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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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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.)
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
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.
Jebba, the guy with the contract with Rackspace has a load more info about this whole affair in his blog.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 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.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
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!
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.