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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."
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.
I bet there is more to the story than we are hearing. There was a search warrent from the "United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio"
To get a search warrent you have to have something to go on already.
Evolution or ID?
If everything was shut down, how come http://www.cithosting.com/ is still up and running? If all the equipment was taken, wouldn't the web page that's being shown on that site be gone...shouldn't it be hard to connect to anything on that site at all?
The fact is, this story is old because the FBI has already started returning the equipment back as of yesterday. The FBI confiscated everything on the 14th. CIT's web site says:
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.
Yes, the FBI overstepped they're bounds and yes it's frightening to think of this happening...but let's not get the facts wrong. The story here on Slashdot made is seem like the equipment was seized and the FBI probably won't be returning it, which isn't the case.
When reporting the crap that the US Gov throws at us, don't embelish...just report what is known and not a lot of speculation.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
A search warrant is one thing, shutting down a private enterprise because a couple agents got impatient or paranoid is another issue entirely.
We keep hearing about liberal judges this and liberal judges that in the media, but there are just as many conservative judges giving law enforcement rubber stamps on warrants.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
If their business was based on not turning anything over to the spooks, well, so much for that idea.
I think the parent was probably referring to uptime guarantees, which the confiscation of equipment has caused the ISP to fail on, rather than anything to do with data privacy.
This is all just speculation, naturally, but such a scenario would be very similar to other fourth amendment workarounds--perform broad, illegal searches (e.g. infrared through walls, which is inadmissible in the U.S. without a warrant) to target homes for additional surveillance. From the results of that illegal search, "happen to" notice something "on routine patrol," then get a warrant, and voila`--untainted evidence usable in court.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
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.
Let me fill you in on Foonet.
Foonet was the blackest of the black hat networks in existance. They hosted spammers, carders (credit card theives), DDoS drones, floodnets, and various other illegal activities and blindly turned the opposite way and let it happen.
Foonet was based out of the basement of the owners' house. There was no actual 'data center'. They had a T3 and a few T1s - nowhere near the OC-X level they were claiming.
They got tossed off of GBLX about a week before they were raided, and were humping the light at Qwest right before they got pulled.
I knew about this right after it happened.
Foonet will not be coming back, so get over it kiddies. Your DDoS drones are gone. Spammers, your mail servers are gone. Go run and hide under another rock.
A little hint for all of you who can't figure it out - the FBI doesn't usually seize all equipment if its something small. If they took all of the equipment, there is a good reason why they did (not that foonet was acting 'too slow').
I have a list of stuff about foonet on the AHBL page here.
Brielle
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the FBI has been doing this in computer crime cases since the last few years of the Clinton administration under that bastion of civil liberties (nevermind Waco, Ruby Ridge, or Elian Gonzalez) Janet Reno, and it didn't require several TB of potential evidence to make it happen.
The FBI will attempt to work with any provider in order to get the data they need to investigate a crime. If that is impossible to do in a 'reasonable amount of time' they have little choice but to confiscate the equipment in order to copy the existing data from the machines to conduct a forensic investigation. A reasonable amount of time is generally a couple of hours to a day. Believe me, the last thing some poor special agent wants to do is sift through TBs of customer crap and put a company out of business or under financial hardship.
Remember the Alamo, and God Bless Texas...
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
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.
I read every single one, fine thank you. The article too.
Maybe we are only getting half the story, and maybe we are getting all of it. The difference is that I am relying on the information I do have and you are relying on information that _must_ exist, but have no proof of because you can't believe that this kind of thing would happen otherwise.
I believe it is entirely possible that the FBI acted in such a manner because they felt that CIT was either stalling or even destroying evidence. I can only assume that they presented this theory to a judge, backed it up with some evidence and got the warrant. However, all of that is speculation.
I worked in the legal system on both sides of the coin as a paralegal before I saw the light and switched to IT. I can only go on my personal experience when I say that this could indeed be the whole story. I have personally seen judges rubber stamp warrants with zero evidence and I have seen judges refuse to sign warrants with all kinds of evidence. I have seen law enforcement officials embellish and even fabricate evidence for the purpose of getting a warrant and I've seen law enforcement officials vehemently defend a defendant's rights.
My point in the previous post, may have been a little incendiary, but the point is DO NOT discount the story simply because you think there MUST be more to it, when it could simply be all there is to it.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Basically, if they guarantee MY server's uptime, and MY server is confiscated due to them not providing the data on another customer (important point) in time, THEY pay ME. Their fault.
Wrong. There is a clear common law legal principle that is considered inherent in contracts. You cannot contract anything that is a violation of the law.
In this situation, the facts are rather murky. If the hosting company was the cause of the FBI seizure then you might have a contractual violation. But the hosting company cannot be held to have violated its ToS because the FBI made a unilateral decision to seize equipment. The alternative that you suggest is that the hosting company resist compliance with the search warrant and ultimately the seizure. You, as a customer, cannot insist on that...no matter what your contract says.
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.
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
There's almost certainly more to the story. I've had some experience with FBI "raids" where I used to work. It was a semi-large hosting provider in south Florida. I worked there from about 1999-2002. In that time, we had FBI "visits" at least 5 times in that time period because of nasty stuff our customers were doing.
Not ONCE did the FBI leave the property with our machines. The key was cooperation. The FBI agents knew what would happen if they left with our equipment, and knew that we would do everything in our power to help them get the job done without having to resort to that.
Heck, I even showed them better ways to get data off of the machine. We had a good working relationship. They'd show up with the warrant/subpoena, we'd go pull the machine that had the data they wanted. We'd assign one of our technicians (usually me) to help them copy everything over. They'd be out the door with whatever data it was they needed by the end of the day on hard disks they brought onsite with them.
The fact that the FBI left with their machines indicates to me that the provider did something stupid to piss off the agents. They probably made everything as difficult as they possibly could, and the FBI agents got sick of it, and said, "Screw this, I can get this done in the lab without all of this bullshit."... and then they did it.
In my experience, most law enforcement (especially FBI) consider themselves professionals. Usually, they're not out to get you personally, they're just out to do their job. If you don't make their day any harder than necessary, they're not going to make YOUR day any harder than necessary.
So to the extent that you feel you can, MAKE THEIR DAY EASIER. They'll tend to do the same.
No wonder congress has to keep bickering about wether we should maintain travel bans and trade sanctions against Cuba.
Because clearly the 40 or so years of sanctions have worked.
Meanwhile, we give most favored nation trading status to China.
-dave
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
Randy Weaver (the "Ruby Ridge guy") was not responsible for the deaths, the FBI was. An Idaho court found this to be true, but as federal agents the people responsible were not answerable to a state court and they literally got away with murder.
The rules at the time were that any Cuban who made it to USA soil was eligible for asylum.
Buy why am I even discussing this with someone who exchanges emails with mass murderers? Or did you lie about that, too?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
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
The existence of right wing cranks is not proof of abuse, but it is also not proof of innocence on the part of the FBI.