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Indymedia Server Raided by FBI
jaromil writes "Today at about 18:00 CET FBI raided the indymedia servers hosted by Rackspace both in US and England. At present, the italian indymedia and numerous other local IMC websites are obscured, while the reasons why the hard drives were taken are still unknown."
The NYC Indymedia site is still up and has coverage of their own downtime.
Nobody's exactly sure why or how the FBI got warrants to take Indymedia's HDs, but their speculation tends to center around the fact that the Feds were spooked by the fact that Indymedia was able to publish RNC delegate names. This unfortuantely means political motivations are going to be questioned no matter what reasoning is brought forward.
Not much we can do at this hour but hold our breath and wait for more info to be released.
Suspicious indeed....Possibly linked to RNC delegate identification? See this link from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette
3 .php
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04264/382137.stm
This in from Argentina Indymedia, which has a different view -
FBI took the hard drives of IMC servers in the UK
por Mat ((!)) Thursday October 07, 2004 at 06:10 PM
-
The US authorities issued a subpoena to Rackspace's office in the US ordering them to physically remove Indymedia hardware located in London. Rackspace is one of Indymedia's web hosting providers with offices in the US and London. Rackspace complied and turned over Indymedia's hard drives/servers in the UK. This affects some 20+ Indymedia sites worldwide.
Since the subpoena was issued to Rackspace and not to Indymedia, the reasons for this action are still unknown to Indymedia.
At the same time a second server was taken down at Rackspace which provided streaming radio to several radio stations, BLAG (linux distro), and a handful of miscellanous things.
The last few months have seen numerous attacks on independent media by the US Federal Government. In August the Secret Service used a subpoena in an attempt to disrupt the NYC IMC before the RNC by trying to get IP logs from an ISP in the US and the Netherlands, last month the FCC shut down comunity radio stations around the US, and now the FBI is shutting down IMCs around the world.
The list of affected local media collectives includes Ambazonia, Uruguay, Andorra, Poland, Western Massachusetts, Nice, Nantes, Lilles, Marseille (all France), Euskal Herria (Basque Country), Liege, East and West Vlaanderen, Antwerpen (all Belgium), Belgrade, Portugal, Prague, Galiza, Italy, Brazil, part of the Germany site, UK Radio, and the global Indymedia Radio site.
Micah Anderson of the global imc-tech collective said, "We suspect it has to do with an FBI request that we take down a post on the Nantes IMC that had a photo of some undercover Swiss police. They claimed there was threats and personal information, but there was nothing of the sort. The undercover police that were photographed on the page were photographing protesters. Rackspace is a US company, but have colocation in the UK where these servers are (err, were) located. So this is about Swiss police, on a French site, on a server in England, taken away by American federal police."
However, according to information from IMC Nantes the pictures in question were already removed a week ago.
Link to Argentina Indymedia
http://argentina.indymedia.org/news/2004/10/22769
and one more to NYC Indymedia, which is still up
http://nyc.indymedia.org/
My MythTV HowTo
The Independent Media Center, also called Indymedia or the IMC, is a network of media organizations and journalists. It was started in late November, 1999, to cover the protests of the anti-globalization movement against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, Washington. By 2002, there were 89 local IMCs around the world spread between 31 countries plus the West Bank and 6 continents. The country with the most IMCs is the United States with 39, followed by Canada with 11.
(Source: Wikipedia.org. Released under the GFDL. See article)
Grr! Arg!
Kind of an independent news site.
They liked to live on the edge of annoying the establishment... they were the ones that broke the story of the statue of saddam hussen falling being a put-up job for the assembled press (there were only about half a dozen people there, there rest were reporters/press).
It's not surprising the US want to censor them... surprising they have the guts to do it so publicly though.
Press Release
7 October 2004
FBI Seizes IMC Servers in the UK
US authorities issued a federal order to Rackspace's office in the US ordering them to provide Indymedia's hardware located in London to the requesting agency. Rackspace is one of Indymedia's web hosting providers with offices in the US and London. Rackspace complied, without first notifying Indymedia, and turned over Indymedia's server in the UK. This affects some 20+ Indymedia sites worldwide.
Since the subpoena was issued to Rackspace and not to Indymedia, the reasons for this action are still unknown to Indymedia. Talking to Indymedia volunteers, Rackspace stated that "they cannot provide Indymedia with any information regarding the order." ISPs have received gag orders in similar situations which prevent them from updating the concerns parits on what is happening.
It is unclear to Indymedia how and why a server that is outside the US jurisdiction can be seized by US authorities.
At the same time a second server was taken down at Rackspace which provided streaming radio to several radio stations, BLAG (linux distro), and a handful of miscellanous things.
The last few months have seen numerous attacks on independent media by the US Federal Government. In August the Secret Service used a subpoena in an attempt to disrupt the NYC IMC before the RNC by trying to get IP logs from an ISP in the US and the Netherlands. Last month the FCC shut down community radio stations around the US. Two weeks ago the FBI requested that Indymedia takes down a post on the Nantes IMC that had a photo of some undercover Swiss police and IMC volunteers in Seattle were visited by the FBI on the same issue. On the other hand, Indymedia and other independent media organisations have been successful with their victories (thanks to the EFF), for example against Diebold and the Patroit Act. Today however, the US authorities shut down IMCs around the world.
The list of affected local media collectives includes Ambazonia, Uruguay, Andorra, Poland, Western Massachusetts, Nice, Nantes, Lilles, Marseille (all France), Euskal Herria (Basque Country), Liege, East and West Vlaanderen, Antwerpen (all Belgium), Belgrade, Portugal, Prague, Galiza, Italy, Brazil, UK, part of the Germany site, and the global Indymedia Radio site.
obody's exactly sure why or how the FBI got warrants to take Indymedia's HDs, but their speculation tends to center around the fact that the Feds were spooked by the fact that Indymedia was able to publish RNC delegate names.
Another theory is around some pictures of undercover Swiss police (photographing protesters) that were posted on an IMC site (IMC Nantes) - Indymedia got a request to remove 'identifying information' from the site (apparently the FBI got involved 'as a courtesy' to the Swiss authorities). Since there were no identifying details, Indymedia didn't do anything in response.
It would seem strange for an American agency to get a warrant to seize information relating to Swiss undefcover police from a French website, but it's the most solid theory I've heard so far.
has more information, they suspect it is related to the posting of pictures of undercover police officers. Oddly enough the officers were photographing protesters.
An "independent" media site. They tend to have left-ist articles (e.g., they cover goverment corruption, torture, protests against WTO, attacks on free speech, what the FBI is doing, etc). They allow readers to post comments to articles, similar to our favorite /..
:-)
They are not owned by large media companies, and do not give money to politicians (AFAIK - they dont' have much cash). They operate on a shoe-string budget and need more computers.
And less legal problems.
There's a short answer
--LWM
IndyMedia doesn't claim to be unbiased... the site admits that it leans left.
Quit your bitching, instead stop calling people who don't have a clue nasty names and throw them a bone.
Who is Indymedia you ask? click the link bellow
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indymedia
Sig
That was a civil case where the anti-abortion group had a site had the doctor's pictures in targets and when each doctor was killed, they crossed off the dead doctor. This was a civil suit holding them responsible for the results of their speech which encouraged the murders of the doctors. This is different from just posting the information on the delgates -- without targets, without orders to kill, etc.
Fight Spammers!
"The US authorities issued a subpoena to Rackspace's office in the US ordering them to physically remove Indymedia hardware located in London"
They wouldn't be obliged to take down the server in a foreign country. Believe it or not, UK soil is subject to UK law, not American law.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
'... On Aug. 18, an anonymous poster to nyc.indymedia.org published the names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of 1,600 delegates to the Republican National Convention in New York City along with a message for anti-RNC groups to use the information "in whatever way they see fit."
[As noted in this previous post, 10464479 ]
Kiddies this is pretty much the quickest way to get your hardware confiscated.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Most recently: http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20041005-024 050-1855r.htm
I find it ironic that a bunch of anti-violence, anti-gun, peacemongers, like Democrats would behave this way. The anti-Bush crowd is foaming at the mouth. Have you all had your shots?
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
These were AFL-CIO protestors. Here you go.
http://www.wftv.com/news/3786807/detail.html
I've just signed legislation that'll outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in five minutes.
Check out the Infoshop story (found via Google News). Turns out Rackspace has indeed been instructed not to comment on this.
It was a group called American Coalition of Life Advocates (ACLA). A good description is at Gigalaw.
Fight Spammers!
Liberal activists are not exactly known for being the militant types (just ask any Republican)
Except for when they shoot up Republican campaign offices and burn swastikas in Republicans' yards...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
The first two of your examples haven't been heard of in over thirty years. The third (ELF) are not much more than vandals.
And you'd probably cringe at the thought of the World Church of the Creator, the Klan, or other denizens of the radical Right held up as examples of American conservatism.
The Panthers and Weathermen were Leftists, not liberals (in fact, they scorned liberals for participating in a system that they considered bankrupt and corrupt). Some '60s leftists held decidedly illiberal views (e.g., Maoist communism).
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
I asked them what the US government's interest was in Swiss police and French websites. They informed me that no law had been violated but they were just requesting on behalf of the Swiss government that the identifying information be removed. I clarified that their concern was with the identifying information, and not with the photographs, because taking pictures of someone in a public forum is not objectionable. They agreed with me and said that their only concern was the identifying information.
I asked them for the URL of the offending post. They did not know what a URL was. I asked them what the address was for the post-- "the address you would type into your internet browser." They looked confused, consulted their notes, and stated that they weren't sure, but they thought it was http://natz.indymedia.org (in fact, the correct address is nantes.indymedia.org). I informed them that it would be very difficult to track down the post considering that there are thousands of posts on indymedia sites everyday.
I told them that the Seattle Indymedia Center has no authority regarding the Nantes Indymedia Center and that they should probably direct their request directly to the Nantes Indymedia Center. They left.
I pulled up the Nantes site. On the front page of the site, at the very top, was a large logo of the FBI, and an article regarding how their ISP (Rackspace) had received a request from none other than the FBI to remove a certain post...
Nothing happened for a few days, and then today the server is gone. This is what we know for a fact:
Indymedia is working on a press release on this matter and is working with EFF to assess its legal options.