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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.
Does anyone know why the hell they seized them in the first place?
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The FBI loves intimidation, and it appears that is what happened here too. I wish the FBI would offer apologies and make some sort of serious restitution every time they confiscate stuff and then realize they don't want to prosecute. They need some sort of penalty for raids that prove unwarranted. It is a form of terrorism, I think. "If you run afoul of us, even maybe violate copyrights, we will raid your house, and take your stuff."
xyzzy - operation overload.
You're on crack if you think the FBI isn't interested in IndyMedia. To quote Mr. Heron, "You got freedom of speech - as long as you don't say too much." IndyMedia participants say a lot.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
If this had been your site, there probably would have been no media outcry. Your site would still be down, and your drives in an evidence locker with no likelihood of return. When people say "Free speech has consequences," this is the kind of thing they're talking about. Cast a vote against the Ashcroft administration and send a check to the EFF.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
Apache on these boxes was set not to log any IP addresses in the access logs, see the discussions on the IMC Tech list if you want to know more about this.
IMC techies are now going to have to analyse the disks to see what info the FBI will have got from this, probably just a few public keys... Of course the disks are not going to be put back into a production server etc...
From what I've read, yes, it's a crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. But the current administration doesn't appear to be doing much to track down who first leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA secret agent. Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was exposed by columnist Robert Novak when Novak wrote:
To quell the knee-jerk duopoly partisans: I'm not saying a Kerry administration would do better here. I have no idea what a Kerry administration would do about this. Speaking out against the actions of one party or one administration is not implicit support for any other party or independent candidate.
Digital Citizen
What I'd like to know is why Indymedia still trusts Rackspace with its hosting. If my colo was refusing to tell me what's going on in a situation like this, I would think about moving my servers elsewhere, preferably overseas. I realize Rackspace is probably under a gag order, but frankly that wouldn't make me feel much better.
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
I love it when the tinfoil hats birgade comes out on slashdot, its better than TV.
Ok, just to turn the paranoia knob down ten notches here, why would the fbi/cia/M5/etc. bother to try to install key or traffic loggers? They have already demonstraited that they can literally own the box any damn time they want it. In addition, they could just slap a copy of carnivor (or whatever passes for it in Europe) on the ISP trunks, and read anything they want, and no ammount of reformatting or scanning would detect it.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
First thing I'd do if I was indymedia was have those drives replaced...possibly the whole box if possible. Secondly I'd switch server companies entirley to prevent any sort of "tapping" through another host (man in the middle) The patriot act, the one thing I completley disagree with President Bush on. Gotta love it.
The ridiculous part of it, was the photos HAD been (as far as I remember) redacted in the form of face blur/blacking, after an initial FBI approach.
This action was merely harassment.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
If some of them were undercover agents, their lives might be in danger for all you know.
If I were an undercover agent and if photographs of me were on the web showing me in places where I ought not to be, it's quite understandable.
No it's not. Taking photographs of demonstrators is an intimidation tactic. If they were serious about taking photos to put into some big database somewhere or whatever, they could easily have done it with telephoto lenses from a distance such that the photographees did not know they were being photographed.
Instead, it sounds like they stood right out in front of the demonstrators and made it a point to be seen by the people. But, the idiots who thought a little public intimidation would be a good thing forgot about one minor detail - the freaking internet.
From the reports, it sounds like they just got a little more sauce of the goose than they could handle. So they tried to take their toys and go home.
Either that, or there is something completely unrelated going on the undercover agent thing is just a thin cover story. Aren't conspiracies great?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I don't get the logic in this. I have 2 particular issues:
1. So what if Rackspace is a U.S. company? If they are doing business in the U.K. they have to obey the laws in that country. Why didn't Italian and Swiss law enforcement agencies contact their counterparts in the U.K. and other listed countries instead? I'm sure the British police could easily seize those hard drives under the British court order.
What does the FBI have to do with this? Is it because the FBI has more pull now and it's easier to violate people's rights in the U.S. as long as you utter the word "terrorism" or am I overreacting?
2. As I understand, whatever was on those hard drives belongs to Indymedia. So, doesn't the FBI need to serve the court order to Indymedia directly (instead of or in addition to Rackspace)? Imagine if you are leasing a car from your local dealership and police get a warrant to retrieve an audio/video CD that they believe you are keeping in your car. Can the police serve the warrant to the dealership and then help themselves to your car without letting you know? Wouldn't they have to serve you with the warrant?
IANAL, are there any lawyers who can verify if these things are legal and if law enforcement does indeed possess such powers?
Compromising the identity of undercover police officers is something that is frowned on by governments worldwide. Don't know if it's actually illegal in Italy or Switzerland though.
The problem of course here is that protestors for years had been desparately pointing out that agent provocaters had been the ones stirring up strife at protests, and not them.
Those cops where in classic black block garb, and provide some solid evidence of cops infiltrating to cause trouble.
I think protestors have a right to get this information out, simply because it provides some evidence towards clearing the innocence of a lot of people who have been entrapped into acts of madness by people who have less than altruistic intentions towards 'the movement'.
I assure you, if a spook was giving me grief, I'd expose his ass quicker than he can blink.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
In forensices cases involving hard drives the drives are copied bit by bit to an image file. That image file is then mounted, data recovery is run, and then the drive is searched. Here are some common type Q's. (Not my company... best link I could find) http://www.dminfo.com/faqs.html
You might also want to talk to the people on irc.indymedia.org , #blag, Jebba hangs out there _ALOT_ (he's there right now). Don't forget blag linux lost data too, including their Repo's, their wiki, their bugzilla, and alot more. I hope IndyMedia and blag get their stuff back.
s.clementmonkey@sympatico.ca, remove the 'monkey'.
I got harassed for taking photographs of several French police officers (in uniforms) in a subway station. They were not the subject of the photographs. Read.
But I haven't heard of any crime being alleged. No reason has been given.
This isn't just being a grammar nazi, this is complaining about a gross violation of proper search warrant procedure.
Now if, as some are alleging, it was the British and not the FBI who conducted the raid, on what warrant were THEY acting on? No record has so far surfaced. No report of any alleged crime.
This sounds an awful lot like somebody high up saying "shut up those bastards", and somebody lower down, who can't find an legitimate grounds, acting on illegitimate grounds that are probably "safe enough". (In other words, he guesses that it can't be legally pinned on him, even though it's blatantly and grossly illegal.)
Now I could easily be wrong. Most of the information is being kept secret. But that's what it sounds like. That theory is consistent with everything that's been revealed, and inconsistent with nothing that's been revealed. I accept that there could be alternate explanations, but I haven't heard any that appeared consistent to me.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
So what if Rackspace is a U.S. company? If they are doing business in the U.K. they have to obey the laws in that country. Why didn't Italian and Swiss law enforcement agencies contact their counterparts in the U.K. and other listed countries instead? I'm sure the British police could easily seize those hard drives under the British court order.
I imagine that Rackspace was neither violating US nor UK law. I wouldn't be surprised if Italy and Switzerland also made the request directly to the UK, and the US ended up "winning the race", as it were. The FBI's statement indicates it was more or less facilitating the mechanics of an MLA treaty request, not doing anything proactive or investigative.
What does the FBI have to do with this? Is it because the FBI has more pull now and it's easier to violate people's rights in the U.S. as long as you utter the word "terrorism" or am I overreacting?
The "FBI" was involved because that is the federal law enforcement agency of record for an international MLA treaty request. Apparently the State Department was also involved. So that's why the "FBI" was involved. If you're asking the broader question of why the US in general was even involved, again, it was because Rackspace is a US company. Perhaps there was some sense of the US authorities having more "pull" over a US company, or the process happening more expeditiously since it was a US company; in any case, Rackspace chose to voluntarily cooperate with "international law enforcement authorities".
As I understand, whatever was on those hard drives belongs to Indymedia. So, doesn't the FBI need to serve the court order to Indymedia directly (instead of or in addition to Rackspace)? Imagine if you are leasing a car from your local dealership and police get a warrant to retrieve an audio/video CD that they believe you are keeping in your car. Can the police serve the warrant to the dealership and then help themselves to your car without letting you know? Wouldn't they have to serve you with the warrant?
I'm not a lawyer either, but I'm not sure about the mechanics of this. I'm not sure that the vehicle analogy is directly applicable to this situation as specific laws and precedent apply to vehicles; it may be that there are US legal or MLAT provisions that allow such seizures with a court order for the specific items, without the order needing to be presented to anyone in particular except those who are required to facilitate the seizure; I don't know.
Unfortunately, this does not cover law enforcement work, otherwise Indymedia and RackSpace could sue any European Government involved for privacy violations. (Even with that out, it may be possible for Indymedia and RackSpace to get a British court to impose some kind of restraining order. If there's no legal case involved, then a judge may be inclined to be sympathetic, as the raid would appear to abuse the trust implicit in the exemption.
That's a long-shot, though. By far the best bet for the Indymedia group would be to create some lurid sex fantasy involving Swiss and American agents, orgies, slavery and debauchery of the worst possible kinds. They could almost certainly get The Sun or someone like them to publish such tripe, and probably for a decent fee. The Governments can't sue for libel/slander, without confessing to what they were doing in the first place, which they'd never do. With luck, the story'd be believed by enough people (let's face it, after the goings on in Iraqi prisons, who wouldn't believe it of Americans?) to become generally accepted and possibly turned into a hit movie.
(P.S. If it does become a hit movie, I either get to play one of the agents, or I get a cut of the profit. I don't care much which.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...we've got a few clients who host with rackspace, but after this we've recommended that they find another provider.
Rackspace have come out of this with egg on their faces and I seriously hope that it hurts their business big-time. I also hope that they will be compensating indymedia and all the other sites hosted on those servers for the lost time, aggrivation and general shittyness of the whole thing.
I am NaN
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.
The police probably felt they needed a distraction after the murder of a protestor.
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).
Nothing to stop them having been "encouraged" by Italian authorities. When it comes to state sponsorship of terrorism, especially domestic, the concept of "plausable deniability" is important.
> It might be perfectly legal for police to Sweden to
> intimidate people in this fashion, and illegal for
> protestors to respond by taking pictures and
> publishing them.
No, it isn't legal for the police to intimidate people like that. And there is no law preventing protesters from carrying cameras either.
As for the protesters publishing the pictures, IANAL etc., if the police, secret or not, is stupid enough to allow themselves to be photographed when they are supposed to keep their identity secret, they should be disciplined by their superiors. As far as I am aware, a normal police officer can not complain if he has his photo taken at a demonstration. (Freedom of the press etc.)
> Remember that the world does NOT subscribe to
> the American idea of freedom and democracy.
Awwww.. Good post right up until there.. Don't go there mate, just don't go there.. You are opening a can of worms better left unopened.
> There are rights we have in the US that you do
> not in other free countries, and rights they
> have that we do not.
This I agree with. And looking at the nordic countries (for the geographically challenged out there, 'scandinavia' or 'the nordics' is not a country...) there is rather a lot of freedoms and rights you have not got that exist elsewhere.
In how many nations on the earth can you, as a citizen, start a *direct* dialogue with, uhm, your minister of defence? (Hint, I have done.)
Could you stop your PM/President in the street when you recognize him and have a friendly chat about some political issue without getting arrested or getting your ass shot off by some secret service trigger happy dude?
In Sweden (and probably in Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland) you can stop your PM/President in the street and talk to them.
I know from experience that trying to get in touch with the Foregin Minister in UK is a mission in futility. I would hazard a guess that that holds true in the US as well.
Swedish, but resident in the UK since 1996.
"and real democracy"
Really? I wasn't aware of any country in the world that was a democracy. Is everything put to a plebescite?
Or do you elect representatives who vote on issues? That's not a democracy. You can use google, so I'll let you spend 5 minutes figuring out what that form of government is called.
How about writing to the service providers of the politicians who voted for the DMCA in the first place alleging copyright violation. See how they like it...
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I thought that the whole point of a protest was to be seen. There's no point to protesting if the target doesn't notice you've done anything. My understanding is that most protesters are very keen to be seen, recorded, and rebroadcast by the mainstream media, bloggers, tourists, and whomever else happens to be about. Saying "I'm going to go out in a public place, make a lot of noice, march about, and wave signs--but I only want some people to videotape me doing it!" seems a tad disingenuous.
The police pay particular attention to the most "vocal" individuals? Well, no surprise there. That's who everyone else is paying attention to as well. People with megaphones tend to attract one's notice, whether you want them to or not. Indeed, that's presumably their goal.
Is it police intimidation to record a protest? It's an interesting question. There's an argument that having a record of attendees at a large gathering--and particularly of the most vocal leaders--is good police practice in the event that something untoward does happen.
If you're at a protest or rally, then you shouldn't be doing anything illegal that will be caught on tape. Chanting, speaking, and waving signs are all generally legitimate, legal practices. If you're leading a group and encouraging them all to do something illegal, you probably should be recorded and charged. Take your lumps like a man. Civil disobedience involves facing the risk of punishment. Gandhi did it.
Police bringing cameras to a protest "intimidates" protestors in the same way that a cop on the corner intimidates pedestrians. It inconveniences you if you want to smash a window; otherwise it is--or should be--moot.
Being on government subversive files can become a health hazard.
Historically and in some countries this has been the case. Is there evidence to support this statement now, in Britain?
~Idarubicin
Don't worry, I'm still telling various people* that they will NOT find kangaroos in Austria. I'm currently in Switzerland (not Sweden), and Austria is often their next destination. They get all disappointed after that ...
* Who these people might be is left as an exercise for the reader.
Q:I was listening to a CD in Grip and it sounded horrible! What's up? A:Perhaps you are listening to country music
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