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.

Comments

So...

[Luigi30]

Does anyone know why the hell they seized them in the first place?

Re:So...

[bofkentucky]

No sure answers, and frankly, Indymedia (and/or Rackspace) may never know. Search and Siezure laws in some parts of Europe are vastly different than in the US, ranging from no protection from government search to 4th ammendment style protections, it varies country by country. IIRC the EU "constitution" has a non-binding 4th ammendment clause.

Hardware too...

[SJ]

I would be treating the entire computer as hacked... not just the hard drive.

Who knows what kind of traffic / key loggers have been installed.

(And yes, I realize that a hardware key logger is next to useless on a headless server.)

Re:Hardware too...

[http]

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.

Re:Hardware too...

[Yeb]

DAldredge asked:
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

Switzerland and Italy

[Trepidity]

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.

Re:Switzerland and Italy

[metlin]

Well, makes sense.

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.

But what I do not understandable is why they would do this in a way that gets them so much attention. I mean, now all those pictures would be all over the place and would be quite uncontrollable. It would have the opposite effect of what they intended.

Weird. Or maybe I'm missing something. Or maybe I just need more coffee.

Re:Switzerland and Italy

[6.023e23]

This is a fairly complicated international connect-the-dots scenario. Just goes to show that immunity from prosecution and/or seizure and the supposed boundaries of jurisdiction are not exactly cut and dry issues. I suspect this type of multinational effort will be seen more in the near future.

Re:Switzerland and Italy

[Gorath99]

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?

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.

In any case, it's a bit weird to generalise Italy and Switzerland to all of Europe. European countries all have their own laws, though members of the EU (which Switzerland isn't) share a lot of common laws. Not that I blame you for doing so - it's a common mistake for foreigners - but I felt I should set that straight.

Re:Switzerland and Italy

[sg_oneill]

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.

Re:Switzerland and Italy

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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?

Re:Switzerland and Italy

[sg_oneill]

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.

Re:Switzerland and Italy

[refactored]

Dunno, seems to be standard intelligence practice.

They always did so in the bad old days of South African apartheid, they seem to do it here in New Zealand.

The most deeply held belief of these coinops types is that all popular activism is orchestrated by enemy agitators. (After all that is what _they_ would/are do/doing...)

For them to believe otherwise is to begin to suspect that their own dastardly deeds are wrong.

Thus they are always there, on the fringes, taking photographs and trying to correlate them to spot the real ringleaders.

Sort of sad really.

You may be tempted to wear concealing sunglasses and a hat next time you protest something, but odds on that will really convince them you're the "black hat" and they will put the hard question to you on the spot.

Re:Switzerland and Italy

[h4rm0ny]

No it's not. Taking photographs of demonstrators is an intimidation tactic.

Definitely! If you've ever been on a protest in the UK then see how you like it when a policeman starts jamming camcorders at you and efficiently recording everyone's faces. They especially zoom in on anyone who is particularly vocal. And they are conspicuously overt in doing so.

Point one back at them and you'll likely get your phone/camera/camcorder seized. They sure don't like the same medicine. And as to the poster elsewhere who said that undercover officers lives could be in danger - these aren't undercover officers in this instance, and what about our freedom from harrasment. Being on government subversive files can become a health hazard.

I recommend mass deployment of those cheap disposable cameras at the next march.

Re:Switzerland and Italy

[tehdaemon]

I recommend mass deployment of small cardboard boxes painted to look like cameras. If everyone had 3 or 4, and they all took TONS of pictures.... With a few real ones thrown in I guess.

Re:Switzerland and Italy

[Max von H.]

I was in the incriminated demonstration (didn't have much choice, the whole city got into it) and clearly saw cops in civilian triggering some strange chains of events. On the right side we had peaceful demonstrators (about a million) and on the other a group of about 200 rioteers (the Black Block) helped by some suburb scum. The local police let them rampage most of the downtown area by lack of orders from their superiors (the cops just sat and watch the shopping district being looted...). On the second riot night, the cops begun acting on their own. Nasty. They pushed the rioteers near where a big indy center was hosting indy press offices etc. (nothing to do with the rioteers - it was a peaceful demo). Civilian cops suddenly burst into the building, breaking doors and everything worth anything (computers, music instruments), for no apparent reason. Those cops also beat up several of my friends with baseball bats, several of which ended up in hospital getting their heads stitched. The bad guys never really got to worry, since the "authorities" obviously had another agenda: undermining the peaceful demonstrator's organization.

The root of Indymedia's problems is that there are photos of some Swiss police agents (with their names and addresses, hehe) infiltrating the Black Block and triggering riots. There are photos of cops beating up people. There are photos of cops attacking a restaurant for no reason (firing CS grenades on a full terrace half a mile from the real events then shooting people with rubber bullets). Without these cops, there probably wouldn't have been that much damage to the downtown area of Geneva.

The Swiss authorities behaved in such a spastic way they don't want their stupid agents to be recognized, for they are not respectable in their actions and deliberately triggered events eventually costing millions to the community and injuring quite many innocents. I feel ashamed my government is turning to such tactics to undermine the anti-globalization movement.

It makes me smile though to see the incriminated images have now spread to about 400 mirrors worldwide instead of 2 or 3 sites. Our local authorities are going batshit about it, yelling they'll have ALL the servers containing those images seized... Tough luck, assholes!

Re:Switzerland and Italy

[Idarubicin]

Definitely! If you've ever been on a protest in the UK then see how you like it when a policeman starts jamming camcorders at you and efficiently recording everyone's faces. They especially zoom in on anyone who is particularly vocal. And they are conspicuously overt in doing so.

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?

True Reason behind the shutdown

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard the real reason the machines were seized was because they hosted goatse.cx.

Apparently the FBI agents decided that they, and GWB had been tricked one too many times

Re:True Reason behind the shutdown

[Solstice]

Yea. That's a great idea. Tie up the emergency system and the cops for your little prank. There's a reason why the cops showed up - they thought someone was in trouble. But obviously, you thought your prank was more important than someone else's life.

I'd be treating the serverfarm as hacked too.

[nlinecomputers]

Who knows what is going on at Rackspace as they aren't talking. I'd be finding a new hardware host ASAP.

Re:I'd be treating the serverfarm as hacked too.

[DunbarTheInept]

On the one hand, that makes sense, but on the other hand it seems really unfair for Rackspace to lose their business over this. They're just as much the victim here as their clients are.

returning confiscated items is rare, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard of someone getting back confiscated items.
Is there any obligation for them to do this, or is it media exposure at this point?

Re:returning confiscated items is rare, isn't it?

[suwain_2]

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.

Re:returning confiscated items is rare, isn't it?

[KronicD]

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.

Re:returning confiscated items is rare, isn't it?

[Piquan]

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.

Not exactly, but...

[daveschroeder]

...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.

Re:Not exactly, but...

[zurab]

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.

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?

Info on the Disks

[essence]

I wonder what was on the disks. I imagine the FBI could have gotten ip logs, password lists, email lists archives...there's a heap of things that could have been on there that points to names and addresses of people who the state would like to harrass..

We all know that the current world order is tending towards fascism, this incident is just another step along that path.

About time

[Cerebron]

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."

For more background info see the sysadmin's blog

[Anonymous Coward]

Jebba, the guy with the contract with Rackspace has a load more info about this whole affair in his blog.

Remember on Nov. 2nd

[vegetablespork]

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.

Justice System?!

[orangeguru]

What kind of Justice System raids people property and keeps silent?! I can hardly imagine that the indy-servers are a threat to anyones national security? Whatever happend to the freedom of expression or the freedom of the press?!

Re:Justice System?!

[6.023e23]

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.

Silly Hosting Company

[Anonymous Coward]

This posting seems rather silly. The FBI never seized the hard drives to begin with, but accompanied the British authorities on the raid to sieze the drives, apparently to be passed onto to Swiss authorities.

And second of all, why was IndyMedia waiting for the return of the drives before restoring sites? Didn't they have backups? Now they make a big deal about how they are treating the drives as "compromised". Whey they didn't just buy new drives the day of raid, and restore the backup? Clearly, they don't have a backup, because now they have to do a selective copy of sites from "compromised" disks onto presumable new disks.

Re:Silly Hosting Company

[Yeb]

Ok AC, you said:
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

Rackspace offices dialog

[suso]

FBI: Bend over
Rackspace: *whimper* ok...

Translated from the site

[Lisandro]

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..."

EFF's press release on the subject...

[stinkfoot]

http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2004_10.php#00200 6

Indymedia Servers Mysteriously Reappear, But Questions Remain

San 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.

No, if they wanted infroation like that

[Sycraft-fu]

Indymedia wouldn't know. They'd obtain a wiretap warrant, and then tap what they wanted (be it a keyboard, the network connection, etc). Works just like a phone tap in that the party being tapped never knows about it. That's the idea, really. You want them going about their normal bussiness, unaware they are being watched so you can catch them doing something illegal. If they susprect you are watching them, it doesn't do much good. A mobster isn't going to call in a hit on someone on a phone they suspect to be tapped.

It would seem that what they wanted was the data on the disks. I'm not saying they shouldn't give it a once over but really, if that was the case, it would be done in secret. They don't raid the house of a mafia member, take all their phones, and then hand them back a couple days later with bugs in them. They stick a bug on the line when no one is looking.

This is a pointless post.

[Anonymous Coward]

And will probabably be modded down... so I dont care...

But the more I read about stuff like this, the more that I realise that we need to change the way our governments operate. They have TOO much power, and the do things that sould be illegal under the guise of saftey

I truely think that there needs to be a shift in world power, I think that if given enough room to breathe people would make the right decision, and if we (americans) would quit putting our nose where it doesn't belong, that 9/11 would not have happened.

Re:This is a pointless post.

[sg_oneill]

I could never in good concience blame americans for 911. It was a horrid horrid tragedy.

But militant movements dont evolve in a vacuum. We need to ask "What happened, by whom, how and when that caused these people to want us harm?". I mean, why the US/allies and not , say, china.

And that is what has not been asked. And THAT is the danger.

Unfortunately we do know the source of the frusturations.... foreign interference. If your neighbor came over and kept punching you everyime you had a fight with your partner or something , you might just feel compelled to go and smash his windows in with a brick after a while.

Re:This is a pointless post.

[Draknor]

Well, let's see.. who sponsored the training of Osama bin Laden decades ago? Who turned Afghanistan into a battle ground between "the good guys" and "the communists"?

Islamic militants may be to blame for 9/11, but US foreign policy deserves a lot of blame for creating the islamic militants to begin with. Or, at the very least, for fanning the flames of their hatred.

I agree: FUCK Bush and Ashcroft on the 2'nd

[bstadil]

I am spending my Slashdot Karma just to be able to voice my anger at this administration.

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.

On leaking the identity of secret agents.

[jbn-o]

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:

"Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate" the allegation.

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.

Can they trust Rackspace anymore?

[FsG]

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.

Re:Can they trust Rackspace anymore?

[6.023e23]

It wouldn't? I would think that knowing that your provider is a law-abiding organization (whether or not you agree with the particular law is another issue) should make you feel better. What's Rackspace supposed to do? Refuse to comply because they don't agree with the FBI/Swiss/Italians/whoever or think Indymedia is a really cool organization that shouldn't be interfered with? That does them no good. Rackspace did the only thing they could do - they complied with (what appears to be) a legitimate law enforcement seizure request and gag order.
As a customer of several colocation providers, I for one could not see any reason to hold Rackspace in any shadowed view for doing what they did. I _would_ look askance at them if they were to have violated the gag order or otherwise compromised the situation.
Whether or not you agree with the situation is irrelevant. What's relevant in evaluating Rackspace's response is the level of professionalism with which they conducted themselves in the midst of what was and is not a comfortable situation.

Re:Can they trust Rackspace anymore?

[HiThere]

Why do you say it appears to be a legitimate gag order? Do you have ANY evidence except that RackSpace said so? Did they file any legal protest? If so, where can I find record of it?

I have sympathy for RackSpace, and realize that this put them in a tough spot. But the fact remains that as far as we can tell they just rolled over, and didn't do anything to even try to protect their customer's privacy. Something to consider when next you are looking for a host.

You rate your business the way you rate yours. (I notice, however, that you didn't name it.) Possibly if they were one of several different colocation providers that I used, I'd still trust them to maintain a mirror. If they were 10% cheaper than the competition. For a primary host they'd need to be 30-40% cheaper. (I haven't decided yet...much information about this is still missing, so even that's a rough estimate.)

I don't consider laws to me more important than ethics or morals. Laws have become what one obeys because it's too dangerous to do otherwise. Morals and ethics are what one does because it's proper. Laws seem to rarely have anything to do with morals or ethics any more.

Scary

[PktLoss]

My understanding from the original article is that a court order was presented in the US to an international firm, which then complied and turned over servers in another country, to officials in that country.

Does this scare anyone else?

Could firms use this precident setting situation & other crazy recent laws (DMCA for example) to force hosting companies to turn over servers located in other countries?

Wasn't there a law passed not too long ago that gave the government the power to request information contained within many types of corporate databases (banking, insurance, car loan, etc)? Leverage that law with this case, and the current level of internationalization of many firms, and the government can get information about anyone, from just about anywhere.

Or perhapps I am wearing the tinfoil hat too tightly...

Re:Scary

[Austerity Empowers]

It is scary. Imagine that hte FBI wanted to shut you up. It couldn't do so following US laws, so it works out an agreement with the Swiss to invoke some international treaty to allow them to shut you up. (In return we could provide the same service to them). Replace swiss with whatever country has 1st/4th ammendment like complications.

Re:Scary

[DavidTC]

And anyone who thinks that's paranoid, remember that, from what we can piece together about it, is exactly how Echelon operates. The US intelligent community gets other governments to spy on Americans, because they, themselves, are forbidden from doing it. And they collect the data.

In return, we spy on Canada's, England's, Australia, and New Zealand's citizens, and turn the information over to them.

Should you be surpised

[dbIII]

If this is a US government initutive, remember that they have been holding poeple in a convenient lawless zone in Cuba for three years without laying charges. Due process can be ignored in more and more situations.

You know what:

[toby]

if we (americans) would quit putting our nose where it doesn't belong, that 9/11 would not have happened.

You are absolutely right. I hope you vote.

Police Repression in Genoa 2001

[Jack Action]

I can remember getting realtime updates from IMC Italy during the anti-Globalization protests in Genoa. The police were storming the IMC headquarters were activists were sleeping, eating, typing in news-stories etc. People were getting smashed with truncheons, taken down, beaten--the Rodney King-type treatment. Those arrested were taken to police barracks where they were threatened with rape and where the police were singing Mussonlini-era facist hymns.

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...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Thing is, that might be legal

[killjoe]

Bah! They all look alike.

Rackspace are not trustworthy....

[Phil John]

...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.

Photos were unredacted

[jeti]

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 !

Re:Thing is, that might be legal

[BlueUnderwear]

Remember that the world does NOT subscribe to the American idea of freedom and democracy.

Tooooot! Toooot! And it's a good thing too! We prefer real freedom (rather than all expenses-paid-holidays in Guantamo Bay), and real democracy (with more than two indistinguishable parties to chose among).

There are rights we have in the US that you do not in other free countries,...

That must be the French use of "other"...