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U.S. Goverment Responds to EFF's Indymedia Motion

bergwitz writes "In a response to EFF's motion to unseal, the U.S. government claims that Indymedia hard drives were seized as part of an international "criminal terrorism investigation," and thus the U.S. District Court's gag order should be upheld." This will help refresh your memory.

9 of 474 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It pertains to an ongoing terrorism investigati by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative


    Get the photos of the swiss cops here with this torrent
    it was nothing about terrorists, just people taking pics of cops that were trying to intimidate activists.

  2. That's always been the case by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Informative

    If the government needs something I have in a bank safe deposit box, they go and serve the bank with a warrant. If they need my employee records, they serve my employer with a warrant.

    A warrant is just a legal declaration that allows law enforcement to etner a place they may not normally enter or seize something they may not normally seize. Law enforcement can't just come and take a computer randomly from a company or person. They have to get a warrant from a judge to do so. However the warrant is to enter the premises or seize the goods, so it is presented to the persons concerned. They don't go, present it to you, and ask you to go get the goods, then maybe alter them, before you hand them over.

    Also, Indymedia has standing to sue, they didn't however, the EFF did and that was part of the judges ruling (read more than the /. blurb). The EFF has no standing. However, even if Indymedia sues, doesn't mean records will be unsealed. There are plenty of cases where revealing specifics will screw an investigation, and in those cases the judge generally keeps the records sealed. They are unsealed at trial, when the case is dropped, or if it drags on for too long.

    Nothing has changed in an information society, except that we'll probably see more seizing of computers to get at data used in criminal activities. It's no different than if you had a physical book with your accounting of illegal activities in storage or at a bank. They'd serve the place that physically had the book to get it. They aren't going to serve you and hope that you give it to them unaltered and intact.

  3. Re:Translation: by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

    > Honestly, has CNN ever said anything good
    > about Bush?

    Well, the headlining article is about Bush, so lets pull it up, shall we?

    http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/10/bush.c ab inet/index.html

    Why, wouldn't you know it - it's a big long piece of praise for Bush's appointment for Attorney General, consistantly calling him a "moderate". Of course, this ignores Gonzales's heavy hand in the Patriot Act, secret trials, tribunals, et al.

    Not good enough? Lets take a FAIR look:
    http://www.fair.org/activism/cnn-psyops.htm l (government PSYOPS agents working at CNN)

    http://www.fair.org/activism/cnn-aljazeera.html (CNN to Al-Jazeera: Don't report civilian deaths)

    http://www.fair.org/activism/cnn-casualties.html (CNN says that a focus on civilian casualties would be "perverse")

    http://www.fair.org/activism/dobbs-annan.html (CNN attacks Annan for saying that the Iraq war was illegal, something that most international law scholars agree with)

    http://www.fair.org/extra/0303/reliability.html (probably one of the more telling - they covered Reliable Sources for 1 year. The results? Media insiders were 76%. Right-leaning guests outnumbered left-leaning guests 2:1. Laura Ingraham came on almost as half as often as all left-leaning guests put together. White guests were 194 to 9, worse than Fox's Special Report. Male guests outnumbered female 155 to 48 (over 3 to 1). Not a single public interest group appeared during the entire year.)

    http://www.fair.org/reports/fox-cnn-guest-list.h tm l
    (Comparing Fox's "Special Report" to CNN's "Wolf Blitzer Reports" - CNN had 38 Republicans and 29 Democrats; Fox had only *6* Democrats)

    I could keep going with dozens more. CNN is slightly right of center from a US perspective, which makes it solidly to the right on a global scale. In fact, it's interesting to compare CNN's coverage with CNN International. To market to an international audience, they had to make their right-wing coverage more liberal - so, while the US CNN showed the toppling of Saddam's statue all day with a waving red, white, and blue background, CNNi showed a split screen: on one side, the statue falling. On the other, images of the Iraqi wounded and dead, including Ali Ismaeel Abbas.

    (BTW, if anyone wants to attack this, you can't get away with just attacking FAIR: you need to attack *the content*).

    --
    That's it, Mr. Giraffe, get all the marmalade.
  4. Re: Ah, terrorism by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yeah, they had to change it from "Still Better Than Saddam" after this happened. ;)

    --
    That's it, Mr. Giraffe, get all the marmalade.
  5. Re:Iraq DID have ties to Al Qaeda by AK+Marc · · Score: 4, Informative

    Iraq had nothing to do with 911

    And that is the answer that we were not given before the invasion.

    but it did have ties to those that supported Al Qaeda.

    Fewer ties than Saudi Arabia. Did we invade there? How about Iran?

    If ties to al Qaeda was the litmus test, then we still struck the wrong place.

  6. Re:Translation: by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 4, Informative
    Richard Perle on CNN called Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist".

    Wolf Blitzer followed up by asking why Perle was accusing Hersh of being a terrorist. Instead of calling it a misquote, Perle said "he sets out to do damage".

    Perle was Reagan's assistant secretary of defense. Until February 2004 he chaired the advisory Defense Policy Board.

  7. Re:Iraq DID have ties to Al Qaeda by statusbar · · Score: 4, Informative
    Don't bother looking at the liberal buddies.

    Look at the facts:

    Vice President Dick Cheney was a vocal critic of trade embargoes while he headed Halliburton, a Houston-based oil services conglomerate, from 1995 to 2000. Under Mr. Cheney, Halliburton expanded its trade with Iran through an offshore subsidiary. That arrangement is being investigated by a federal grand jury.

    Nineteen executives or directors of companies fined by OFAC for dealing with state sponsors of terrorism were top campaign fund-raisers for Mr. Bush.

    Also:

    Federal authorities also are investigating whether Halliburton broke the law by using a subsidiary to do business in Iran and whether it was involved in an alleged $180 million bribery scheme in Nigeria. The company admitted in 2003 that it improperly paid $2.4 million to a Nigerian tax official.

    So, in reality, Haliburton may have been trading with the "axis of evil" Just like Prescott Bush did!

    --jeff

    --
    ipv6 is my vpn
  8. Re:Aren't all lefties terrorists? by metlin · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hello?

    He was the _leader_ of Hamas at the time of his assasination. He was _killing_ people. He was _ordering_ the deaths of more civlians through suicide bombings, and openly admitted and challenged Israel to it.

    He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1989, and later on released in 1997 - following which we went back and started a spate of attacks on civilians through suicide bombings. The Hellfire missile hit him and all the people who were killed were his aides and his bodyguards.

    Yeah, it's sad that Israel has lowered itself to the level of the militants whom they're up against, but when peace does not work, what is it that we could do against people who would not go against the word of "God".

    Ask yourself this: even if a man is guilty, is it right to kill him without trial, without provocation, without immediate threat, and at the cost of innocent lives?

    He was guilty, a terrorist who was leading a terrorist group at the time of assasination, who was a threat and would have ordered more, had he been alive. And oh, there were no innocent casualties - the only people who were killed in the vicinity were his aides and bodyguards.

    If Osama were out there and we could kill him, do you expect us to stay our hands because we've not had his trial?

  9. Re:Aren't all lefties terrorists? by 1u3hr · · Score: 4, Informative
    The My Lai Massacre? Are you kidding me? This happened during the middle of a nasty war. The Lieutenant who ordered the attack was charged with murder. No one in our government condones what happened.

    William Calley was charged, and convicted, but got "house arrest" for a few years. His actions were apparently condoned by your then-president, who set him loose. They were just gooks, after all.

    http://www.vietnam-war.info

    Calley ordered the men of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, American Division to shoot everyone in the village.

    He was initially sentenced to life in prison, but President Richard Nixon ordered him released from prison. Calley served 3 1/2 years of house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning, Georgia and was then released in 1974 by a federal judge.