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The Empires Strike Back
Alien54 writes "Back when the Internet was young - oh, say, eight years ago - there was a school of thought that held that cyberspace was its own sovereign nation. For one thing, 'The Net perceives censorship as damage, and routes around it.' What government could control what was said on the Net? [...] Maybe it's time to change that into, 'Governments perceive the Internet as damage, and gang up on it.' So says Net War columnist Wendy Grossman in an article discussing the recent raids on Indymedia. She makes an interesting case."
all we have to do is Wait for The Return of the Jedi and all will be good again.
four words:
amatuer orbital server farms.
cut down on those pesky armed intrusions and silly warrant nonsense.
Mr Rutan, could you loft my rack? thanks.
Of the authorities in situations like these that gets stories like these printed. It goes something like this:
* We owe you no explanation
* Nobody holds us accountable
* You have no defense
* You are automatically assumed wrong
* We admit no wrongdoing
* We are above right and wrong
* Whatever we want to do is automatically justified
* We don't owe you an apology
* Go ahead and try to sue, we'll just do it again to teach you a lesson
* People with power are on our side
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
In the present matter regarding Indymedia, Rackspace Managed Hosting, a U.S. based company with offices in London, is acting in compliance with a court order pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), which establishes procedures for countries to assist each other in investigations such as international terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering. Rackspace responded to a Commissioner's subpoena, duly issued under Title 28, United States Code, Section 1782 in an investigation that did not arise in the United States. Rackspace is acting as a good corporate citizen and is cooperating with international law enforcement authorities. The court prohibits Rackspace from commenting further on this matter.
What's an MLAT?
Criminal Cases Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Treaties: Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Treaties (MLATs) are relatively recent development. They seek to improve the effectiveness of judicial assistance and to regularize and facilitate its procedures. Each country designates a central authority, generally the two Justice Departments, for direct communication. The treaties include the power to summon witnesses, to compel the production of documents and other real evidence, to issue search warrants, and to serve process. Generally, the remedies offered by the treaties are only available to the prosecutors. The defense must usually proceed with the methods of obtaining evidence in criminal matters under the laws of the host country which usually involve letters rogatory.
MLAT Treaties in Force:
I. The United States has nineteen Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLAT) currently in force: Argentina, Bahamas, Canada, Hungary, Italy, Jamaica, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Panama, Philippines, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom (Cayman Islands), United Kingdom, Uruguay.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Q: What government could control what was said on the Net?
A: China.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"Governments percieve free speech as dangerous". Still not quite it...
"Governments perceive free speech as dangerous to themselves". Yeah, I think that says it.
until the goverment says why they raided the place everyone is really just crying wolf.
... abuse of power is abuse of power, regardless.
Um, no. Having the government abscond with people's property without cause or justification, and stonewalling as to why, does not imply no cause for concern, nor is anyone "crying wolf" when they announce to the world that the government has seized their property and silenced their voices without announcing why and without proper due process (which, in case you were sleeping through twelve years of civics classes, includes being told what one is accused of doing wrong).
They might have had a perfectly legit reason or they may have been poltical tools
With no notification to the accused of what they are accused of, it is abuse of power and in violation of acceptable norms in every western liberal democracy. It is irrelevant as to whether the motive was political, legal, or personal
We don't know yet and may not know for a long time but so far I'm not inclined to start screaming about censorship just yet.
Not surprising. You represent the school of thought that is primarilly responsible for these sorts of actions, and the erosion of our fundamental rights they imply.
But nevermind, I'm sure you'll scream loudly about how burying your head in the sand is "realistic" and "sophisticated," while those of us who point to such obvious abuses as these are dismissed as the "tin foil hat" crowd. This has happened numerous times in history, and is happening again, proving once more that those who ignore history are indeed doommed to repeat it. Unless, of course, IHBT.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The Internet is just rowdy. Bruce Sterling's take on it: one of the few places the Average American is daily approached by criminals attempting to steal everything they own! [referring to 419 scams, and I'm paraphrasing]
Freedom is a double edged sword.
If we ask the Government to police spam, or if we ourselves don't keep copyrighted material off file sharing systems, we're inviting Government to come and police what we, the geeks, have not self-policied. What we will not govern, they will.
Nature abhors a vaccume, and The State abhors an anarchy.
And with good reason!
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
At the Genoa G8 summit in 2001, the Italian police shot a protester dead and assaulted a number of journalists including the Indymedia reporter Mark Covell. The Genoa police are currently defending charges brought by Covell and others.
It appears the Italian government hope that they can disrupt or compromise the case against them. Acting in concert with the Swiss, who want to get back at Indymedia for their coverage of the Evian G8, they went through the FBI (because Rackspace, Indymedia's London hosts, is a US company) under a MLAT (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty) to ask the UK police to raid Indymedia's servers.
The UK Home Office was of course happy to comply, mainly because MLATs enable them to carry out police actions that would be judicially indefensible without the cloak of secrecy that surrounds MLATs.
Firstly, there are current 152 Indymedia websites, not 50 as reported. That means that the loss of ahimsa (the server that was taken down) caused 13% of the IMC (Indymedia Centre) sites to go down, not the "more than 40 percent" quoted.
Secondly, the article makes it sound as if there has been no progress on the cypherpunk front since 1996. While progress has been annoyingly slow, the growth of peer to peer technologies over the last few years has prompted a number of experiments - TOR, I2P, Freenet, etc. (see the I2P network comparisons page for a list), some of which seem to be getting pretty mature.
Thirdly, the bigger sites on ahimsa were up again in hours/days. They would have been up even quicker if a proper backup / mirror system had been in place, and in fact Indymedia techies have now been spurred into action by the ahimsa seizure to make sure the network is more robust. Think about this: the leftie scene is not particularly filled with technologically adept people. The Indymedia network runs on a shoestring budget (in terms of money / time). Despite this, the network was *still* able to respond and repair the damage fairly rapidly.
And finally, don't overestimate the competence of the FBI in this matter. Apparently when trying to do something about the picture of Swiss undercover cops on nantes.indymedia.org, one of the people they approached was from Seattle Indymedia, which has nothing to do with running either ahimsa or nantes.indymedia.org. And anyway, the disputed picture was quickly mirrored all over the place when it became "notorious" (just like the DeCSS code).
So, while I think Grossman's article is a good counterbalance to the mystical rants of people like John Perry Barlow, she leaves out a number of facts that show that the Internet can indeed be used to "route around censorship". Its all a matter of effort - in the 1970s and 80s, the ANC got around government censorship in South Africa by planting "pamphlet bombs" to scatter leaflets at busy rail stations (the cost: activists spending several years in jail). The Internet allows the subversion of censorship with far less effort, but of course it doesn't do it "by magic".