getting used to this kind of thing. After many people surrending our rights in the name of anti-war and anti-terrorist activities, this kind of thing is becoming a more common sight.
Those who trade in their freedom for security, deserve neither.
At least they were not about to publish "a handbook for computer crime".
Think twice before connecting that modem...
love slashdot. populate it. use it. abuse it. hate it. kill it. miss it. stop following links, they only kill servers.
Well, what if there was a credible threat made by terrorists through the hacking? Perhaps time is of the essence, and tracking the person down could bring down a terrorist cell.
G
There is an article here that tells that equipment is already being returned.
Evolution or ID?
From their site - don't forget to let the FBI know what you think! rwhite3@leo.gov
02/23/2004 CIT re-establishes service.
We have restored service at Equinix's Chicago Data Centers. We are in the same facilities as MSN and many fortune 500 companies. The facility has multi OC192 connections to the backbone.
The FBI has begun retuning equipment to CIT which is being shipped to our new facilities in Chicago.
At this time CIT will continue to provide dedicated DDOS Protected web hosting only.
CIT provides reliable and scalable solutions for customers of all sizes and services. Located in Equinix's Chicago Data Centers , CIT has access to all the major carriers without the need for local loop circuits.
Our Chicago staff is focused first and foremost on customer satisfaction, and will take every action necessary to accommodate each customer. Unlike many large ISPs, CIT prides itself in its ability to provide personalized service to each customer - if a customer calls twice for assistance, they can usually speak to the same representative. Our sales and support teams are allowed a great deal of flexibility to work together to resolve each customer's needs on an individual basis. Our success and rapid growth can be attributed to the satisfaction of our customers - word-of-mouth referrals account for a large portion of the new business we receive each month.
The IRC Network will remain down until further notice.
02/14/2004 FBI Confiscates all servers
Dear Customers of FOONET/CIT:
We regret to inform you that on Saturday February 14, 2004 at approximately 8:35 am EST, FOONET/CIT's data center in Columbus, Ohio temporarily ceased operations.
Here are the facts of what occurred:
The FBI executed a search warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio regarding the IRC network that we host. According to the warrant, it appears that the Bureau is investigating whether someone hosted on our network hacked and attacked someone else.
After several hours of attempting to track down, inspect and audit the terabytes of data that we host, the FBI determined that it was more efficient (from their point of view) to remove all of our servers and transport them to the FBI local laboratories for inspection. This was completed at 7:00 pm EST same day.
The FBI has assured us that as soon as the data has been safely copied and inspected, the equipment will be promptly returned. Unfortunately, the FBI has not been able to tell us when they will be completed with their inspection.
We have been told by the Special Agent in charge of the investigation that If you need access to your data you are asked to please contact the Bureau via email to rwhite3@leo.gov. Make sure to include in your email your name, mailing address, and telephone number with area code.
Since we wish to focus 100% of our efforts on restoring services, we would appreciate it very much if you do not attempt to contact us directly. Please rest assured that we are doing everything possible to restore service to you as quickly as possible.
To the many who have inquired, Paul and family are OK, although shaken by these events. They are at home and awaiting the blessed event of their new child's birth. We thank you for your good wishes and prayers.
Please check back here often. Through this site, we will keep you informed of ongoing developments as we know them.
Thanks again for your understanding.
Some one who has been spamming using my domain as fake from addresses - cdatlow.com, their payment processor is heavily involved in some sort of credit card fraud; when poking around, i noticed a mysql connection error, to a host in foonet.
I wonder if this sort of activity has anything to do with it...
Marked troll already. That's slashdot for you.
Anyway this incident illustrates why the citizentry needs to be active in government instead of reactionary and "woe is me" after the fact. The government isn't very good at self-disciplining. That's our job. An absentee citizentry breds the results you see. Get out and vote in 2004. Get involved in local and national politics. Stop being a wallflower.
What do you think the chances are that this has something to do with the microsoft source code leak?
In Soviet Russia Slashdot cliches use you
Is that if the FBI, ATF, *BI, or whoever seizes your property in the investigation of a crime, they are in no way liable for any damage that occurs to your property, if you can even consider it your property anymore, because, even if your property was deemed to have NOTHING to do with the crime being investigated, said above entities are not required to return your property. You have to SUE to get it back. Now how's that for some bullshit.
Time to move to home-based T3 and better hosting services. At least in that case, your stuff isn't all over somedumbguy.com's webserver and you don't have access to whoever thinks THEY should have access.
One of the 187.
Ironically, they were probably investigating a Denial Of Service.
someone was hosting a Dancing Bush site.
--
Billwashere
The only thing I find a bit odd about this whole thing is that it looks like they too the opportunity to relocate their data center to Chicago (it was previously in Cleveland). According to their news,
Wouldn't that unnecessarily delay the process of restoring service to their customers? Was the move already planned, or did they suddenly decide that they needed a different data center? Is it possible they're blowing the seize out of proportion in order to cover outages due to their move? Or did the seizure even actually happen?
...that 'the powers that be' are monitoring everything 'on the fly', if they need to get their hands on the physical data repository to check it out.
AT&ROFLMAO
My conclusion is simple. I will not use an US-American ISP.
my 0.02 $
Can/do they seize those too? How about when those backups are offsite? If it's the data you're worried about, those backups could save your business.
Besides, if their warrant only applied to that one physical address, you could forget to tell them about the redundant data, or you could simply tell them to get stuffed if it wasn't explicitly listed in their warrant (replacing the hardware they seized would be another matter entirely, but you'd at least have the data)
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
what about their reputation for having illegal or compromising people using thier service. That reputation alone may be worse than the downtime.
Evolution or ID?
Maybe it is as powerful as the Slashdot raid.
love slashdot. populate it. use it. abuse it. hate it. kill it. miss it. stop following links, they only kill servers.
Doug Moen
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
- a suitable network, with configured routers, auth./DNS servers...
- logins/passwords for the servers
- knowledge, and not only general tech but specific setup of that company servers
I prefer to read (between the lines) that they wanted something to be stopped, and eventually an occasion to get the information on the long term (weeks at least) on who/where it isThe strange part, for a European citizen like me, is that no reason at all is given. Normally (in democratic/free world), an investigation means a judge, some reasons, some rule brake, some arguments on why the police is acting.
I hope that with these new laws in Europe we are not going to become like that too soon
ClaudeBBG
... slashdot alerts carrierhotels.com that they have 1 minute to prepare for slashdoti.... oops, times up!
Arcticle text:
FBI Shutters Web Host
By Rich Miller
Carrier Hotels Editor
Posted Feb 19, 2004
Print This Story
If FBI agents showed up at your data center bearing a warrant, would you be able to provide them prompt access to customer data? How long would it take?
That's an important question in the wake of an FBI raid of Columbus, Ohio hosting company CIT Hosting last Saturday. Federal agents wound up shutting down the entire operation, seizing all the company's web servers and all customer data as part of its investigation of a hacking incident.
CIT Hosting, also known as FooNet, markets itself as "the leader in the IRC and DDoS protection business for the last 5 years." The company posted a web page informing customers that its data center was shut down, and instructing customers to contact the FBI if they needed access to their files.
"The FBI executed a search warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio regarding the IRC network that we host," the company said in its statement.
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a live chat system that allows users to create private discussion rooms. While IRC has a lengthy history of legitimate use, it is also a medium for discreet communication between hackers. CIT said the FBI was "investigating whether someone hosted on our network hacked and attacked someone else."
"After several hours of attempting to track down, inspect and audit the terabytes of data that we host, the FBI determined that it was more efficient (from their point of view) to remove all of our servers and transport them to the FBI local laboratories for inspection," the statement continued. "The FBI has assured us that as soon as the data has been safely copied and inspected, the equipment will be promptly returned. Unfortunately, the FBI has not been able to tell us when they will be completed with their inspection."
The seizure isn't standard procedure, and there's no way to know exactly what prompted it. CIT's account suggests the FBI may have lost patience with the process. The IRC-focused nature of CIT's business may also have been a factor.
But if you're a data center operator, you want to avoid any scenario in which the FBI gets impatient and starts hauling away your servers. Just one more item on the contingency planning checklist for the times in which we live.
"It's the smell! If there is such a thing." Agent Smith - The Matrix
well this proves you aren't free, and attacking defenceless countries isn't exactly brave, either.
How's about "land of the previously free and home of the international bully?"
Save the poor server and use the less-bandwidth-print-version.
Thank you.
Troll, noone on Slashdot encourages DDoSes, except ACs. Like Slashdot wants to encorage behavior that sheds negative light on OSS.
And why would the FBI doing a DoS be any different?
Anyone besides me struck by the irony that the news site for the Data Center Industry is significantly slashdotted? One would think that Data Center professionals would be a little more ready to handle the traffic than the average site that gets slashdotted.
"The simplest solution is to ignore your dead children."
We, my comrades, live in dangerous times. It is not the threat of "terrorism," for terrorists do not want to take away our liberty (directly). No, it is the threat of the United States Government. The treat is posed militarily to those outside her boarders, and by gross incroachments on fundimental constitutional rights and liberties against those within her boarders. The 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution is as follows:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
So I say to you: is this not a blatant violation of the US Constitution? The warrent did not say to take the servers, did it? And where are the warrents of TSA people at the airports? where is their probably cause? where are OUR GODGIVEN, CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED freedoms?
Customer data shan't be too difficult to retrieve, shall they?
I'm surprised that there hasn't been any discussion of Magic Lantern for awhile...
Wether you find this acceptable depends I guess on wether you find it acceptable that the police can investigate crimes beyond posting a little poster asking criminals to please come to the station and answer their questions and to bring in any evidence on their own.
Normal search warrants on an office mean that the FBI and police storm the building and everyone inside is ordered to stop doing anything. No more accessing PC's no shredding of documents no phone calls no nothing. The reason is simple to prevent evidence from being destroyed.
I am frankly amazed that they even allowed the company to provide the info this shows that they probably don't suspect the company but rather that they hope to find evidence against someone else on their systems.
There was a rather nasty ddos attack on mircx and aniverse. The FBI seems to be investigating wether the IRC network hosted by this company was used in the attack. There seems to be a lot of hints as to the person who was behind the attack but sadly in america you need that silly evidence stuff (at least for use against americans).
So the FBI asked and got a search warrant. They then gave the company time to hand over the data but they couldn't. So the FBI used the law and did what we expect them to do. Secure any evidence by removing access to it. They are even giving the hardware back. They waited wich they don't have to and give the hardware back after copying data wich they don't have to do. Frankly I think they went way beyond what they needed to do to minimize damage.
Quit frankly the original poster seems to be one of those people that want the police to disappear. That line about wich coorperate master they offended is clear bullshit. mircx and aniverse are hardly the powers that be.
In any society that doesn't chose to be an anarchy you have to give some powers to the police to investigate crimes. Search warrants are pretty common in all democracys and also work pretty much the same way. If you get one it sucks but so far noone has come up with a better alternative except to just allow criminals free reign.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm assuming it is legal for an ISP or other hosting entity to browse whats on their machines, so going on that I guess it should be up to the ISP to make sure there isn't anything obviously dodgy going on on their networks. They should take an active role in making sure that no Bad Things are stored on their servers.
I get the feeling from the article though, that the main reason for the raid is because the ISP was hosting an IRC node. But with IRC, unless you're making logs, there is nothing 'saved'. There is nothing static about IRC.
Perhaps the FBI believed that bringing down the servers would stop the network from running? I don't know.
Before you declare a jihad on the /. moderators, note that he wasn't modded down to -1, just that he posts at -1 by default. Check the comment history.
I believe this has something to do with with recent shutdown of the mIRCx IRC network (see: http://www.mircx.com/irc.html). There are rumours (see: http://kashin-anime.edwardk.info/mircx_downtime.tx t) of a DDoS "botnet" being held on foonet, which may have been responsible for recent IRC network attacks.
This is just speculation however, I'm not sure I should believe that the FBI would take action against the attack of an IRC network with a less-than-wholesome reputation.
This is true. We as a society have been ready and willing to give up our rights in the name of temporary safety and it appears that this is even further confirmed when dissent pointing this out is posted here - it gets modded down!
I can't get access to the article, but I guess that the story is about the shutdown of FooNet. FooNet isn't a "real" hosting solution ; it's a cheap shell provider for script kiddies who want to have their own ircd. They might also provide "serious" hosting services ; but as soon as one provides shell services for such a targetted audience, she knows that she will have to handle some specific problems - DDOS, flood, etc.
And according to what I know about the FooNet shutdown (if that's the same story), there was thousands of DDOS "drones" located at the datacenter, and the staff of the datacenter failed to shut them down. That sounds very dubious to me, but you might want to check this for another side of the story ...
Quoting :
PS: if the shutdown mentionned isn't the FooNet one, ignore this post :-)
It's not like I agree with this, if indeed things happened as the article state... but a quick google on FooNet (AKA / DBA CIT ) turns up some VERY interesting results.
I google'd quickly on a hunch, and sure enough I got some rather interesting hits.
I claim to know nothing about SPEWS and how they go about adding to the blacklists, but they apparently are no stranger to it.
Furthermore, it seems that this IS NOT the first run-in with the FBI that FooNet/CIT has had: from here, if you scroll down a bit, you'll see the following text: The FBI executed a search warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio regarding the IRC network that we host # We regret to inform you that on Saturday February 14, 2004 at approximately 8:35 am EST, FOONET/CIT's data center in Columbus, Ohio temporarily ceased operations. And this was from Feb. 14 ...
Another incident was reported out here on 07/12/03 (search the page for "foonet") ... seems that 84898 spams swamped a box, and follow-up by FooNet sucked - e.g. they turned a blind eye.
There are far too many hits to return ... if you're interested in more, you can always head here. For now, I'll close with this: I do not agree with the methods used, if they were as described ... however, FooNet/CIT is no stranger to the FBI, and perhaps this is all rolled in to the Feb. 14th notice ... maybe the FBI actually gave them 10 days to comply... I'd really like to see how this ends.
This is obviously a violation of the fourth amendment. The FBI didn't need to take all the equipment that it did.
Could they sue under the 4th Amendment?
Even if they had the authority to seize all the data, and it wouldn't surprise me if they in fact did not, they're MORONS for seizing everything. It's much easier to copy the data from on-site than to relocate everything and set it up, and THEN dump the data. It's also a lot less expensive. It also doesn't spread ill will among people who are helping your investigation.
After 9 days they've just barely started to get back up and running again. I guess the real moral of the story is to have an off-site co-lo contract you can activate in a heartbeat. Terabytes of backup restore would be a real pain though.
As I understand it, suing the government over things like this is nearly impossible. They still might be able to sue the agent on whose authority the seizure was conducted. Proving damage is trivial. I think if they can convince a jury that it was a case of gross negligence, the usual government protections don't apply. Any lawyers in the house?
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
"WTF are those web sites still online?"
/.ed to be taken down???
Are you saying they need to be
Evolution or ID?
~~~
Doesn't this tech us.... you always need to have backups. I mean most hard drives will go for years but you never know when your stuff will just be gone.
Evolution or ID?
It seems that many people didn't read the text. The FBI had a warrant, which means they had to go before a judge, justify the need, and spell out what would be looked for/taken. If it wasn't initially spelled out that the servers would be taken, they might have had the warrant amended as such. Before some of you "conspiracy theorists" start screaming about a police state and such, the FBI was acting in the bounds of the law, under a warrant issued by a judge. John Ashcroft and George Bush had nothing to do with this. Maybe once you stop looking for black helicopters, you can see this. As for those of you saying you're glad you don't live in the US, we are the most free, most law-abiding country in the world. While we may not be perfect, we're the best thing going. Sorry if I'm offending anyone, but I'm tired of hearing knee-jerk reactions to things, without anyone reading the facts. Believe it or not, not EVERYTHING the government does is wrong.
Liberalism...the next best thing to thinking.
Theres a point to the story.
Don't candy 4ss and hinder an investigation. You'll get similarly angry law inforcement even when it doesn't involve computers.
Remember, "The Man" isn't out to get you, your not important enough.
You are a cop and arrive at a murder scene with a dozen doctors standing around the corpse. Would you really allow any of these medical experts to assist you with determining the cause of death?
A shutdown machine cannot erase data and the fbi got the tools to simply copy data from HD's without the computer it was in being involved. This prevents any chance of the data being destroyed.
Saying they replug them back in at the fbi shows you have no idea of what is involved in this kind of investigation. They copy the HD's directly and completly by taking them out and putting them in their own hardware.
How the fbi does this kinda stuff has been discussed often enough on /.
This is nothing else then the police sealing of a crime scene. Any inconvenience is considered though luck. It really is no different from streets being closed off to allow marathons or demonstrations or repairs. Yes they do attempt to minimize damage but the investigation comes first.
But lets turn it around. If the FBI raids a place like enron would you find it acceptable if the bosses were allowed to keep making phone calls and keep working on their pc's and play with their shredders as they could loose money if the police removed access and took everything away?
Of course not. Just because this is a small hosting company doesn't change the law.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Did any one else read the title of the post and take it as meaning the FBI just down a hosting company for providing slow service. I was hopeing that my hosting company saw this and took note. Oh well.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
...this is our government's "intelligence" agencies, you know, the ones who were supposed to stop things like 911 from happening.
FLR
I wonder if CIT was destroying the information on their network while the FBI waited. Then the only alternative could have been to take the equipment so the admins didn't destroy more. I could see that happening if the admins were anti-government-getting-customers-information people.
Evolution or ID?
No, it turns out you are right, cit & foonet are one and the same. http://www.easynetworknyc.com/foonet/
to have survived this long lol..
How exactly are they supposed to take only the relevant evidence without first analyzing it? You don't think the hacker was so nice as to name all the files "hacker attempt on xxxx"?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I do wonder how cooperative CIT was. After several hours of requests for the info (with a warrent) the FBI must have been riled to say "F-this-S, haul it away!". Think about how much extra work that must have been. There's more to this story, pity no news service has looked into it yet.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Perhaps someone can clarify this for me... the article/letter seems to point to the FBI seizing CIT's entire data center... Now, as big as they seem, I am sure they have more than just one hosting customer, and more than one IRC server... so did the feds just take the IRC servers, or the hosting servers too?
The reason I question this is the legality of seizing an entire data center like this. For example... lets say CIT had 10 web servers and one IRC server. On those 10 web servers there are 5000 web hosting customers.
Now, the feds want to track ONE user out of 5000 hosting customers, and God knows how many IRC users on the one IRC server, but instead take all 11 machines. So they have, in effect, seized the IP of 5000 innocent people to get the effects of only one.
This to me, seems akin to having the FBI sieze property from every house in a subdivision to get evidence on only one resident.
Given the state of IP law in the US, and how thanks to things like the DMCA and other legislation, IP is being treated like a tangible, wouldnt the FBI have to A: justify seizing the IP of all those customers, and B: be answerable to legal or civil suits regarding lost revenues? What about lost data?
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
Any other option won't be listened to.
Exactly what is covered by the warrant? Is the warrant valid? Can they take all the servers if the information they want is only located on one or two?
This actually reminds me of that IBM linux heist commercial where the older guy runs in to the data center saying, "Our servers! They stole all our servers!" The younger guy says, "No, we moved everything onto that one!" while pointing to the IBM server in the back.
(tin-foil hat req.)
Did the person making this hate debian or what's the reason for "aptgetupd.exe"?
:-P
Anyway, that 'worm' req. the user to follow a link and use an ancient version of IE(?). Surely there are no such persons left on the internet.
Is that petite the updater.exe is packed with? I couldn't be bothered to go through that.
[jole]
Perhaps the agents decided that there was a wholesale destruction of data going on, and to safeguard the warranted evidence, decided to make a raid.
If that is what was happening, the ISP can expect obstruction of justice charges along with whatever else.
Do you think Chinese would do the same? or are they more lenient?
Found nothing about it in the local paper, which is not normally a surprise (the Columbus Dispatch is worthless) but when I went to the company's own website, it says they're NOW located in Chicago. Guess they didn't want somebody rushing into an office park location and saying "ok boys, pack it all up." Or maybe they're tired of marginally-justified court search warrants.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
the guy behind it seems to have been boosting about about a 200k botnet. 200.000 machines under his control. I think this is no longer some harmless hacking. This is stuff the fbi needs to investigate cause quit frankly nobody else seems able to stop this.
So unless you believe the net should be total anarachy ruled by those with the most bots then this kinda off stuff is sadly needed. To bad for those caught in the crossfire but that is live. Nothing really different from when all trains are disrupted because someone jumped in front of one. A marathon closing off all the streets despite the fact you hate sports. A demonstration causing massive gridlock despite the fact that only 200 people in a million people city are taking part.
Live sucks at times. Really this story shows that /. is getting more and more tabloid. A serious tech site would have asked what the fbi was investigating and wether the hosting company was hosting the person investigated or had servers wich were hacked or was simply a place where the hacker might have left evidence.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
George Dubya and John Ashcroft should read this.
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that, too.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
The FBI took all of my computer equipment and held it for almost a year. When I got it back I found out that they never even went through it. They just took all my shit, boxed it up and put it on a shelf somewhere.
That the spammers/DDoSers/phishers/whatnot on FooNet were at least partly responsible for the massive DDoS against SpywareInfo, Merijn, Tomcoyote, and Net-Integration a few days back?
It's still going on. Just try to get to SpywareInfo. The attacking machines are throwing 64 HTTP GET requests a second at the server.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
I 100% agree. I get in political discussion with folks who complain about the system not working...when I ask if they write their representatives they say no. I ask if they vote, they say they aren't registered. How dare someone say the system is broken when they've never bothered to participate!! Register to vote if you haven't already and GET OUT AND BE HEARD. Vote on election days, write your senators and representative whenever you have something for the government to hear. A government of the people means we are their bosses! They don't listen to the majority, they lose their job. And don't say to me "the /. geeks will never be the majority" until you all are registered to vote and participate in our government! It's more important for us to do it now more than ever...
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
One more reason to get hosting based outside the US, if your site does anything but blindly wave the flag and speak the newspeak.
I beleive you misspelled that... I think it' suposed to be 'Asscroft'.
I think it's pretty outrageous just to yank the things out, surely there is some other solution? portable storage of some kind whether masses of drives, tapes or whatever. or an ethernet cable routed outside to a truck with a sat dish on it. or something else.
In olden days they just took every piece of paper they could find and then sorted it out back in their own labs. They don't rebuild the office.
Nope not needed at all. This is an absurd idea. I suggest you thin-foil hat is on to thight.
Only if you believe the FBI doesn't have computer experts. Windows and Unix machines password security is meaningless if you have physicall access to the machines. Only encrypted partitions are supposed to be difficult if you really believe the FBI is unable to crack them. Also keeping the passwords to them from the FBI is a crime.
The FBI has more then enough knowledge. If for some reason they don't know something they can always bring in the secret service or another agency.
There is somewhere a search warrant. This always lists the reason. It is required by law and if it didn't list it the hosting company could have barred access.
But claiming these laws don't exist in europe shows you as being totally ignorant. These are normal search and seizures. If this had been a raid on an office it wouldn't even be news. If it had been a raid on SCO /. would have been applauding it.
Paranoia is a good thing. Sillyness isn't.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It won't help. People won't vote third party, they only vote for the current reigning Demopublican party.
The democrats and republicans use rhetoric to convince the less intelligent that there's actually a difference between the two, assuring that almost everyone votes democrat to vote AGAINST the republican, or republican to vote AGAINST the democrat.
Unfortunately, there's no appreciable difference betwixt the two, so we're condemned to continue down the slippery slope.
This service provider was formerly known as FOONET. FOONET was started by a guy on UnderNet with the nick ArGG (or something like it). He was an op, and I believe owner for some period, of the #warez666 channel.
(FYI: I know this guy, I've spoken to him (years ago), and I know what he's about)
He traded illegal software.
He traded illegal software from the boxes he had on FOONET. (ftp site(s), bot fileservs, etc)
He supported "script kiddies" in their DoS attacks on other providers from his boxes.
He supported abusive IRC bots on several IRC networks from his boxes.
This guy is not innocent, nor can the business he owns be concidered innocent.
What you don't know in this case CAN HURT YOU. I know that many people could not know this data, but it's a fact. With this guy's reputation, it's likely the FBI felt he was purposefully delaying the dissemination of information to them.
This company appears to have had terabytes of data. Lessee:
is oh, about 40 bytes. Say there's a comment every second of evey day... a terabyte would hold over 20,000 years of such comments. Or 20,000 such IRC channels for a year.
Sure this doesn't account for file trading, dead channels, bots, etc... but it gives you some idea about the amount of data in a terabyte, and if you think there is anything anonymous about IRC, think again...
in fact, this comment will probably be stored somewhere for way too long.
I live in Columbus, and have had the misfortune of working with foonet/Creative Internet Technologies/Creative Internet Techniques - they have called themselves all three. The small ISP which I used for my website unexpectedly moved our web site to a server at foonet. All of our mail forwarding was getting blocked by about every blacklist on the planet, and the uptime was horrendous. Needless to say, despite the 3 month prepay, we immediatly moved to another ISP. While we were being hosted at foonet, located about 10 minutes from us, I called them (local, no 800 # - ) multiple times, telling them that they were on blacklists. I never could talk to anyone, just leave messages that would go unanswered. If you are doing anything remotely important, avoid foonet/CIT like the plague. Their phone numbers are/used to be Sales - 614 353 8243 and General Inquires - 740 881 0323
Make sure next installation uses stongly encrypted filesystem, and multiple methods of boot authentication.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Something here I don't get.
If you go to their home page at http://www.cithosting.com/, they have some quotes from customers they protected from DDOS attacks. They customers quoted are http://www.boxedart.com, http://www.templatemonster.com/, and www.designload.com. All three of these sites sell predefined templates for web pages.
Why on earth would this type of business be such a target for DDOS attacks?
But even if they did that is the cost of having a police who can investigate anything. Would you prefer eastern europe? Where the police can't stop cars with certain license plates? Got the right plates you can kill someone in the road and not be stopped. Yeah that is freedom.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
i don't want MY rights violated, and if they start with the "poor little hackers," i know i'm somewhere on that list and i don't even "hack."
In an environment where a physical crime was committed they can exclude people by fingerprints. For example, in a bank vault (an ISP isn't entirely dissimilar with access controls) they could exclude employees but pinpoint the bad guy. The general public doesn't have access to the vault, that doesn't mean the FBI can start opening up safety deposit boxes because they feel like it.
Giving them carte blanche access to the data is beyond the reach of the warrant. Read the article again.
Trolling is a art,
The FBI cart equipment away to their premises in order to duplicate the systems and environments. If ever you get into information systems forensics, they would at least perform 2 copies. One is kept as an exact duplicate (to keep for their investigation records) and at least another to actually run analysis against (since searching on an active system can change the data stored in it).
It also makes it easier to catalog what they are working with, and prevents any interference from the outside.
Whoops, did my math wrong; forgot days had hours. It's only 871 years of that in a terabyte. (whew! that's better. cancel red alert)
--
2^40 / 40 / 3600 / 24 / 365.25
Delete your logs. Delete them early, and delete them often. Searching through 24 hours worth of data is a lot easier then searching through 2 years worth...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Yeah, I am one of those people who's data is now in the hands of the FBI. It's pretty irritating that they decided to confiscate everything, causing problems for many many people, than just go through all the data on location. I've been in contact with a special agent trying to get my data back. I think he might be sending it to me via CD or something, but I'm not sure.
--
Matt Keeler
ODP Editor - http://dmoz.org
http://elysium.org
There has been an ongoing discussion about this since feb 15th
...according to http://www.ahbl.org/
No, but if they stripped my store clean, leaving my place bare while they sifted through my stuff for God-knows-how-long looking for 'evidence' of where he might have gone...yes, then I'd have a serious problem with the feds.
The only problem is, no one really seems to know what is going on!
Speculation on cause has ranged from DDoS attacks to having to do with the Microsoft leaked source code.
SearchIRC - Now with live chat directory!
Like a lie? As a former LEO I've seen search warrants that were based on 100% lies. "Anonymous" or "confidential" sources are the classics. Or just squeeze someone to lie and bam!, you're in business. Twisting the facts into probable cause like "container with a white powdery substance found on suspect's vessel. Possibly narcotics." You know that it's flour in the galley but that part is just left out. Telling half the truth is still a lie, something most cops ignore.
I suspect they were fishing, looking for one piece of data but really wanted a reason to grab everything (like all the irc logs). It's possible that the company pissed the agents off (by not bending over on command) and they're just getting a little revenge.
Please, do not trust the police. They are there to arrest as many people as they can (and these are the "good" ones). Rogue cops are a nightmare. Ever wonder why most of the time when a police action is investigated it's only done by cops or an ADA (nothing more than a cop in a suit)? Isn't that like Tony Soprano investigating a mob hit? Law enforcement in the US answers only to themselves.
Do a search on news.google.com and find news stories about cops that broke the law (beat downs, dealing drugs, OUI, etc.) and you'll find almost everytime they've received a much lighter sentence (if any) than the average joe. Welcome to the Pig States of Amerika. I guess Abby Hoffman was right.
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
If you are a data center, this sounds like another good reason to have a mirror (RAID 0, or is it RAID 1). That way you can just unplug the mirror drive and give it to the FBI without disturbing the rest of your service.
Actually this makes the acronym RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Devices) have dual meaning... RAID is what you want when you are raided!
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
I think that all spamers, carders, crackers, et cetera (not phreaks. this is a vaild persuit and one everyone should engage in) should all be executed, very publically, by fireing squad. However, the fact that i do not engage in these activities and in fact am blatantly opposed to them in a fascist fashion does not mean that i don't have things worth hiding, demand the right to be secure in person, et cetera.
I just have absolutly no respect for the federal government in general and federl law enforcment in particular.
honestly, i think there should be only 3 federal crimes: piracy(on the high seas), treason, and counterfeiting. All others should fall to the states.
You'll work harder with a gun in your back for a bowl of rice a day.
Irvingnet, the home of the Fark IRC channel, was also affected in the raid. The MOTD said that the entire datacenter was cleaned out by the FBI.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
If they're investigating a hacking incident I am surprise dto hear that seizing the equipment wasn't the plan to begin with. Why wait and get jerked around by your suspect or accomplice only to get the wrong information. If you want answers, DO IT YOURSELF, they're the FBI for Jeebus' sake. I'd rather see progress than the usual five agents running in circles.
[Please sign here]
All your [data]base are belong to us! :)
-Jeff
If I had moderator points today I would mod you up. Your post is rational and sane unlike many of the rabid paraniod scrawlings elsewhere in this thread today. By the sounds of it this hosting company is not a pargon of virtue and light in the first place and if the FBI are investigating a crime then they need to take whatever measures they deem necessary to protect the information they will need for a criminal prosecution. I really don't see how they would have any alternative in a scenario like this. All this paranoia is clearly coming from some kind of deep mistrust of the FBI which if it is concerning you then you really ought to do something about it, you really need to be able to trust your law enforcement services !
When you see something modded at 0 or -1 with no reason, check the poster's history [[ OPTiX_iNC (691070) ]] , or click on the comment number [[ (#8372157) ]] for more info...
In this case, it looks like OPTiX_iNC has a history of being modded as troll. This may be because he likes to insert racist epithets into his comments.
In any case, +6 moderation on this comment might do his karma some good. He should at least be posting at a base 0 for a little while.
___
and as for the late posting, I can see it being hard to get the word out when your servers are all in the hands of the FBI ( and your bank is looking for a real good explanation before they'll give you an extra loan ).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Doing it in-house sounds so old fashioned. They should look into out-sourcing like spammers have been doing with under-utilizied home Windows computers. Does anyone have contact information for the people who did MyDoom.A and .B? I might have a deal lined up involving a few hundred thousand dollars of business. (I could use the reward money.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I came to the same conclusion. But a Czech hoster ripped me off. So found a good French hoster, but it uses servers in the US for Americain customers. Better than a US host anyway...
Campaign finance reform is national security.
I have believed for a long time that more Americans should be voting for the Green party. There are many who prefer the Green's stand but fear that a vote for Green is a vote wasted and would only serve to help put the Republicans in office. I suggest accepting the (relatively) short term pain of Republican rule and looking at the long term.
Currently the Democrats and Republicans are essentially different flavours of the same poison. Forget the next election, forget the next five elections. Even if the Democrats gain power they will produce more of the same crap. Vote Green in the next election - they won't get much this time around, but if everyone who wanted to vote Green did, then the Greens would probably make the coveted 5% mark, which means more money. With more money they could do better the next time around, and after two or three more elections they could mount a real challenge to the status quo (if they manage to not become a part of the status quo).
Forget tomorrow; tomorrow is already a disaster. Think of your children and think of your grandchildren.
As for the Green party itself, getting Nader elected (as implausible as it may be) would not be a great triumph as I can easily imagine the dems and repubs in the houses making his life hell. The Greens need to seriously focus on getting seats in the two houses. With balances teetering at 51-49 for a long long time, the Greens getting just a few seats and being able to tip a house one way or the other could provide a breath of fresh air that American politics has needed for a very long time. Why the US generally believes it can only function with a two-party political system (with little difference between the two) is baffling and perhaps a little sad.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Voting for the lesser of two evils is better than not voting at all. If you're about to be killed, and the murderer says "should I use this shotgun and blow your head off, or stick you with tiny needles until you bleed to death?" would you make a choice or let him choose? Not to say that our government elections are akin to murder per se (though some might interpret them as such).
Government participation is important after the election too, there are many websites that make it easy to send letters to your elected officials to tell them your opinion. That way you can make a difference every day for their elected term, instead of just once every few years. Don't say I'm full of shit if you don't try.
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
From their website: DDOS protection package is using an unique technology that was developed by our company based on more than 10 years experience...
Through our patented process, we skillfully unplug your servers and cart them off to an unknown location. We guarantee your servers security...in fact, it's so secure we can't even access the data!
That's actually true, no matter how absurd Darrow's argument was. Especially in government.
Yes, it's possible for Special Agent Joe Smith to disobey orders to seize data based on his own morality, but the practical upshot of that is that Joe Smith will be fired and replaced with someone willing to do the task. In the end, the task will get done no matter what Joe Smith's morality is - so how can he be held responsible for what is inevitable?
Nations and their component organizations have monopoly over force, not individuals. If the FBI wants to search and destroy, the FBI is to blame, not its agents. (Even the word agent means 'representative'.) You don't shoot the messenger when the message is bad.
1.) Foonet/CIT did cooperate. 2.) Warrant was sealed. 3.) Not many, if any, got "free" accounts there. 4.) 300 or so servers were taken. 5.) Agent responsible to contact hasn't been returning calls/emails. 6.) Only a couple of machines have been returned, some should be sent out today. 7.) Warrant was served on a house which contained foonet/cit, Paul, his very pregnant wife, and two small children. 8.) Paul has always cooperated with the FBI. 9.) A 200K botnet would have clogged the lines Foonet/CIT was on, get real for pitys sake, 200K? lol 10.) Those crying DDos kiddies being freely housed are mostly terminated customers. 11.) The ownership of Foonet/CIT had recently changed, some guy named Jay owns it now. 12.) Nobody directly working for/owning Foonet/CIT knows why this raid was done, why do kiddies claim they do? I'm going to work now, feel free to flame. Sincerely, Kelly
So there is no "correct" English quotation anyway.
I write my representatives. And I vote. Know what? It still doesn't make a damn bit of difference so long as at election time I'm given no real choice.
As Bill Hicks put it, "I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs. I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking. Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding both puppets."
The majority are easily led around by those in power. Most Americans beleive that Iraq as involved in 9/11 and that we have found weapons of mass destruction in our invasion there. Our "leaders" have gotten people more disturbed about destroying a flag than about destroying the land that the flag represents.
The game is rigged. Third-party candidates are doomed from the start. Any candidate talking about real change is not permitted to get past the primaries - look at how they savaged Dean for speaking truth. Betting on a Senator for re-election is about the safest bet you can make, and Representatives only risk losing their seats if their opposing party gets ahold of the state legislature and manages to redistrict them out.
So, yeah, I vote, I give to the ACLU, I write my Congresscritters, but I don't expect it to make much difference. Me, I'm looking for Yin revolution. And if that don't work...well, that's why there's a rifle in the closet.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Slashdot, last week's news today. This was on f*ckedcompany the 18th and I submitted it here the 19th.
I vote Libertarian.
People tend not to vote for them because they are a "fringe" party, but if people did vote for them, they wouldn't be. Also, if you're disturbed by the party's more extreme views, keep in mind that the real extremists are already members, and as their membership increases, they can only become more moderate.
Whatever you do, don't throw your vote away on a "small government" Republican or a "civil liberties" Democrat. They have never delivered what they've promised.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
When the FBI asked them for evidence, couldn't they have temporarily shut down to do a complete disk mirror, and handed over the mirror of their drives for the FBI to inspect at their leisure, that way ensuring that they stayed operational in the interim, but the FBI would still have the evidence they needed, even if the hacker somehow got back into their system to remove it?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Alas poor goatse, I knew him well.
This story offers a very good example why ISPs and similar service providers should have the best lawyer possible on call. If nothing else they may have been able to halt or slow things while finding a judge who can come up with a more sensible solution.
I see no good reason why the FBI should shut down an entire business with nothing more than search warrant. Surely such a warrant defines what exactly they are seeking, and it would have been reasonable for them to extract those chunks of data on-site.
I have to conclude that the aim of the exersize was to shut down foo.net without the bother of legal proceedings, and it seems that they were successful.
Three Squirrels
Then join one of the two partys and work for change! Have your ever tried to be a state delegate to a party convention? Have you ever gone to a party meeting and voiced an opinion? Have you ever worked to get a "good" candidate on the ticket of either primary? Or would you rather sit and home and just complain?
http://www.windmeadow.com/
Voting very evil is the better option sometimes, because at least there's the hope that the evil will anger the people so greatly that the next time maybe there would be a viable option.
Hey, remember Gore? If he was so likeable and so deserving to be the President of the United States, that is, if he was truly the best man for the job 4 years ago, what has changed? Why aren't the Democrats demanding he run again?
Could it be that, perhaps, nobody liked him in the first place?
I would recommend that the ISP gets all the user data (non-executable) off into storage, wipe clean, re-install everything, copy data back on...Problem is that the setup for this would be exhaustive and time-consuming. However, if there is an IRC informant tool that has been added to this (I remember slashdot articles concerning a system developed by FBI or CIA on a system to snoop) it would conflict with the ISP's promise of security and privacy...
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
How would all of this change if your "datacenter" were the basement of your house, and the thing they were investigating was an IRC network run by the company doing the webhosting? It seems to me that if it were in a REAL datacenter, and not the owners basement, it might have gone over a little differently.
"How dare someone say the system is broken when they've never bothered to participate!! Register to vote if you haven't already and GET OUT AND BE HEARD"
If you tend to believe the system is corrupted beyond repair and a fair vote not possible, then what would be the point?
if you really think that the world is doomed and nothing you can do can fix anything then you might as well kill yourself and get out of my way :-) (the royal you, not necessarily you specifically)
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
I use to be a democrat leaning independant. I became a Libertarian after seeing many of the same issues that you see. But the difference is that the greens and the rest believe that government solves issues. It rarely does. But when you allow people to solve problems, and you hold all accountable (including those in Business and Governments) things happen.
The problem is the ratio of times that terrorists are *really* involved.
How many major terror acts are perpetrated or confounded each year relative to how much we've seen "The War on Terror" used to justify anything and everything anyone can get away with. Funding for every agency under the sun derives from whether they're combatting terror. The DOE needs money "to combat terror" by developing methods to protect our utility grid. The DoD needs funds to "help combat terrorism" by developing new monitoring and data-mining technologies. The CDC needs money to "help combat terror" by producing vaccines. I'll bet that even the Department of Agriculture has funding initiatives based on "terror" somewhere -- maybe they want to monitor use of crop dusters, who knows.
It's freaking ridiculous. The "War on Terror" certainly saves lives, but the amount of resources that have been claimed in its name *vastly* outweigh the amount of damage that terrorism has done to us. A lot more people lost their lives to car crashes in 2001 than to terrorist attacks. Did we have black helicopters ready to swoop down on speeders? How about long-range alcohol sensors? What about armed guards at strategically-placed toll booths that search cars and people thoroughly for any kind of alcohol? All these sorts of things have been done in the name of "The War on Terror", instead of being used in an area where more American lives are being lost. The "War on Terror" is, frankly, a tool based in fear to help manipulate the masses. It has little practical value.
I claim that terrorism on the order of at 200:1 life amplification (roughly what the 9/11 terrorists achived -- something like 4000 lives to around 20 terrorists) cannot be eliminated without massively curtailing and altering a free society. There are just too many ways for a person willing to die to kill many people.
I would like to point out that people are only willing to throw their lives away if they are incredibly upset over something you've done. You don't see Iceland coming under terror attacks, because Iceland doesn't anger people to the point of being willing to die to kill Icelanders (or whatever a citizen of Iceland is called).
We have spent masses of money and effort on trying to figure out how to crush terror rings, on making people so afraid to resist the United States that they won't dream of it. The problem is, it can't be done. The Soviets couldn't crush resistance with years of secret police and encouraging children to inform on their parents. I don't think Bush Junior can do so in our society. Sheer force and fear just don't work when you're dealing with people who are willing to lose their lives to kill. You have no cards that they are interested in.
How much money has been spent on diplomatic and social solutions to eliminating terrorism? Supposedly the United States has a negative image in Islamic countries -- how much work have we gone through to improve that image? How much effort has gone into determining the things that are making people so angry that they are willing to *die* to hurt citizens in the US and resolve those issues?
A lot of people feel that trying to resolve things peacefully would be "giving in to the terrorists", and encourage future terrorist acts. I don't agree. The only value to a hard-core refusal to ever attempt peaceful solutions is as an attempt to establish prescedent governing future acts -- that no terrorist would ever be willing to attack the United States if it was *guaranteed* that doing so would hurt his cause, and damn the consequences to us in hurting that cause. The problem is, the prescedent has clearly not been established during the time we have taken a hard-line approach. The United States was attacked several times, despite having followed tough guidelines for dealing with terrorism in the past.
I'm curious as to what would happen if the 70 billion or whatever dollars that are being spent to keep us in Iraq (which at least originally was supposed
May we never see th
Let's look at your argument. According to U.S. Census data on voter registration and voting the percentages of the American public voting are much higher (70-75% vs. 30-50%) for folks with college and/or advanced degrees than those with some HS or only a HS diploma. It's not like the least intelligent people in America are even voting. 60-70% of those who actually voted have at least an associates degree or some college. 30% have at least a bachelor's degree.
Come play Moral Decay!
It wasn't just CIT's stuff that was confiscated and / or shut down, but EVERYTHING in the datacenter where CIT's stuff happened to be; everything included my hosting provider, as well. N.B. - I am typically all for law enforcement and would rather err on the side of caution - esp if CIT was "reasonably believed" to have been stalling or destroying data.
I see all alot of, "their rights have been violated", and "this is why I don't host in the US", and "here's what I think they're investigating", but I don't see anything constructive about how to protect your service uptime against a raid.
At a local security meeting, I learned about security incident handling, and things you can do to help preserve the chain of custody of the evidence (aka data). It's one thing to copy data, but just by reading data on most filesystems, you alter it. If a hacker determines that you are investigating them, that can and will try as fast as they can to cover their tracks, and it's alot quicker to delete/destroy/taint data than copy data.
The fastest and best to preserve a single machine's data is to break a RAID 1 array (pull out live disks). Your machines keep running, and the FBI gets a pristine copy of the disks that they can put into (hopefully antistatic) evidence bags and document chain of custody without modification of the data. They can go read it at their leisure off-site. Using RAID5 doesn't cut it. Using single disks with frequent backups doesn't cut it. Use RAID1.
Another way to protect data and preserve service is to store all non-OS data on enterprise storage that supports advanced mirroring or snapshot capabilities. If I had a NetApp, I could create a read-only snapshot and give the FBI access to that point in time copy of data and never delete it until I can do a DR copy of my filer onto another box. If I have an EMC or Hitachi or other large RAID1-capable unit, I can beak off a very large mirror and present it to FBI hosts on a SAN and continue to run off of unprotected data or implement a disaster recovery plan to get me running again on another similar storage. This data isn't as clean as a "drive in a bag", but with proper notes and techniques, the FBI can be convincing enough to a jury that the data was used in the investigation was correctly read unmodified "beyond a reasonable doubt".
If I'm really good, and have a bigger budget, I'll have a near-real-time mirror of that data (NetApp SnapMirror, EMC SRDF, "rsync", etc.) in a remote location that runs independently of my primary site and a plan that will help keep me running while I let the FBI tears apart my primary data center.
If you run a 100% uptime service ("Show me the nines!"), it's your responsiblity to to have an effective disaster recover plan. An FBI or Secret Service raid is an equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing into your data center. You as an individual, have a RIGHT to privacy and due process, but your company has created obligations to your customers to which you've guaranteed service, and your customers care more about the latter than the former. It's more responsible to have a DR plan and sue the FBI to replace your hardware than not have a plan and sue for lost business.
-ez
If the checksum doesn't fit, you can't commit!
wrong.
> The truth is
wrong. i live there (europe) and that should do. never mind my ideals, twisted as they might be.
let me guess, too: you usually judge people by their sig or some other irrelevant feature and only draw conclusions that seem to help your argument. wrong?
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
AK47 should be part of your toolkit. Keep it under the raised floor. Whack those SOBs and blame the terrorists.
Here are the details and a time line.
They were out of business from 14 to 23 February.
When they are back, they are only providing web hosting and not IRC. So the warrant was definitely related to IRC and they decided not to be in the business again?
http://www.cithosting.com/news.htm
02/14/2004 FBI Confiscates all servers
Dear Customers of FOONET/CIT:
We regret to inform you that on Saturday February 14, 2004 at approximately 8:35 am EST, FOONET/CIT's data center in Columbus, Ohio temporarily ceased operations.
Here are the facts of what occurred:
The FBI executed a search warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio regarding the IRC network that we host. According to the warrant, it appears that the Bureau is investigating whether someone hosted on our network hacked and attacked someone else.
After several hours of attempting to track down, inspect and audit the terabytes of data that we host, the FBI determined that it was more efficient (from their point of view) to remove all of our servers and transport them to the FBI local laboratories for inspection. This was completed at 7:00 pm EST same day.
The FBI has assured us that as soon as the data has been safely copied and inspected, the equipment will be promptly returned. Unfortunately, the FBI has not been able to tell us when they will be completed with their inspection.
We have been told by the Special Agent in charge of the investigation that If you need access to your data you are asked to please contact the Bureau via email to rwhite3@leo.gov. Make sure to include in your email your name, mailing address, and telephone number with area code.
Since we wish to focus 100% of our efforts on restoring services, we would appreciate it very much if you do not attempt to contact us directly. Please rest assured that we are doing everything possible to restore service to you as quickly as possible.
To the many who have inquired, Paul and family are OK, although shaken by these events. They are at home and awaiting the blessed event of their new child's birth. We thank you for your good wishes and prayers.
Please check back here often. Through this site, we will keep you informed of ongoing developments as we know them.
Thanks again for your understanding.
02/23/2004 CIT re-establishes service.
We have restored service at Equinix's Chicago Data Centers. We are in the same facilities as MSN and many fortune 500 companies. The facility has multi OC192 connections to the backbone.
The FBI has begun retuning equipment to CIT which is being shipped to our new facilities in Chicago.
At this time CIT will continue to provide dedicated DDOS Protected web hosting only.
CIT provides reliable and scalable solutions for customers of all sizes and services. Located in Equinix's Chicago Data Centers , CIT has access to all the major carriers without the need for local loop circuits.
Our Chicago staff is focused first and foremost on customer satisfaction, and will take every action necessary to accommodate each customer. Unlike many large ISPs, CIT prides itself in its ability to provide personalized service to each customer - if a customer calls twice for assistance, they can usually speak to the same representative. Our sales and support teams are allowed a great deal of flexibility to work together to resolve each customer's needs on an individual basis. Our success and rapid growth can be attributed to the satisfaction of our customers - word-of-mouth referrals account for a large portion of the new business we receive each month.
The IRC Network will remain down until further notice.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
>Unfortunately, there's no appreciable difference betwixt the two, so we're condemned to continue down the slippery slope.
If you think there is no difference between the judicial appointments made by the Shrub and those made by Clinton, you'd better hope you never have any kind of civil rights or first ammendment case go up on appeal. There are very real differences between the two parties in their approach to civil rights, the environment, education, and how many cameras Ashcroft gets to put in your bedroom.Voters are citizens. All others are residents
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
True, voting for your Third Party Candidate for president might just lead to another 4 years of Bush & Co, but what's wrong with getting out and voting for your favorite third party in *local* elections?
Nothing wrong with that at all. Act locally, but keep your eye on the big picture.
Here are the stats for Walnut Creek, CA:
PARTY AFFILIATION
16,368 Democrats
15,883 Republicans
540 American Independent
368 Green Party
185 Libertarian
52 Natural Law
54 Peace and Freedom
5,389 Declined to state
406 Miscellaneous
(Source: Contra Costa County Elections Office)
If all of those "third party" voters would get out and vote, they could (and have) helped to get third party candidates elected.
When special interest parties get a lot of votes, the other parties notice. They'll usually adjust their policies hoping to pick up the voters "lost" to the 3rd party.
Clinton administration under that bastion of civil liberties (nevermind Waco, Ruby Ridge, or Elian Gonzalez)
I hate to get offtopic here, but it really annoys me when democrat bashers don't even know what they're talking about. I bet you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage religiously.
Hint, Ruby Ridge happened in '92.
This is utter horseshit.
It is Ashcroft's job to enforce and uphold the law. Well, THE BILL OF RIGHTS IS THE LAW. Not only that, but it is part of the law that is supposed to take precedence over all other laws of any sort including those against vandalism, theft and even murder.
The minions of Ashcroft are simply ignoring a part of the law that they find inconvenient. This makes him no different than a mafia don.
The Bill of Rights is not just a good idea; It's the law.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Doesn't this mean you need to get an offshore server or offshore web hosting to be safe?
I hate to say it, but more things seem to be going offshore than they are onshore. Oh well.
**FREE** Track and view your phone's via CellID and/or WIFI and/or GPS
[...] the current reigning Demopublican party.
You know, that doesn't scan very well. I'd try "Repocrat" instead!
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
The company in question, known as "Foonet" or "Creative Internet Technologies" is well known to anyone who frequents efnet as a safe haven for anyone involved in illegal activities, including DDoS, childporn, compromising hosts, spamming, carding etc, the staff of foonet are well known for overlooking illegal activity by their customers..
Most likely the fbi turned up to confiscate one or two customers boxes and saw how stuffed with illegal data their network is, virtually everyone on efnet who is involved with illegal activity used to base their operation from foonet, the servers there will be a total goldmine of evidence for the fbi..
Infact, the staff themselves at foonet are well known for breaking the law, in particular "Paul" who owns the company gives shell accounts or free hosting to people who will ddos for him, and often the staff at foonet have used their customers credit cards for fraudulent transactions.
From their site:
The rest of the page is chaff about who the company is, and things already quoted here.
This puts the downtime they experienced at about 2 weeks - which must have been very disruptive to their business, but not in line with most "the FBI is here" horror stories. Though I understand the FBI agents in this case not wanting to be any more disruptive than they have to be, it is incompetent of the FBI as an organization to not have a more unitrusive means of auditing large datahouses unannounced - although the companies they arrive at cannot possibly be prepared, the FBI must anticipate this frequent eventuality.I 100% agree too.
I used to feel dejected about politics too.
Hopeless, right?
Democrat/Republican are the same thing, right?
Then one of my friends (who went to college the same time as I) got a job at a local political office.
She works for the Lt. Govern of Illinois. She's an assistant press secretary or something. Strictly entry level job.
But she gets to talk to 'Pat' whenever she wants (infact, he calls her, and many other members of his staff, all the time). Her opinions certainly draw more political weight than mine do.
Sure, he's not the president, but she IS part of the process.
Politics is NOT the scary beast everything thinks it is.
Big business only rules politics because generally, in this day and age, the little people have lost interest.
A little bit of 'little' guy political activity, and you'll have divergent views appearing in the political spectrum again. The Democracts/Republicans will come to the side, and perhaps YOU (the generic you) will be able to interject something into the debate.
Sure, instant run-off voting would be nice, but the current system works, anyone can participate, and (oh god this is a terrible cliche) you CAN make a difference.
My grandmother+aunt in the U.K. feel similarly. They worked for Tony Blair's campaign. Of course, they hate him now, but that's for different reasons.
They are far more part of the political process than I have been, but if 100 people like me, or my relatives, or my friend, try to exert a small bit of influence, they can, without a terribly large expense.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
What a great time to install a backdoor.
granted they no doubt have easier ways to do it remotely..
When will ISP's run end-to-end encryption software with a user's area protected by a key only the user has. Open source guys.. let's go..
I know the Ashcroft-obsessed crowd will drown out this message, but I will say it anyway.
foo.net has, for the longest time, been protecting carders. They've been told so, repeatedly, by the anti-spam community and weaseled. My suspicion at this point is that either they are actively involved and/or some of their members are involved. FBI methods aside, foo.net isn't the innocent-victim they would have you believe.
As someone who has had multiple run-ins with Foonet and their customers over the years, I'm personally glad to see this happen, even if it's only temporary. The FBI doesn't just decide to dismantle an entire datacenter on a whim, there obviously has to be just cause. I feel that in this case, there's probably more than enough cause. If you are a (wannabe) "hacker" or "packet kiddie", Foonet is the place for you, and most people know it.
I run a large text based chat server (IRC), and as such we see frequent (D)DoS attacks. Far too many of these attacks in some way lead back to Foonet. It's even rumored that some of their employees harvest and sell Denial of Service drone networks... how's that for service! Since Foonet was raided a week and a half ago, we've seen maybe 25% of the DDoS attacks that we reguarly receive.
Bottom line... don't target "kiddies" as your primary customer base, and don't tolerate their abuse and things like this will not happen. But hey, what do I know.
And most likely, the FBI didn't tell the hosting company exactly what it is they wanted. When the Feds come in with a search warrant, they don't ask for your help. They say, "stand aside" and commence ransacking.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
"I disapprove of what you say, and I will deny, to your death, your right to say it" -Get fuzzy, a comic strip
> perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees; print'
Yes. Yes I do. :o)
Jeff
Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from all that is known.
The agent that siezed the equipment probably has a boss who expects to see progress, and that progress is probably propagated up the line to the point where the details have been filtered out and it's just a number on a spreadsheet of how many computer crimes have been procecuted in the last however many days. The ulterior motive is to look like he's being productive in order to keep his job.
Ah, there's the rub.
Behind every job is a human being. That job could be something as heroic and altruistic as a fireman, or something as shady and questionable as this FBI guy. What all the folks in the country need to realize is that all the things we bitch about are being done TO us, BY us. If people would refuse to fill jobs that had questionable consquences, things might be different. We will never know that, since we all have bills to pay, and somebody will always take those crappy jobs.
What I find fascinating is that so many of us have jobs where the harmful consequences are so far down the chain that we can't even see how we have contributed. But alas we are all a part of our own mess.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
This may be the first time I've ever seen anyone flame someone they agree with. The guy you responded to was saying that the current administration had little or nothing to do with the FBI's actions in this incident. Unless I seriously misread your post, your statement:
That does not mean that the federal government is at fault in every case
leads me to believe that you feel the same way. Looks to me like you were just begging for a reason to flame someone with different opinions. I have two words for you.
1: Idiot
2: Troll
Have a nice day...
While everyone seems to be focusing on the FBI and it's antics, hackers behind the scenes are running around making fools of intelligent men.
This weekend, we saw foonet disappear without a trace, mirc-x, aniverse, and rizen brought down in flames by DDoS attacks, and (ranked least important on this list) the anime fansubbing scene, as well as Paul (the one actually served with the warrant says #foonet on efnet) in complete disarray and confusion.
Maybe in a few weeks, some legitimate news corporation will repost what I'm about to suggest with more information.
foonet's ircd was probably a host for some sort of illegality, hence the FBI's raid.
The warrant may have been formed with the help of an IRCop on mirc-x.
While sustaining DDoS attacks, a user visited mirc-x appearing to "be the culprit," and left a few locations he could be found.
Reading between lines, the lingo announced the reason for the attack: That damn IRCop reported my irc server with a lot of hacked computers taken away. So I'm bringing down his network.
What was the reason the IRCop reported anything? Did he crack a joke about the hacker's mother? Or was he just doing the "right thing?"
Sadly enough, by the end of the weekend, the anime scene had pretty much caused the death of 3 servers either due to load, or to followed DDoS attacks on other servers.
I have to wonder if there's actually a connection between the two events. 3 IRC networks down and an entire hosting company at a local FBI headquarters because of hacker squabbles? Are they really that important and/or worth the time?
I wish I knew. I wish someone could actually write about it. My story can't possibly be true.
-Kenners EE,CE,JP&RPI.EDU
After several hours.. (etc)
Let the fbi show up at my door with a search warrant for a customer's data and they'll be given a choice of how they want the data handed to them, and then they'll have it, in as much time as it takes me to open the case and hand them the secondary harddrive of the system (break the raid) or if they have a minute I can burn 'em a CD rom of the customer's data in as much time as it takes to tar and scp the data to the machine with the burner in it. Time required would be measured in minutes, and no toes required to count them.
After reading about this story in a few places I said from the first I heard of it "there's more to this". They host an irc network, bastions of warez and mp3s (hey I like IRC too, and have my own server but I know what happens on them if they're not policed heavily). They are (accused) of being carder/hacker friendly and their "ddos proof" hosting and irc services definitely sounds like something a hacker would like... It's sounding like they slept with the pigs and are covered in mud.
Another choice comment: The seizure isn't standard procedure, and there's no way to know exactly what prompted it.
That sounds to me like a thinly veiled attempt at insinuating foonet might not be as innocent as they'd like to be seen, "isn't standard procedure" "no way to know exactly what prompted it".
Call me a chicken or even (gasp) a Republican but if a lowly sheriff's deputy shows up with a warrant he's gonna get 100% cooperation and anything he wants ASAP from me, let the FBI show up? Shit that's when I get out my shoeshine kit...
--- www.f-theocean.com
So giving the Police the right to trash anyone's home or business is the only way to prevent anarchy? The only ways that are at all possible are this way, or the small poster way?
Besides the option of a large poster, it seems to me it would be possible to have a system where the police can search for evidence with a warrant, but have to pay for any damages they cause if the victims turn out to be innocent.
The current system invites abuse. The police don't even have to frame anyone they dislike enough to get them convicted, only enough to get a warrant. Evidence can be hidden in furniture, walls, cars etc, all of which can be smashed down in the search for evidence, easily costing any uppity person $100k+.
Abuse of police power is arguably a bigger problem in the world than regular crime, so don't think it's a small issue.
I would like to ask this person: was it worth it? Is the evidence that this will result in, going to have value that exceeds the harm? Did you even ask yourself that question, before you signed the warrant?
I guess you can blame the FBI too, for bringing that unsigned warrant to some judge to be signed. But the responsibility ultimately fell on the judge.
Who judges the judges?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Offsite Backup
A data center adds this risk, which needs to be considered in a disaster recovery plan. Do you have off site backups at your hosted site? If the hosting site has the tapes, they may included when the warrant is executed. Your equipment may be swept up in a search of the datacenter, your first notice may be the watchdog scripts
Is it possible to get insurance that will cover this sort of thing? Then if the FBI raids your business and shuts you down (probably assuming that you didn't directly cause the raid) the insurance policy covers losses due to down time, etc.
" sorry we don't log that data for more then 24 hours " or some other excuse..
Face it, all transactions must be logged and kept forever, or face the wrath of the government...
And if you get caught trying to delay, or reduce said logs infinite length of retention, expect a jail sentence for obstruction..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Mexico is an example of a police state/dictatorship, not a democracy.
Of course US police have less power than in countries like that, but compared to other democraciees, I seriously doubt it has.
I'm far from an expert on these things, but as a Swede living in California, it seems very clear that the Police here have much bigger licence to steal, kill and destroy at will.
Since the bits went across a 'outside' network, then all users of that network should be raided and have their pcs removed ..
Oh and while they are there, why not take away all your books and papers too..
Yes this is sarcasm, i personally think they overstepped the idea of 'crime scene' a tad in this case.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Democrats (and especially Naderites) are advocating a nanny state; they want to take any possibility you hurt yourself or others by removing your freedoms.
Nader in nothing more but a trial lawyer disgiused as a human being. What he advocates is even more money squandered by the kangaroo courts that are used by lawyers to enrich themselves.
Republicans and Libertarians have more hands off approach (with the exception of the extreme right who try to inflict their moral values on everybody). They advocate personal responsibility versus "It all is not your fault, it is some evil corporation".
Here are my articles that show what is happening to the US because of the leftist influence:
http://sqft87.pisem.net/tiger/barbar.html
http://sqft87.pisem.net/tiger/victim.html
http://sqft87.pisem.net/tiger/civilwar.html
(the hosting seems to be down now, but it will come up eventually).
P.S. Your line of thinking is EXACTLY Nader's line of thinking; it is his goal to destroy Democratic party and become "the new left". However, it is one of the worst things that might happen to the US.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
are the leading software applications of 4 years ago still the leading software apps today? Times change, people change, needs change, to answer your offtopic question.
Stirring anger is a motive, however I'd like to think of it as a next to last resort, before a violent uprising.
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.
- PUBLIUS (Alexander Hamilton)
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Right on target. In my experience the FBI couldn't give a rats ass about causing the least amount of colateral damage or returning your siezed property. In 2001 (I believe that's right) the FBI siezed a Sun 20 from a lab at a University I worked for. The lab was less than maintained. It was full of SGIs that were vulnerable to every possible exploit for the last 5 or 6 years. It was a joke really. The Sun was also unmaintained. I pointed out to my super 10 months before the siezure that the Sun was an open relay and had services running that shouldn't be (I still have that email!). Nevertheless it wasn't touched for 10 months. Right about the time I volunteered to help the lab maintainer get everything up to date and secure again the FBI came in and siezed the Sun. It apparently was used for something bad. I haven't been with that University for a while now but last I knew it still hadn't been returned. The FBI couldn't give a rat's ass about causing the least amount of colateral damage. Their actions speak for themselves. What if the machine used for the attack (or probe for that matter) was the Unv's mail server? It was poorly maintained too and had been hacked before. What if an attacker used it as a launching pad for an attack. Would the FBI sieze that piece of state property, effecting bringing email on campus to a complete halt? It's sad really to think about it.
Naderites will break the Democratic party completely.
See, Democrats now are not an ideological party; it is more like a marriage of convenience between very different groups (it can be said about Republicans to much lower extent).
Why do I consider it the worst thing possible? Because it will break Republican party either.
Nader is a leftist fanatic, he is a fundamentalist that will never attract enough supporters to become part of the mainstream.
Thus, significant amount of moderate democrats will be willing to make a centrist party. That will lead to many moderate republican willing to lose the conservatives and join them under the direction of, say, John McCain and Joe Liberman. The new centrist party will easily capture 60% of most votes.
It might work in a parliamentary democracy, but in the US it will lead to one party getting in power forever. Stagnation is never good, I can tell you that like someone who lived in Soviet Union.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
I actually wrote both my state district senator and representative this week in support of a bill to legalize concealed carry of weapons in Kansas. I also was in contact with a rep I know personally. Today I'm writing the rep that introduced the bill to thank her for her efforts. All the people I spoke with were happy to talk about their position and genuinely seemed glad to hear from a constituent. It probably doesn't happen very often. That is very sad. I'd like to see a system where a rep puts up a poll on a website that asks what their constituents think that reps stance should be on a given bill/topic. The rep doesn't have to follow their opinions of course but it would at the very least give the constituents a speedy voice, something that doesn't exist today. There would of course have to be some sort of auth for this to work. I'll leave that as an exercise for the creative mind.
The actual site I wanted to refer to is here
Here is another site that seems to argue differently and thinks Instant Runoff is better than Condorcet. Possibly this is a liberal slant, which may indicate that there is belief that Instant Runoff helps liberals, while Condorcet helps conservatives (or libertarians, who don't want to be called conservative), though I can't think of any real reason why.
However both sites think "Approval" voting is better than Instant Runoff.
FYI
RAID-1 is what you'd want. RAID-0 is for combining the capacity of disks, RAID-1 is for redundant mirroring.
And really, RAID is a good idea for almost any major business with important data. You're more likely to have a hard drive frag itself than the FBI raid you anyways, but it's useful in either occasion I suppose.
What difference will voting make? This type of behavior has been an increasing problem under the democrats and the republicans. Third parties have essentially been eliminated. Are there any examples in history where citizens have voted their way out from underneath an increasingly oppressive government?
What the hell is this crap about toeing party lines? I never have understood it. It's utter bullshit from no matter what angle you look at it. Voters who vote for a candidate just because they are Democrats are fools. They aren't voting on the issues or for the man/woman. They're voting with a word. A single fscking meaningless, pointless, worthless word. Elected official who toe party lines and vote against a bill or resolution simply because it was introduced by the other defunct party is a damned dishonest fool. He/she isn't there voting for the issues that his constituents elected him/her for. They are voting to maintain their party's power and to keep their own job. That's as dishonest as it gets.
What the hell is the point of having political parties? Why can't our elected officials just vote on the issues? Why the hell do they have to play party games? Elected Offical A runs for office by taking a particular stance on Hot Issue Z. His constituents elect him to office because of his stance on Z (and other stances of course). A bill is introduced regarding issue Z. His party Pink doesn't actually like Z and wants to instead vote for Y. Who is Elected Official A loyal to? The people that elected him to office and that he's representing? Or the club Pink that he claims to be a member of? I never will understand the point of political parties.
http://alpha.dnsresolution.net/~foonet/more/xevian .txt
would post the text, but the line length daemon sez no way %-)
On Sunday, CJB announced they were shutting down their IRC network.
Many of the channels on mirc were anime/manga channels, and they scrambled to set up temporary homes on other nets, with many going to Aniverse (irc.aniverse.com). Said script kiddie followed, pissed off the Aniverse IRCops and then started attacking aniverse.com's IRC net. It was still down as of last night.
Good riddance to the kind of NP that caters to these kind of people, and I hope the FBI is knocking on this guy's door soon.
I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego
The biggest reason to vote for a fringe party is because if they get a significant percent of the vote, the major parties will try to integrate it into their platform.
So even if a minor party strives hard to get 4% of the vote... it's a win, because 4% is enough to make a difference between D and R, so both parties will want it.
... typical ham fisted approach.
... this shit never ceases to amaze me.
Now they will lose their business because the FBI couldn't wait for them to process their files.
Newflash: FBI, it will take you just as long.
l8,
AC
Unless the hosting service itself is involved in criminal acts, it is unlawful for the FBI to request a search or seizure of "work product materials possessed by a person reasonably believed to have a purpose to disseminate to the public a newspaper, book, broadcast, or other similar form of public communication, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce". This includes hosting services; that was established in the Steve Jackson Games case. The service itself, not its users, has to be engaged in criminal activities before search and seizure can take place.
The FBI is usually quite careful about this, having been publicly embarassed in the Steve Jackson Games case. So the question is whether there are criminal charges against the hosting service.
I wonder if they bothered to check the carnivore logs first.
Given that the only parties that can are electable are both troublesome, I think the best bet is to have as much friction as possible. What that means is to never have congress and the White House controlled by one party. Very, very few laws help regular people so the best bet is to minimize the number of laws Washington writes, and the best way to do this is to have them fighting amongst themselves. This was a SERIOUS mistake to allow Bush in while congress is controlled by the same party.
I believe that was the assumption when Germans voted for the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.
I was affected by this, as my company used motionxl.com (who consequently used CIT Hosting) as our web hosting and email provider. I had to spend some time last week explaining why we needed to find a new provider, as the FBI had simply confiscated all our data, including databases and other files. motionxl.com had been unable to retrieve their server even though their box only did hosting, and the FBI's warrant was for a box that launched a DoS attack.
Government: 1, civil liberties: 0.
In a domestic violence case, some whacko sent a couple of death threats from a couple of our public access machines.
The police department got the ip address of the client machine from yahoo, and came to us. When they had the proper authorization, we turned the hard drives over to them.
The detective said it was good we could track the dhcp addresses. In a serious enough case (threaten El Presidente, serial killer), if we couldn't identify the relevant machines they would have taken all of them to find what they wanted.
Rule 1002 of the Federal Rules of Evidence requires that an original document or object be used to prove something. Waiving this rule means that you accept your equipment back, but agree to allowing the FBI's copy of your original hard drive's being deemed as the equivalent of originals.
Rule 1002. Requirement of Original
To prove the content of a writing, recording, or photograph, the original writing, recording, or photograph is required, except as otherwise provided in these rules or by Act of Congress.
I would guess that the smartest thing to do when you receive your evidence back is to make a hash / MD5sum of your enitre hard drive's contents, or individual MD5sums of each partitions' data to corroborate that what you got back matches what you gave. Or is that being too paranoid? Of course, this would work better if your had hashes or off-site backups of your machines that you could also create hashes of. But then if you had off-site backups, this wouldn't have been that much of a problem. Or would the FBI have confiscated the off-site backups too?
That's Standard Operating Procedure. The FBI doesn't say 'Hey, can we please get root on your servers for a minute?'. They come in with a SWAT team and say 'keep your hands where I can see them'. If they have reason to believe crimes are being committed, then they have the jurisdiction to apprehend criminals and collect evidence. Here is a hint: Don't break the law and don't allow your hosting clients to commit crimes using your servers. If you don't know what's going on on your machines, it's your own fault.
Foonet are a bunch of spammers anyway, the feds are doing us all a favor.
TallGreen CMS hosting
Gore lied (in a speech I attended) on a university campus with a top ten medical school about how "helpful" government controlled healthcare would be and to look at Canada. This university was in Washington and it was pretty much standard practice for pre-med students to look at other nations' health care systems. Canada's is definitely broken. Because he lied to a group educated more than himself on a subject was how he lost my vote. If I could go back in time, I would give him my vote, but only reluctantly because Bush squandered the good will of the world toward America and went to war without just cause. Nationalized health care is pretty damn scary as well. So is someone in power who obviously didn't have his facts straight...
The parent poster, The Unabageler, must have a lot more weight to push around than the average Joe. I *do* write to my government. More often than not, they send a canned answer to part of my letter (if they bother to answer at all) and blatently ignore factual evidence I bring to them about their policy that I disagree with. My writing hasn't made an iota of difference so far. I've got at least 6 letters under my belt just for last year.
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
In light of recent government decrees in Oceania, it should be insightful, not funny.
First let me preface that I havn't had any association/communication with Paul in years, but back in the mid-90's I Knew Paul, the owner of FooNet (Now CIT) in relation to a Small ISP I used to be a corporate officer of/part own/work for (we were the coloc host of the fledgling FooNet.net's first server 'foonix' if I recall correctly). Things could have changed since then but I very much doubt so.
Back in the day, Paul was very much into the warez/irc scene and seeing the UseNet Articles that are around about FooNet, it seems to be pretty much the same as it used to be, only quite a bit larger. I don't know that I'd actually place CIT in the 'innocent' category, as even back then he knowingly hosted practically anything and anyone that would pay him.
Evidence seems point to quite similar behavior of FooNet/CIT as I had experienced in the 90's, so, I'd say good riddence to one more large spam/DDoS host.
Under Gore we would not have a half trillion deficit and growing larger (because of the usual cowardly politician trick of deferring the pain to later years).
Under Gore we would not have an energy policy of INCREASING oil consumption.
Under Gore we would not see religious bigotry proposed as national policy.
Under Gore we would not see a tax policy goal of entrenching wealth.
Under Gore we would not see the concept of overtime eviscerated.
Under Gore we would not see environmental laws written by and for the convenience of polluters.
The Dems are a centrist party, the Republicans right-wing (and run by feudalists).
No difference? How pure a stance you are making! How stupid.
USA! USA! USA! USA!
That's all the justification I need, so I'm with YOU "kill-9-0"! Saying the US is the best place in the world is truth on its face, so screw those people and their "measurements". You've posted tons of facts that are impossible to refute. Even though nobody was saying that "everything the government does is wrong", you've gone right ahead and answered all the questions that were on everybody's mind. Thanks!
I believe that they're looking for the people that's been DDOSing IRC servers like irc.mircx.com and irc.aniverse.com.
I really dont understand how the FBI can treat every computer system they confiscate as safe to pick-up and stick in the back of a van. Either that or i dont understand how anyone with data thats either criminal or very confidention hasnt caught on to the fact that they could erase it before its even loaded into the van! take a few machines (or remote backup if needed) and stick them on a UPS. The vital data is then loaded into RAM along with the 'loading/unloading' program and removed from the drive, only a correct procedure will restore it back to disk. In come the FBI and shut it down, oops they just lost all the evidence they were looking for including the program that was responsible for loading and unloading the data into memory - absolutely no evidence left, no trace, nothing to say you even damaged evidence - an offence in itself.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Here is one case for going offshore and out of the reach of the local cowboys. Doesn't look too much like a free country when you have to go elsewhere to protect your property.
I will grant that support of corrupt and oppressive governments in the Middle East has done a lot to make us hated there. Support for Israel is another big thing.
On a more fundamental - or fundamentalist - level, we have two conflicting world views. bin-laden wants fundamentalist islamic states everywhere. The West wants pluralistic, open societies. (though the political leadership wants corporate-dominated societies...) How do you resist the former? Turkey might be a target for violent transformation to a sharia-based society. Support the modernizing government, and the suicide attacks at home start all over. Don't support them, and another state is assimilated. Next.
I guess my point is that some fraction of terrorism is produced by one's illegitimate actions. The remainder is produced by the legitimate ones. I think it is the moral, sound, and sensible thing to do to oppose the creation of fundamentalist states. (At home and abroad!)
yup...smells like 1984...but probably a bit worse.
It's a sad day for real patriots; those who fight and died for our Constitution throughout the years.
[sarcasm] On a lighter note, if we can find a way to hook up a generator to those spinning bodies, our energy crisis(es) would be gone forever. [/sacrasm]
Are posted here. It looks like this is all 'by the book' to me.
There is only one voting system where it is impossible to produce a "surprising" outcome. That being literally "one man (wiht) one vote", i.e. a dictatorship. *All* of the other schemes have a mathematical "odd part."
In your summary of the analysis you overlook the fact that in order to suffer a reversal, there still has to be more people who want the republican than the democrat. (etc.) That is, the point of inflection happens *only* *if*, in this scenerio, thre are four party candidates: Republican, Democrat, Republican-lite (libertarian?) and Democrat-lite (Green?). [The *-lite candidates are candidates who are selected as first-vote candidates, with their second-vote going to the non-lite party.]
In order for the Republican to win (in the inferred degenerate case), the number of the Republican and Republican-lite voters must must make up more than 50% of the electorate. The FUD is that IRV is flawed becasue the least-voted-for person in the current iteration becomes the swing-votes for the next iteration. This isn't however, the real flaw.
The Real Flaw(tm) is that IRV degenerates as voters disapear in the runoffs. Lets keep our original candidate pool of R Rl D and Dl but then add a Comunist (spoiler). In the definition of the spoiler here, lets say that S always gets the least votes. In the simplest spoiler scenerio the spoiler-voters only vote for S. After the first iteration the Comunist is removed and we are back to the original model with those votes distributed among the other parties. Seems fair right?
But what if the S voters don't have a second choice? Well then the fact that they voted just disapears from the model. Still fair.
The apparent purturbation happens when, say, the S voters have a second choice of Rl, but don't have a third choice of R. If Rl is still the next eleminated party. You can end up with a situation where the sum of (R + Rl + D + Dl) nets no winner, but when Rl is eleminated you might end up with the total voter pool reduced in size so that R becomes the winner. But for that to be true, the total voters for R must outnumber th total voters for D and Dl.
I call this the "apparent" purturbation because it is only a correct result if all the S voters wouldn't have voted at all if there hadn't been an S party.
That is, R wins with less than 50% of the "original" vote even though they have more than 50% of the surviving vote. This looks like a problem because people start guessing about the "mandate of the people" for those people who got eleminated.
This isn't really a problem, however, if the voter can rank all the candidates. That is, if the voter isn't limited to, say 5 ranked votes in a field of 7 or more candidates, then the "failure to rank" into the final vote is a proper abstain.
It is also proper to discount the abstained voters because if you don't you could easily end up with no result at all.
Only if the IRV rankings are limited to some number less than the size of the field do you end up with really purturbed results.
Another complication arrises with voters who would rank Dl, Rl, then D, for instance, because their second choice (Rl) may never experience the benefit of their second-standing. In particular it appears that, in a change up situation where most/all of the *-lite voters have "the other" *-lite as their second rank, things may seem a little dicy. You get some chaotic cross over that, if you look at the raw numbers seems "surprising."
This is not *really* a problem mathematically, but the whining electroate might see it as unfair.
Still in all, if the voters percieve there to be dominant parties (R and D) and rank their votes all the way up to their perceived dominant party, the system ends up "closest to fair" of the curent alternatives.
The "odd looking" part comes out if you were to sum up the votes "the other way" by adding a tickmark next to each candidate if that candidate appears in any chain of votes. You might find that Rl h
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Seems to me the cause of them getting raided in the first place was they didn't log enough of their customers actions to be useful to the FBI.
Does Finland have an army capable of defending it from any country in the world?
In 1939 the German Reich had the strongest army in the world. It was easily capable of defending Germany from attack, and in fact was so strong that it defeated most of Europe, brought the British Empire to its knees, almost beat the Soviet Empire, and provoked the US to create a military-industrial complex from which it has suffered ever since.
No I ask you, was Germany free in 1939?
Da Blog
Hmmm, maybe they should of had some image backups made with CDP's SnapBack or SnapBack enabled product and just handed the FBI the tapes and told them to go restore them and search them themselves. That would have shut them up for thier hastiness and would have allowed the provider to keep his equipment and stayed running.
You are from the university, where John T. A. Ely is professor emeritus, who has published a comment about the WHO World Health Report 2000?
To quote:
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
No reasonable person would be in favor of a state without police...that's just a straw man argument. The issue here is that the FBI can just shut you down simply because it believes you're doing something wrong, and you don't get any compensation regardless of whether or not you really were doing something wrong.
If I'm hiding coke in my sofa, and the FBI raids my house and confiscates the sofa, I have no reasonable expectation that I will ever get the sofa back. If they also take apart my easy chair looking for more coke, but don't find it, then, well, I shouldn't have been hiding drugs in my furniture. Tough luck.
However, what if the FBI screws up, and they don't find anything, even though they trash all of my furniture? It seems pretty reasonable that they owe me the cost of all the furniture, EVEN IF there was no way they could have known. In other words, even if they cross all their t's and dot all their i's, if they don't come up with anything, they still wrongfully accused me, and thus they owe me compensation.
By the same token, if they shut down a business, and they don't find evidence to accuse the business owner of a crime, the FBI should be responsible for every penny the company lost while their equipment was getting sniffed and probed by the FBI nerds, plus something for their trouble.
There's no reason why I should have to sue to get compensated...if you're not going to falsely accuse me I should be automatically compensated the instant my name is cleared.
The problem is that as it stands now is that the FBI could just hose an operation like 2600 for some minor offense and just keep their equipment indefinitely. Accountability, especially the financial kind will go a long way towards preventing the Gov's cronies from abusing their powers.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
I'm sorry to break this to you all, but this hosting provider is far from innocent.
I believe that is for the courts to decide, not the FBI.
Gore's not standing because he doesn't want to. There are a lot of people that wish he hadn't decided so.
Hmmm, can't hit submit yet because of the two minute rule, so here's a link for you to click. Nothing to do with the above, just a guy's blog that's kind of interesting. You might like it.
Sorry, I could've sworn I'd reloaded the page just a minute ago... *boink*
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I hate to ask a stupid question and in no way am I casting judgment either way. But, how big was this hosting site? With todays large disks, "a few terabytes" might be a single box under someone's desk...
So, how big was this hosting center? less than 5 computers? less than 10? 20? 50? 100+?
I can just see why the FBI might consider taking them, if after searching for awhile, it was only a few machines to pick up and throw in a van.
OTOH I can see why owners of some data centers with hundreds of computers heads might be spinning just thinking about how big a disaster it would be if they were shut down.
And I thought the US was the 'home of the free'??? Glad I don't live in the home of the free.
Recalling from memory (appologies for the current lack of articles at hand), there was a strong influx of Canadian doctors in the US because of the nationalized system. Canadian patients are also hopping the border for health care because it will take less time to be seen by an American doctor than a Canadian one.
I am hearing horror stories still from Canadian friends who are waiting in lines to wait in further lines to sign forms before they are even seen by someone.
The US health care system is going down the toilet because of HMO regulations (my ghod! have you heard about the life threatening Kaiser is doing by not allowing particular early detection exams? I know three cases second hand (either friend or husband of the person at risk). This isn't going to be fixed by our over-charging, under budgeting, morally reprehensible government. I think that it is scary already the disservice to the medical sciences that Bush is pulling, among them, giving federal dollars to private religious groups for abstinence-only programs and dissallowing funding for programs that talk about condoms or contraception. I *so* hate that the republican party continuously sells its soul to the religious right.
I will see if I can find the articles I'm pulling from memory, but that means digging through old pre-med boxes that I'm not sure I brought with me in the last move.
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
Foonet? Back when I used to IRC, it was owned by a script kiddie who ran the local #warez channel. To hear that it was host to " spammers, packet kiddies, script kiddies, carders, and other illegal activities" would not exactly come as a surprise to me.
don't you mean dmca?? i'm lucky i don't live in the 'land of the free' either, don't have to worry about the fbi, dmca, riaa or people insulting my president.
- gpb
Remove the hard drives! Does the CPU store information/logs? no.. how about the power supply? ahh no.. So open the case and remove the drives.
Every man is two men,
One is awake in the darkness,
The other is asleep in the light.
...or else you could end up having to explain to your customers that the FBI has your server and you don't know when you're getting it back like this guy did.
--
A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest men. -Willy Wonka
Not trolling but this is what happens when you vote for morons
This is one of those times where the government violates all constitutional protections to the point that citizens so violated damn near have a DUTY to exercise their second amendment rights. There is no excuse for the government putting a company out of business if their only requirement is to copy data. And if the FBI is unable to do so on-site in an orderly manner, it is their failure not the fault of the ISP. ISPs have long been given the protection of a "Common Carrier" just like the telcos. They are not responsible for monitoring the content of user conversations any more than ATT/MCI/Sprint are to monitor personal phone calls. Can you imagine the FBI shutting down AT&T and confiscating their equipment because a couple hackers were discussing DDoSing? It really is getting to the point that US citizens need to start pushing back against an overbearing government. Quite frankly, take away cable TV and consumer goods and little separates the USA of today and the Soviet Union of the 1960s and 70s as far as freedom and liberty go.
Argue about who is right and wrong allyou want but there is one point missing here.
Anyone who shoots at cops or even threatens a cop
is very, very stupid. The only sensible thing to do when the cops show up to arrest you is to let them do their job and keep your mouth shut. Anything else can get you killed.
I share many of the concerns about abuse of
government power. I even think that cops can be way too trigger happy. But Randy Weaver and the Waco bunch both threatened the cops (I think the Waco guys even shot some). That is insanely stupid.
The truth is an offense, but not a sin.------R. N. Marley
The terminology in vogue is "republicrat".
My shell a/c got shut due to this raid as my shell hosting company had hosted their servers at CIT(Foonet).One fine day it goes *poof* and i realise that theres no shell company and no servers.
How much time does it take to copy all the data from these servers to analyse it or as someone said, just keep the frigging hard disks! Hehe apparently these FBI blokes still are'nt that tech savvy.Hope they sent the cyber crime dept of the FBI to check things and not the local FBI desk cleaners.
Lord of the Binges.
True, but the 'deleet' bookmarklet m4k3h r34d1|/| I7 4 li'l ez13R.
668.5
...how much damage was done to an innocent ISP...
Zero damage done to "an innocent ISP". CIT aka Foonet are far from innocent of anything. 100% dirty, involved in just about every sort of criminal activity on the Net. Trojan coders, DoS bot networks, huge spam gangs, kiddie porn from eastern europe.
I'm no fan of the jackbooted types, but this time they got it right. Although, they should have done it months ago, back when most of the worldwide DDoS attacks originated from the scum infesting Foonet.
\me waves to Paul. Hope the g-men find something that'll get you some time in club-fed punk. I'm sure there's some Bubba in there who likes chubby, pale, pasty "oh, I'm a 'leet Linux admin" ass!
"Plead or bleed" boy, have your lawyer explain that to ya!
Fuzz got it right this time. Not that it was that hard, CIT/Foonet were not to secretive as to what they and all their script-kiddys were doing.
Mostly mom's-basement teenagers as addicted to DoSing and cracking as some methed up junkie.
But also some real bad guys, lured there by "no questions asked" bullet proof hosting.
Hati
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
There's nothing in the article that says they logged all IRC traffic. Generally this isn't done, as it's considered an invasion of privacy. Why would you waste a terrabyte of data on something as useless as logging IRC?
AccountKiller
In an open society, you can live according to your religious tradition (within limits, as is the case in France). In a fundamentalist society, only the clerics with the guns have the apparent ear of god, and everyone else is a heretic. Witness the horrific violence of the Taliban on Shiites. Do women in Saudi Arabia get to opt out of Wahabi doctrine? I don't think so. That's why the West should want open societies - so that those who don't want to be repressed by religious maniacs don't have to be. But if they wish to live according to extremely conservative religious precepts, they can. Orthodox Jewry seems to do o.k. in the decadent West, and the U.S. has a long history of thriving fundie christian culture.
I grant that it's hard to influence societies this way. The Chinese seem to get pissed off when the U.S. criticizes their kleptocratic, tyrannical, deeply fucked up government. Yo! Nitwits! That's *your* neck the boot is on! We think it is wrong for your shithead government to oppress...you! (The popular, nationalist-based resentment leads them to some goofy conclusions: there appears to be a consensus that their air force is unable to obtain jet fighters that can outrun or outmanouver a propeller driven EP-3 spyplane. They'd put it differently, of course, but that's the only way it could be the U.S. pilot's fault. Maybe China could buy some WWII surplus from the Phillipines. You really have to be a moron, or blinded, to think that a pilot is going to put 24 crewmen at risk initiating a game of chicken. But a fighter jock under orders to harrass a spy plane...that's different. There's no question that China owes the U.S. an apology and reparations. It was only the small matter of hostages that prevented it. Long digression, but, yeah, I agree that people can be stupid in identifying with their governments)
I think the U.S. should clean up its act, but it should also condemn human rights abuses everywhere. Not just nutbag Islamic states (which does not include all Islamic states, or states with Islamic majorities). Bombing a country into a democracy is a pretty retarded way to go about it, I grant you. No argument here on that.
What one it was and how? There are good and bad ones here.
In our case, they'd be ransacking big iron belonging to several major companies other than their intended target. Wanna bet the squeals would reach the White House? Just how much accountability do the feds have when it comes to collateral damage?
If I run a hotel and someone is murdered in the hall? Then the hall is sealed off for as long as needed and my lost business is just though luck.
Of course this is unfair and mean and nasty and lots more. BUT imagine it the other way around.
Say the police had to reimburse the hotel for not being able to rent out its rooms. Had to give you a replacement car.
How many investigations would then take place in the ritz? How many investigations into ferraries involved in hit and runs?
In olden days the rich and powerfull could avoid the police by simply threatning to go over their heads. They had to ask permission to get access to land. This meant the law was only enforced on those without power. We changed the law to make this harder. To allow the police to investigate crimes under control of judges as they think is necessary without having to worry that someone is going to claim "oh but this is really to inconvenient just go away".
If you want to worry about something worry about the amount of compensation given to people who were wrongly convicted (not those who get out on a technicallity but the really innocent). These people really suffer far more but get nothing not even wages for the work they did in prison.
Search warrant seizures are part of the way the police has to work. Yes it is very bad if you are caught in the middle but just imagine what the world would be like without it. Do you think the police would dare raid an Enron or Worldcom if they had to worry about being sued for damages?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Basically in the United States of America, today,
your rights are George W. Bush's rights to
deny.
Ashchrof is just a paun.
George W. Bush wants to have the right to decide
who gets married to who: very similar to Kim Jong
Il.
To have this right, George W. Bush wants to build
the Master Race: George W. Bush will donate
sperm for each marrage: to insure the Pruity of
the Body Fluids and Supermicy of the White Anglo
Saxon Prostestints.
George W. Bush will take all and necessary
measures to insure that George W. Bush is
chrowned the Furer of US.
Sig BUSH
Sig BUSH
Sig BUSH!
1. The FOONET network itself was the target of an investigation (in addition to "customers unknown"), and named so in the warrant. The company itself was a target, not just some customers.
2. "John Does" were specified in the warrant, meaning that before the FBI could ascertain which boxes needed to be targetted (as specified in the warrant) they would have to sift through corporate data to determine which boxes to take. Note that the corporation itself is already under criminal investigation, so it is very unlikely that the FBI could expect any cooperation from the company in determining that information. During that time period it's very likely that said targets of investigation would have the time to remove incriminating evidence from their boxes.
3. The "datacenter" was in dude's BASEMENT. All kinds of illegal activity was occuring on their network. I've heard numbers as high as 80% of the boxes were targets of warrants.
I'm *VERY* pro-civil liberties, and no doubt some civil liberties were violated... HOWEVER, there is the concept of "compelling public interest" that should be taken into account. If there are 100 boxes with kiddie porn and ddos utils on them, and it takes 125 boxes going down to root it out, i think that's a fair compromise. Besides, when you do business with criminals don't expect to come out smelling like a rose.
You can probably expect a SLEW of bills of indictments to come out of this deal... and the world is better off for it. Once again, slashdot ensuring that reporting is "fair and balanced."
U.S. DoD does this all the time during raids.
They aren't required to give it back either.
To paraphrase George Carlin, he's funny but he makes a good point:
:)
On election day, I stay home for 2 reasons:
1)Voting is meaningless. This country was bought and paid for a long time ago. That empty shit they shuffle around and repackage every 4 years doesn't mean a thing.(2000 election ring a bell?)
2)Don't complain if you don't vote? Where's the logic in that? If YOU vote, YOU elect dishonest, incompetent politicians. When they screw everything up, it's YOUR fault. You voted them in, YOU caused the problem, so YOU have no right to complain. You consciously chose them, I had nothing to do with it at all. I was at home the whole time
Argue about who is right and wrong allyou want but there is one point missing here.
Anyone who shoots at cops or even threatens a cop
is very, very stupid. The only sensible thing to do when the cops show up to arrest you is to let them do their job and keep your mouth shut. Anything else can get you killed.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin
The degree to which it is safe to comply with the demands of civil authorities is proportional to the degree of accountability which the civil authorities are held to. If you had valid reasons to believe that you would be falsely accused and handed over to Syria for interrogation under torture, I certainly hope you wouldn't dismiss the option of violently resisting arrest.
Consider the Gestapo as a baseline example of police without accountability. Think it'll never happen again? Take a look at Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Guatemala, Myanmar, or half a dozen other countries I could name. We're quite lucky here in the United States because the vast majority of police do act justly, but it doesn't have to stay that way forever, and it certainly isn't that way everywhere.
Accountability is based on verifiable proof that authority is being justly exercised, not an assumption that the actions taken by authority are warranted. Require them to prove that what they are doing is correct, every step of the way. If their answers aren't valid, then your choice as a rational individual comes down to the balance of risks between acting to protect yourself or unconditionally surrendering to their power.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
Thermite would be less dangerous, but a fire hazard as it melts your equipment. Though I could see selling tape / cd / harddrives with a thermite case enclosed in firebrick long before I could imagine a neighborhood degausser on the market. The thermite jacketed drive'd have to have a build-in fire supression system, too.
I think the lesson is to have two offsite backups
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
'Nuff said
>Warrants sealed, how would you know what is in it unless you are involved on the federal side?
:)
:)
I have detailed inside information. The warrants very specifically listed the hosting company as well as as-of-yet-undetermined customers.
>This isn't even a fact those that run/work for Foonet know bright boy.
What does this sentence mean? If you're implying that foonet itself wasn't a target of the warrant, please observe that the entire network was dismantled. Hear me now, believe me later...
>yeah he must be a REALLY bad guy right to care about his customers and take care of them that way right?
I don't care if he rebooted your DDoS box at 3am or not... the fact of the matter is foonet was a HUGE home for all sorts of black hat operatsion. Please go ask google, go read the blacklists, or observe federal raid for illegal activity. This doesn't happen for no reason.
>Except for the fact that Paul had cooperated with any requests the feds have made of him in the past
Foonet knew and actively protected people who illegally obtain/use creidt card numbers. This is not new information.
rabid script kiddies defending their "unkillable shells" and blackhat haven. Do you understand what kind of badbad activity one has to be involved in to have the federal government raid your "datacenter" and take every box? Go read NANOG, INET-ACCESS, or any other legit and clued internet operations list...
foonet is known to be bad news bears, and they finally got busted. hooray!
IANASC, but
I don't care if he rebooted your DDoS box at 3am or not... the fact of the matter is foonet was a HUGE home for all sorts of black hat operatsion. Please go ask google, go read the blacklists, or observe federal raid for illegal activity. This doesn't happen for no reason.
As far as I've read of foonet, it seems that this seems more like sanctioned (but otherwise illegal) revenge. EFNet/NANOG/$EXPENSIVE_DATACENTER wanted them out, and the lists you refer to seem to put some cloud of mystery around foonet, other than it's just a "bad network". Saw the notice of them shutting down, and saw too many of their competitors, who will in no doubt, be marking up 300% in preparation for former foonet customers. Y BTW, inside information doesnt mean you're not a L.E.O. of some sort.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
Steel doors, three feet thick slam closed sealing off the datacenter. Have all the computers in a vault. Single entry door (now covered by three feet of steel), and sets of quintuple, automatically locking one-way exit doors for the techs in the vault. When the FBI comes, push the Red Button. The vault main doors close, and the techs descend fire poles, with foot thick steel apertures closing off the vertical entrances. Then they file out of the escape doors, into the basement of the administrative facility. When the all clear is sounded (via radio-frequency tags embedded in employee ID tags) and everyone is out of the vault, epoxy resin is force-injected into the space between the quintuple evacuation doors.
Anyway, these places usually have gobs of venture capital. What the FUCK are they spending it on, pool tables and nerf guns?
Pick another battle. Foonet's the WRONG poster child for "violating our rights"... they were, and are, scum. The things they did, and allowed to happen from that network should get a few of them locked up for some time.
There are geeks and evilgeeks, Foonet were the latter.
just because they are criminals doesn't mean that they lose their most basic rights as guaranteed by the Constitution (and basic human rights) nor does it mean that the feds can become like the secret police or the ol' KGB.
Remember, unlike the dark ages, it's innocent until proven guilty now.
The FBI will not seize computers without a warrant. I know this because I just lost a job for ratting to them about child pornography at one of the country's largest construction staffing firms ($100mil in sales last year). Though the local field agents were anxious to put the keibosh on the whole operation, they couldn't, because heresay is not enough evidence to get a subpoena for a raid. It takes a long time to collect evidence before such a raid will ever be authorized, sometimes months or years. So if the CTI data center was seized/shut-down, you can bet there was plenty of evidence already collected, enough to satisfy a judge. Most likely, their traffic was already being monitored, and they have only themselves to blame for condoning illegal activities.
-- Jimtown Kelly
then the U.S. was trespassing.
If it's just a claim, the U.S. has a counter-claim and until resolution of the claims it has the right to fly there. Hell, I claim the rock.
As for spying, call it "intelligence gathering". China has the right to fly outside U.S. territory as well. The Russkies used to tail U.S. fleets with long-range bombers/spy craft.