Secret Service Seeks Indymedia Logs

sunbird writes "The Justice Department has issued a subpoena seeking IP logs from Calyx, the ISP for nyc.indymedia.org, after individuals posted [1 | 2 | 3] the names, addresses, and phone numbers of some of the RNC delegates. The subpoena was issued as part of an ongoing investigation of voter intimidation. As reported earlier in this Slashdot article, the Justice Department tried this before. Calyx, represented by the ACLU, responded, claiming that '[t]he only intimidation taking place here is the Secret Service intimidating people who speak out against the government.' [Full text of the letter available here] Read more: Indymedia.org | NYT"

Comments

For those interested.

[xenostar]

NYC protest radio http://radio.socialtechnology.net/listen.html

cryptome has the delegate info.

[Anonymous Coward]

john young, doing what he does best:

http://cryptome.org

this line is just filler

as is this one.

All the facts.

[TheLoneCabbage]

This guy hacked the ProtestWarrior website and stole the info. It wasn't just delagets it was people registered at PW. Private emails, phone numbers, names addresses. Furthermore posted that information to the world on IndyMedia with the full aproval of it's editing staff. Then suggested that people call and harrass everyone on the list.

I don't give a @#$% what your political offiliation is that is wrong. It is violation of PW servers with intent to do harm. It is violation of their covenant of privacey with their members. It is harasment of people because of their beliefs.

It's one thing to protest, it's another to make personal attacks.

We have secret ballot in America for a reason!

I'll see you all at the polls Nov 2nd!

Idiot

[GreenCrackBaby]

If you had bothered to read the ACLU page linked, you would have seen that the information that was posted is publicly available.

They're not necessarily public officials.

[VT_hawkeye]

Not solely by virtue of being delegates, anyway. The only definitive statement you can make is that these people were selected by (generally) the members of a political party to participate in ITS process for choosing a presidential election nominee, and that can be as private a process as the party wants it to be. The public gets its say in the general election (yes, I know there are exceptions, notably Louisiana and Virginia).

Some of them probably are public officials (it's reasonably likely that if your Senator or Congressman is a Republican, s/he is there; some delegates also may be local office holders), but many others are like this girl, private, politically interested, citizens who do not hold elected office.

The posting of their personal info is an invasion of privacy, but that's not why the DoJ is involved. They're involved because of the threats to the safety of these individuals just a few clicks away on the site in question.

micro-HOWTO: anonymous logging

[Yeb]

Admins, here's a few tweaks you can make to your configs to protect the privacy of your users.

Apache
======
In httpd.conf:

LogFormat "noip - - %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\" %T %V" noip
CustomLog /var/log/httpd/access_log noip

This will keep the format of the logs the same as the default, but instead of
having an IP in the logs it will read "noip". The logs can still be processed by
programs such as webalizer.

Squid
=====
In squid.conf add:

client_netmask 0.0.0.0

pure-ftpd
=========
When compiling, run ./configure using --without-iplogging

Indymedia did not do this

[br00tus]

I see several posts here saying Indymedia did this, Indymedia posted the names. Indymedia did NOT post the names. Indymedia is like Slashdot, ANYONE can post. Blaming Indymedia for something a poster said would be like saying CmdrTaco was supporting what some anonymous Slashdot poster said, or blaming the Usenet cabal for a posting by some anonymous Usenet poster. I just wanted to make this clear as several people have said here that Indymedia took this position. I don't think they understand what Indymedia is. Yesterday I read through a dozen posts by people who hate the protestors on the nyc.indymedia.org site. nyc.indymedia.org is in many ways just like Slashdot in terms of anonymous posters and so forth. They can't be blamed for every bozo that comes along.

Re:Free Speech Was A Terrorist Victim

[deacon]

Bzzzttt!!!

Wrong.

Thanks for playing.

The people getting attacked in the protests are those who dare to disagree with the party line of the "Peace" and "Anti-War" crowd.

I am talking about the Protest Warrior people that were attacked by "Patriots" in NYC.

Link goes to video of the attack.

The brave reader can also google for the urine filled balloons that "Peace Loving" protesters threw at police.

Yuck.

your posts on slashdot aren't a political platform

[SethJohnson]

As someone who might have chosen to be in the Republican Party, don't you think it might be helpful to be able to contact your delegate before they ratify the party platform or nominate their candidates? In Texas, the GOP ratified its state party platform containing the following planks:

• p.17: "The Party supports the termination of bilingual education programs..."
• p.15: "We call for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education and the prohibition of the transfer of any of its functions to any other federal agency."
• p.10: Celebrating Traditional Marriage calls for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, and opposes the legalization of "sodomy" ie homosexuality.
• p. 2 #18: "We oppose the Endangered Species Act."
• p.8, Christian Nation: "The Republican Party of Texas affirms the United States of America is a Christian Nation ..."

Upon finding out that you might agree or disagree with some of these elements, you probably would like to contact your national delegate to urge that person to listen to your input before the national party platform is finalized. The Indymedia list seems to be a valuable reference for doing so.

Re:what the heck?

[Darby]

In any case, the aforementioned 'missing' records would quiet a lot of screaming howls from the rabid-left.

About a month ago, the pentagon admitted they had the records. There is no recordof Bush being paid during that time, there is no record of him showing up for duty for a year.

There are no more "missing" records.