Slashdot Mirror
Indymedia Servers Given Back
NW writes "According to a post on Indymedia Argentina the two Indymedia servers seized earlier by the FBI are in the process of being returned: "A Rackspace employee stated, "I was just told that the court order is being complied with and your servers in London will be online at 5pm GMT. I will pass along anymore information that becomes available and that I am allowed to." It has been verified that the returned hard-drives are the originals, but the circumstances of the seizure still remain unclear: who took them, why were they taken, and under which court order? Indymedia is not aware as to whether Rackspace is still under gag order.
The hard-drives will be treated as "hacked" (compromised) and as a result there will be delays in restoring the sites that are still down."" Here's our previous coverage on this.
The wire reports last week (sorry, no link at the moment) had an FBI spokesperson who said they were acting at the request of the Swiss and Italian governments, under the terms of a law-enforcement-cooperation treaty. Apparently the FBI was involved because Rackspace is a US company.
The only likely explanation for why those governments would be interested that has surfaced so far is that Indymedia posted some photographs that were taken of undercover police officers who were photographing demonstrators (the demonstrators photographed their photographers, as it were). Apparently this is illegal in Europe?
It's all very murky, in any case.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
...according to this and this, there was a request from the Italian and Swiss governments under a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to the United States (since the hosting provider was a US company). The "FBI" did not physically "seize" the drives, since the FBI does not have jurisdiction in the UK, though it appears that Rackspace voluntarily responded to the US subpoena, which was generated as a matter of course under the MLA treaty.
Jebba, the guy with the contract with Rackspace has a load more info about this whole affair in his blog.
I'm not speaking from personal experience here, but I've read of FBI confiscation of hard drives before. Apparently, the "we're seizing all your servers' hard drives" tactic isn't new.
They try to get the disks back in a timely fashion, when they're through with their analysis. It's completely different than, say, having your car impounded as you're arrested selling suitcases full of coke. They're taking the drives not because they were used in the commission of a crime (necessarily), but because they want evidence off of them, possibly just incidental.
No word on legal obligations, but I can say, based on what I've read (again, no personal experience here), the FBI does make a reasonable attempt to not inconvenience you *too* horribly if they have to take your disks.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
A) Freedom of the press is a more predominant issue in the US than in Europe. The press has very different rights in Europe than in the US. B) If the FBI was indeed acting as a go-between in this case, your beef should be more with the originators of the seizure order than the FBI. C) If indeed undercover officers or other covert LEOs were potentially exposed, the general position, IMO, is that the freedom of the press takes somewhat of a back seat to maintaining the security of those individuals and the operations to which they are attached.
Translated (roughly, so pardon any mistakes) from the News section of the Indymedia homepage:
"In the morning of Thursday 7 of October, American autorities delivered a federal order to Rackspace (Indymedias' provider, with offices in London and USA), requiring the surrender off Indymedias' web servers to the demmanding agency. According to what was said to Indymedia volunteers, Rackspace stated that "they couldn't give Indymedia more information respecting the order". ISPs have received orders to stand quiet in similar situtations in which orders were given not to keep the involved parts informed on what was going on.
Indymedia has not clear how and why a server outside American jurisdiction no can be requised by American autorithies.
At the same time, an aditional server was disconnected at Rackspace; that server provided streaming radio for some emitters, BLAG (linux distribution), and quite a few more sites.
In the last months numerous attacks to independant media have been seen being perpetrated by the USA federal government. In August, the secret service used a jurisdictional requirement in an attempt to disband New Yorks' CMI before the RNC, attempting to obtain IP registers in USA and Holland. The past month the FCC dismantled several American radio emtitters. Two weeks earlier the FBI requested that Indymedia deleted a story on the Nantes CMI who had the picture of some Swedish secret police officer and CMI volunteers were visited by the FBI to inquire on the same issue. Meanwhile, Indymedia and other organizations had success with their victories against, f.ex., Diebold and the Patriot Act. Today, nevertheless, American authorities have disconnected CMIs all oer the world.
The list of affected CMIs include:
Italy, Brasil, Uruguay, England, Andorra, Polonia, Western Massachusetts, Nice, Nantes, Lilles, Marseille , Euskal Herria (País vasco), Liege, East and West Vlaanderen, Antwerpen Belgrado, Portugal, Praga, Galicia..."
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2004_10.php#00200 6
Indymedia Servers Mysteriously Reappear, But Questions RemainSan Francisco, CA - Rackspace Managed Hosting, the San Antonio-based company that manages two Indymedia servers seized by the US government last Thursday, said yesterday that the servers have been returned and are now available to go back online. Immediate access to the servers, which host Indymedia's Internet radio station and more than 20 Indymedia websites, will be delayed so that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) can ensure that the servers are secure and take steps to preserve evidence for future legal action.
Now that the servers have been returned, the question still remains: who took them, and under what authority? Citing a gag order, Rackspace would not comment on what had happened both in the original seizure of the servers or their return. All that is known at this point is that the subpoena that resulted in the seizure was issued at the request of a foreign government, most likely with the assistance of the United States Attorney's Office in San Antonio. Although initial reports suggested that the FBI had taken the servers, the FBI has now denied any involvement.
The seizure, which silenced numerous political news websites for several days, is clearly a violation of the First Amendment. "Secret orders silencing US media should be beyond the realm of possibility in a country that believes in freedom of speech," said EFF staff attorney Kurt Opsahl. "EFF was founded with the Steve Jackson Games case fourteen years ago, and at that time we established that seizing entire servers because of a claim about some pieces of information on them is blatantly illegal and improper. It appears the government forgot this basic rule, and we will need to remind them."
EFF will take legal action to find out what really happened to Indymedia's servers and ensure that Internet media are protected from egregious First Amendment violations like this in the future.
There are backups, but they are not 100% complete as you would expect when the backup is an rsynced db dump done via cron every 24 hours...
In 1998 I had a machine seized by the AFP (Australian Federal Police), I wasn't charged and was never informed as to why my equipment was being seized.
However, 3 months after the incident they offered to return the data to me if i supplied a hard disk, I did this and the information was returned as promised.
Another 6 months later, with much pressuring from an attounry provided by legal aid (the government paid for my lawyer because im a poor student), the rest of my equipment was returned along with the original hard disks and data.
I'm really not sure why any of this happened, however it is an example of law enforcement returning confiscated items.
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
It's only rough, so sorry for any mistakes.
"On the morning of Thursday the 7th of October, U.S. authorities delivered a federal order to Rackspace (Indymedia's provider, whose offices are in London and USA), requiring the surrender of Indymedias' web servers to the demanding agency. According to what was said to Indymedia volunteers, Rackspace stated that "they couldn't give Indymedia more information respecting the order." ISPs have received orders to stand quiet in similar situtations in which orders were given not to keep the involved parts informed on what was going on.
Indymedia has not been clear as to how and why a server outside American jurisdiction can be requested by American authorities.
At the same time, an additional server was disconnected at Rackspace; that server provided streaming radio for some emitters, BLAG (a Linux distribution), and quite a few more sites.
In the last months numerous attacks to independant media have been seen being perpetrated by the U.S. federal government. In August, the secret service used a jurisdictional requirement in an attempt to disband New York's CMI before the RNC, attempting to obtain IP registers in USA and Holland. The past month the FCC dismantled several American radio emtitters. Two weeks earlier the FBI requested that Indymedia delete a story on the Nantes CMI who had the picture of some Swedish secret police officer and CMI volunteers were visited by the FBI to inquire on the same issue. Meanwhile, Indymedia and other organizations had success with their victories against FedEx, Diebold and the Patriot Act. Today, nevertheless, American authorities have disconnected CMIs all over the globe.
The list of affected CMIs include: Italy, Brasil, Uruguay, England, Andorra, Polonia, Western Massachusetts, Nice, Nantes, Lilles, Marseille , Euskal Herria (País vasco), Liege, East and West Vlaanderen, Antwerpen Belgrado, Portugal, Praga and Galicia"
They have made a pigs breakfast at everything from The economy, environment, egual rights, Civil Liberties.
Not one fucking thing have they managed to succed in. Not ONE.
Help fight continental drift.
What major stories has indymedia broken?
Diebold election scamming is the main one that comes to mind. Theres been a heck of a lot of anti protestor violence reported (and in some cases acted on by authorities) ie in Genoa. Indy does tend to focus on local news alot, so its in the local area indy sites that you'll find most of the scoops.
Indy does alot of work in countries with strong political repression. Iran, Iraq, Burma, etc.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
In return, we spy on Canada's, England's, Australia, and New Zealand's citizens, and turn the information over to them.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
No, there would be no first ammendment impications. The UK doesn't repsect the US constution. It's a sovering nation. The US didn't request the seizure or do the seizing, the FBI was just there as a treaty formality. It's basically in place so that if a foriegn bussiness somewhere is subject to something in their host country, they have agents there from their own police force that can explain thing to them and deal with them. If an ATi office in the US were to be raided by the FBI, the RCMP would be along for that reason, not to do the raiding, but for diplomatic reasons.
It has the side effect of helping make sure that Rackspace had their rights in the UK respected. The FBI was observing and documenting everything so had the British authorities crossed the line, they could have reported it to the US consul to try and get something done.
The alternative would be for the FBI to just stand aside, which would be seen as a slight by the UK, and let this all happen anyways.
Long afterwards, a judge found the entire raid on the IMC headquarters had been a complete fabrication. The police had planted Molotov cocktails, a sledgehammer, knives etc. in the building. As for agent provocateurs, there is no doubt these were operating in Italy--though they were probably oldtime fascist sympathizers, not undercover cops (though in Italy, the line is blurred).
When you say how many stories has IMC broken, I think you miss the point. How many stories has Slashdot "broken"--and by this I think you mean stories that have made it into national and international media? IMC, like Slashdot, is community media, and serves to communicate information and build connections between those who use it. Thanks to IMC, I was in North America yet I knew what was happening to comrades in Italy.
IMC keeps the flow of information open because it has an open posting policy. With more and more online newspapers disappearing behind subscription walls, often times the only way an important article can released into the wild is by posting on IMC. More "legit" sites won't post entire articles that covered by copyright, say stories on E-Voting from the New York Times or Washington Post. Google hits an IMC site once, and that article is forever cached in its entirety.
This also begs the question, what important stories has the New York Times broken recently? It all seems to be happening at the New Yorker with Seymour Hersh...
Where did you get Sweden from? According to my understanding, the request is from Switzerland.
This is an excerpt from a previous message he received from Rackspace, which seems to be about something different. I find the text very troubling. (The text is taken from here)
Rackspace said:
Mon Oct 4 07:30:53 2004
Hello,
I am sorry for the tone of the ticket you referenced. However, we are at the mercy of the DMCA as it is written. As a hosting provider, once we have received a DMCA notification, we are responsible for removing the offending material regardless of the merit of the complaint. In fact, we are not even to look into the merits of the complaint. We are only to act to remove the offending material as quickly as possible. If we fail to remove the material, we can be held liable for damages.
Essentially, they're saying that while he may well be correct that his material doesn't infringe any copyrights, Rackspace is legally obliged to remove it immediately.
I've long known that the DMCA was a terrible law. I didn't know it went quite this far, though.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
The FBI never seized the hard drives to begin with, but accompanied the British authorities on the raid to seize the drives
How do you know this? You don't. The various Brit cops that have been contacted have either said "no comment" or "we weren't there". We HAVE NO IDEA WHICH GOVERNMENT'S AGENTS WERE THERE. Oh, I'm sorry, I must be shouting this because I'm saying it over & over...
AC says:
why was IndyMedia waiting for the return of the drives before restoring sites?
Um, have you been to http://www.indymedia.org lately? http://uk.indymedia.org or a whole ton of other sites that were hosted on AHIMSA but are up & running? They were back online very quickly. How fast would slashdot come back online if the gubmint stole their kit?
There were backups of most things, but not of everything. Each indy was responsible for their own backups & some were better at it or had more resources than others. Some sites had newer software that allowed for easier mirroring, for others it's way more messy.
Sorry if I'm sounding a bit edgy here... :)
-Jeff
What major stories has indymedia broken?
1. Go to any demonstration or social forum
2. Listen to what the folks there have to say
3. Read the corporate coverage of it. Check the national news, likely there will be nothing. Read your "local" (e.g. Gannett owned) newspaper and see what they say. Listen to the "local" TV (e.g. one of a few companies) coverage, if any. Listen to the "local" (e.g. Clear Channel) radio coverage, if any.
4. Go to your local Indymedia and see the coverage of the issues and what really happened at the demo.
5. Compare what you saw at the demo/social forum with what's in the corporate press.
This is one example, but is probably where Indymedia shows the most glaring difference between what really is happening and what you're supposed to hear.
On July 20th, 2001 Carlos Guiliani was shot and killed by Italian police forces during the G8 summit demonstrations in Genoa, Italy. I've always been into the news & politics so I was reading it on fucking cnn.com and they were saying "uh, some guy was shot, we dunno what happened". I mentioned it to a friend and he said, "dude, go to indymedia". Indymedia, of course, had like a dozen photos of exactly what happened. Had it not been for indymedia, the story probably would have disappeared.
At that time, I had never heard of the massive demonstrations that happened in Seattle in 1999. I had been reading the corporate press. How would I know? How would I know the issues that they were raising? If I kept reading the corporate news, I'd still be clueless as to what's going on in other parts of the word. The corporate press in other nations have their own $agenda too.
Indymedia certainly has it's share of junk, but I notice you're still reading slashdot. ;)
-Jeff
The best-documented federal seizure of HDDs that I know of (it's referred to in many court cases) is the Secret Service's raid on Steve Jackson Games.
FROM:
http://jebba.blagblagblag.org/
EFF has contacted the FBI to demand Indymedia's illegally seized servers be returned and is preparing for legal action in the event that negotiations with the FBI fail. EFF is also calling on Rackspace to challenge the government's illegal seizure. "If Rackspace stands behind its claim of providing 'Fanatical Support' to its customers, it will go to bat for Indymedia-one of its biggest customers-and demand that the FBI return the seized Internet servers," said Kurt Opsahl, EFF staff attorney. "Rackspace should also fight for its own rights and challenge the gag order preventing it from sharing its side of the story." A federal court in New York City recently found a similar gag order unconstitutional in Doe v. Ashcroft, the ACLU's challenge to a secret PATRIOT Act subpoena served against an Internet service provider.
"The FBI can't pull the plug on more than 20 news websites - our modern printing presses - based on a secret proceeding at the request of a foreign government. This is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment," said Kevin Bankston, EFF attorney and Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow. "As far as the Constitution is concerned, Indymedia has the same rights as any other news publisher. The government can't shut down the New York Times, and it can't shut down Indymedia."
When I first heard of the story, I looked for mirrors of what is supposed to be the incriminating site.
It contains four pictures of two guys who are supposedly undercover policemen. The photos have _not_ been redacted.
I guess it doesn't hurt to post the short text that came with it. But my french is a little rusty and the automatic tranlators do a poor job on this:
GENÈVE post-G8 : Vidéos, photos et témoignages ; tout est bon pour remonter la piste des casseurs. Un travail minutieux poursuivi aujourd'hui par deux inspecteurs, et qui a conduit à 200 arrestations à ce jour.
La cellule G8 avait pourtant été dissoute en décembre 2003. Elle a repris du service, en plus petit : deux inspecteurs.
Ces inspecteurs visionnent des films et photos reçu par des balancent et des collègues.
Ils viennent aux manifs sur Genève où ils pensent retrouver des "casseurs"
De plus ils prennent de nouvelles photos afin peut être de constituer une bande de données de photos d'activistes suceptibles d'être les futures casseurs des futures émeutes Genevoises.
Comme le dit l'un des 2 inspecteurs : J'ai vu deux de mes collègues se faire lyncher pendant les manifs anti-OMC, en 1998, raconte un inspecteur. Je ne l'oublierai jamais.
Peut etre qu'il y a d'autres choses que cet inspecteur n'obliera jamais ! Car il n'y a pas que le Carpacio comme plat qui se mange froid !
The only advantage I see to an internal datalogger is you can grab it after the SSL layer decrypts it. If you have adequate encryption, a wiretap is only going to yield traffic analysis, not the full communication.
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
The Register covers this in more detail, stating that parliamentary questions have been tabled asking "what recent discussions [The Home Secretary] has had with US law enforcement agencies concerning the seizure of material from UK-based internet hosting providers; and if he will make a statement."
I'd expect we'll see his evasion^h^h^h^h^h^h^hanswer appearing on the excellent theyworkforyou.com
ooooooh! What does this button do? - DeeDee, Dexters Lab.
It seems hard for me to believe the claim that they've made "a reasonable attempt to not inconvenience you *too* horribly". The fact is, most previous historical captures in the past in the US by the Secret Service and the FBI have centered around the simple (collection just the computer) to the absurd (collect anything remotely electronic). Part of this was in the past, the Secret Service and FBI were utterly paranoid on the power of phreaks (the legend phreaks propagated probably didn't help matters much); taking away their computers, et al seemed the best method to stop them I guess. The other part is that they didn't want to risk possibly ignoring information that might turn up to their advantage.
Ie, they were less going in to confirm suspicions of a crime and more fishing for any evidence they could gather, especially to the end of finding the plans/schemes in taking advantage of the phone system (and computer systems, later with hackers). The fact is, if the FBI was really only interested in having a copy of the information, as a source of evidence, they could either a) take a copy of the HD and give the original back to the owner or b) make a copy of the HD and leave it with the owner, while taking the original.
The primary reasons they didn't/don't do this is because they see the information as a threat itself, and they're trying their best to prevent further dissementation of this information regardless of having actually proven guilt (it's a de facto indefinite injunction). To me, it seems pretty obvious that the FBI or police do not have a right to take things away from you and inhibit your use of them without first arresting you, trying you, and having you convicted of a crime. To that end, it seems abundantly clear that if the FBI or police wish to take something away from you as evidence, they either need to a) arrest you pre hence or post hence, then your goods will be returned to you when you're freed be it for lack of evidence, being found innocent, or after serving your term or b) if they don't arrest you, have the goods returned to you within 48hrs (the maximal period of time allowed before they have to bring you up for inditement) while in the meantime providing you with comparable goods to use. In the latter case, a comparable good would be a copy of the original HD.
But, all in all, this is all talk about what should happen in the US. Seeing that the FBI was apparently involved somehow, these practices should play a role in their actions. And finally, these rules should apply throughout the US, as it's clearly outside the scope of the government to take goods indefinitely without paying you for said goods. The Constitution gives Eminent Domain powers. It doesn't give Eminent Indefinite Borrowing powers.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Yes, in fact: but the fire estinguisher was just thrown out by a policeman towards the guy. It was part of the internal tools of the jeep.
If you are publicly protesting something, why would you care if the police photograph you? After going through the RNC here in New York last month, I'm now 100% convinced that the Indymedia scene is the most self-satisfied, unproductive gang of agent provocateurs roaming today's political scene. Frankly, it was absurd how they would bait the police by pushing down the police motorcycles and then cry foul when the police would arrest someone who pushed a bike. I've never seen such shameless, two-faced futility in my life. A little intimidation would do those shitheads some good.
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/mtoups/nantes/copsi nnantes.htm
It will be interesting to see whether I get a reply, and if so what reply I get. The more MPs are asking questions of the Home Office on this issue, the better, so if you're a UK voter, write to your MP. Obviously, don't copy my letter exactly, because the objective is to get them to understand a lot of different people are upset about this one.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.