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Indymedia Seizures Initiated In Europe
daveschroeder continues: "Rackspace's statement reads, 'In the present matter regarding Indymedia, Rackspace Managed Hosting, a U.S. based company with offices in London, is acting in compliance with a court order pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), which establishes procedures for countries to assist each other in investigations such as international terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering. Rackspace responded to a Commissioner's subpoena, duly issued under Title 28, United States Code, Section 1782 in an investigation that did not arise in the United States. Rackspace is acting as a good corporate citizen and is cooperating with international law enforcement authorities. The court prohibits Rackspace from commenting further on this matter.'"
...and, as such, had to be served with a subpoena by a US law enforcement entity. That's why the FBI was tangentially involved. The FBI merely acted as a legal conduit under an international legal treaty to which the US, UK, and many other nations are parties.
First off, RTFA. Second, strongly centralized governments envy banana republics that don't have this "rule of law" democracy seeking people keep asking for.
I think Indymedia's problem really is that they don't know why the servers were seized, they just got a call from rackspace saying "dude, the FBI is here with a warrant, so that server is coming down". In fact, I think that this could have been done without Indymedia knowing until the server was unplugged, sort of a Patriot Act style no knock raid.
The first rule about patriot act is we don't talk about patriot act. The second rule about patriot act is we don't talk about patriot act!
Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
John Young of Cryptome.org says:
"This is not unprecedented. Some years ago several US ISPs removed material on sites at the request of foreign governments. They acted unilaterally, without court order, merely upon the request of the governments. Some of these incidents were made public, competing ISPs offered to refuse to abide such requests, and customers abandoned those who cooperated with the authorities.
This method can be used against Rackspace. Indeed, it is likely that Rackspace awaits public outcry, and customers leaving, in order to have grounds to resist the thinly justified action in this case.
Recall that the US DoJ is regularly bluffing and faking its attack on alleged terrorist suspects and political dissidents. Other countries are following the US in this vile practice. They cover for each other with these obnoxious mutual assistance treaties, in which fingers are pointed after the dirty deeds are done."
It's here
http://cryptome.org/fbi-imc.htm
http://cryptome.org/fbi-imc/fbi-imc-doc.htm
http://cryptome.org/rackspace-axe.htm
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
Hello,
s html
Living in switzerland, I could hear quite often the news concerning this article.
At least concerning the Switzerland, I cannot say for Italie, the problem was that Indymedia was publishing some pictures of swiss cops under cover with 1 name, addresses from both cops.
From this point of view I can understand that it's quite dangerous for them to be exposed in such way.
here is an article (in french) http://www.edicom.ch/news/suisse/041009160849.sa.
if you want to read it by yourself!
LG
From Yahoo! News: In short, they're a site that helps coordinate and inform the worldwide anti-globalization movement.
As to the question of what they might have been involved in, they can only speculate on what exactly their servers were yanked for. But speculations abound. It could be a story they ran about the Swiss undercover police, or their publication of the names and addresses of RNC convention delegates, or their involvement with the Diebold memos.
But even if they were totally irrelevant, the fact is that they've had legal action taken against them and are unable to determine the parties or reasons for the legal action. That's honest-to-god police state stuff, and we should be asking our elected officials tough questions about it.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
"Rackspace may be a US company but Rackspace in London is subject to UK law not US law. If they took down and handed over Indymedia's servers simply on the basis of a US subpoena communicated to them this would not be lawful in the UK.
However it seems more likely that the US subpoena was the subject of a request for mutual legal assistance from the US Attorney General to the UK Home Secretary under the MLA Treaty. It would for the Metropolitan Police, probably accompanied by the FBI, to enforce the request and take possession of the servers.
This begs the questions: Why did the Home Office agree? What grounds did the USA give for the seizure of the servers? Were these grounds of a "political" nature? Has the Home Office requested that the servers be returned? What does this action say about freedom of expression and freedom of the press?
A trail that started in Switzerland and Italy has now ended fairly and squarely in the lap of the UK Home Secretary to justify."
If anyone wants to help out (there are still many IMC sites down) some more mirrors would be good!
You can get in touch with IMC techies via email or via #tech on irc.indymedia.org.
The sites that are easy to mirror are the ones running Mir since this CMS generates static HTML, this includes the global site and the UK site.
Also one of the siezed London servers was the main Blag Linux server and it ran some other Free software mirrors... :-/
8 Sep 2004: Indymedianates publishes an article with photos of at least 1 (maybe 2?) undercover swiss police. Google cache of another site with pictures here. Translation of original Indymedia post.
Unknown date: FBI asks the post to be removed, but admitted no laws were violated: "The FBI agents told me that they were not concerned with the photos, but with the identifying information. There never was any such identifying information, and even if there was, it would likely be protected by the first amendment if it was obtained legally. (There was a recent case here in Washington that you may be familiar with on this very issue). But, even assuming it is illegal to post identifying information (which it is not), there WAS NO SUCH info. The FBI agents freely admitted to me that individuals have a right to take photographs of agents in public places and post those photos on the internet."
7 Oct 2004: Two Indymedia servers hosted by Rackspace (a US Company) but physically located in LONDON are taken. FBI agents are present at the seizure. No information is given other than the servers were taken. The order was issued to Rackspace (not Indymedia) and Rackspace was apparently barred from talking about it.
8 Oct 2004: Rackspace publishes that they turned over the servers in response to an order under MLAT (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty).
8 Oct 2004: The AFP states that the request for the seizure originated with the Italian and Switzerland governments.
The bottomline is when the time came for the U.N to authorize the invasion of Iraq it didn't, so as a result, the U.S. invasion was illegal under current international law.
Your argument is flawed. The US invasion wasn't strictly illegal by international law. Hussein was in material breach of the Gulf War cease-fire, and a number of UN treaties.
By any measure of International law, the cease fire that Iraq/Hussein signed was violated in any number of cases over the years. Any one of those violations was enough to justify - legally - renewed military operations.
George H.W. Bush encouraged to revolt and then turned his back on.
One final note. This is again overly simplistic view of the matter. The dynamics of the countries in the middle-east are vastly complex. Countries like Saudi Arabia who are railed against for being on the side terrorists (especially by the left in the media - "18 of 19 hijackers were from there", type of stuff) are a mish-mash of conflicting political entities. Saudia Arabia was nearly torn apart from within due to the US intervention the first time around with Iraq. The ruling family is not in complete control of the nation. They have a tacit agreement with the religious clerics to preserve and protect the order - but the House of Saud knows that this could turn at any moment. Make no mistake: if the House of Saud falls to a fundamentalist regime like the old Taliban or the Iranian government the world as a whole will be in a really nasty spot.
It's hard to underestimate the effect this would have on the world.
HW Bush was warned off deposing Hussein the first time because of tensions in moderate nations, specifically Jordan and Saudia Arabia.
Middle-East politics is an amazingly complex thing. Citing a single reason for anything that happens there is a sure-fire way to be wrong.
I'm the tech who had the contract with Rackspace. My blog has info about this, including copies of the rackspace trouble tickets:
http://jebba.blagblagblag.org
I'd like to clarify a few misconceptions I see in some slashdot comments (imagine that!):
daveschroeder wrote in comments (he also submitted this story to slashdot):
The bottom line here, for what it's worth, is that the US (or political agents within the US) had absolutely nothing to do with Indymedia's drives being seized, even though that's what 90% of the posters in the original article immediately assumed.
It is believed that it is the US State Department that had the drives (servers?) seized. You say the US had absolutely nothing to do with it? How about the Federal Order? Do you have info I don't have? Sounds very much like US agents are involved...
We do not know for certain whether it is related to Italy or Switzerland or somewhere else. It is a good guess, but still a guess. All we know is that it was a Federal Order from the U. S. of A.
ptitvert wrote in comments:
Indymedia was publishing some pictures of swiss cops under cover with 1 name, addresses from both cops.
Really? Did you ever see the post? I never saw a single name or address of a cop. There was just a newswire submission (very similar to a slashdot comment, except that it's multimedia enabled). See my blog and trouble tickets with rackspace for more info about this issue.
Also, folks write things like:
It could be a story they ran about the Swiss undercover police
Indymedia has feature articles and a newswire. Indymedia "ran a story about undercover cops" in the same way that CmdrTaco ran a story about your comments. Get it? FREE POSTING TO ANYONE WITH A FREAKING MODEM (npi).
Anyway, no one really knows what is going on, and that's the spooky part. I mean, the Feds just yanked the servers and never even contacted us once. And they still haven't. (Um, not that I'm inviting them over for coffee or anything...)
Look! They're just grabbing servers, no comments. This sucks folks, even if you loathe indymedia.
I know there is a lot of noise/spam/junk on indymedia, but there is on slashdot too... Since ANYONE can post, the posts are of greatly varying quality. But Indymedia has some of the best (if not the best) coverage from the street, especially at demonstrations. It does break news which is found no where else. It is extremely valuable for this alone.
Let's say there is a Swiss pharmaceutical company in Ohio that does something the Mexican cops don't like. Do the Swiss cops raid? The Mexicans? It seems we really have Team America: World Police.
The rockin' EFF has volunteered to represent me/indymedia pro bono. Very nice. :)
Have fun,
-Jeff
You say "Any enforcement was done by the UK Metropolitan Police IN the UK".
How are you the privileged one that knows this? People have contacted the Met and have heard nothing. My lawyers know pratically nothing. Yet you know it was done by the Met?
Who is modding this stuff insightful? Geez, and people complain about crap on indymedia...
MODERATORS PLEASE MOD THIS DUDE DOWN FOR THE TROLL HE IS!
-Jeff
As an European, I disagree.
Even if I agree that American and European politics are quite different, I think you are quite wrong on this point.
Maybe just UK can be an exception, since the well known position of the labourist Prime Minister (but I never heard of any end-military-spending of their rightwingers, altough I admit it is possible).
As an instance, here in Italy I can assure it surely isn't that way (even if the main leftwing party can't be defined a hard-line pacifist one, having approved military intervention in Kosovo at the time).
Leftists are mainly, and strongly, against any militarty intervention. Some even insistently asking immediate troops withdrawal from Iraq.
As another important example, I remind you that Spanish new leftist government has just done it.