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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.
... we didn't serve IndyMedia - we served RackSpace.
Ah, the complexities of an information society. According to the government, you'd better own the equipment, not just the data. Data owners apparently have no standing to sue if they aren't directly served, even if it's their data that's confiscated.
Let us live so that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry -- Mark Twain
Does it pertain to an ongoing terrorism investigation in the sense that it discusses the politics surrounding terrorism? Particularly from a viewpoint unfavorable to the agencies performing the seizure?
Does the executive branch get to claim unilaterally from claiming that the investigation is ongoing, or does some judge get to investigate that claim? If not, is there any check on the executive branch's ability to make that claim for anything they choose to seize?
I left my elitist card at home; I'm genuinely curious.
As far as I can tell from RTFA, this is just the government's response to the motion; a judge still gets to rule. Yes?
It is believed that the FBI seized it on the request of either the Italian or the Swiss government.
Since the FBI isn't talking, no one is quite sure who requested the actual seizure. Getting that information from the FBI is the first step towards unravelling this case.
Look, as long as the Patriot Act remains largely untested in court, the Justice Dept. would be incredibly stupid not to milk it for all they can. I'm pretty sure this kind of thing will be eventually overturned, but Congress passed the law, so now we've got to deal with it. Dealing with it will probably take the Courts striking down enough provisions that they send it back to Congress for a rewrite. This will probably take several years. Till then, it's a process. So far, it's a process that still seems to work. Give it time.
It is sad that in the United States you apparently need special standing to request the unsealing of information for a warrant/subpoena.
In Canada, the PUBLIC is considered to have an interest every time the STATE uses its power to seize something via a warrant/subpoena and any member of the public can request the information be unsealed and has standing to do so.
On a similar theme, the public has the right to order transcripts of court proceedings for the same reason.
The process of Justice is considered to be a matter of public interest. Not simply a private matter between the state and whoever the state is screwing over.
Their argument about the MLAT treaty is persuasive however. It seems to contradict their argument about terrorism however.
Either the seizure was according to the a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) and was therefore done on behalf of another country, or it was at the behest of US authorities to protect american national security.
Does anyone know the identity of the unnamed "REQUESTING STATE"? Or is that a secret also?
Because it seems by refusing to ID the requesting state the government is also necessarily refusing to ID the authority of which specific treaty they are relying on. Pointing out the Treaty would tend to ID the requesting state (in so far as it would be a signatory)
I don't think you can rely on a treaty if you don't want to identify it to the court. that is just my hunch. Justice is called Justice for a reason.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
Huh? Where do you live, Citizen? AmeriComplex is the largest MMOLARP on the planet, featuring 300,000,000 LARPers playing 24/7!
It does not say in the treaty that the government is obliged to honour the request for confidentiality,
Therefore, the part that says that unsealing the documents would be a violation of any treaty is bullshit. BTW, what government is going to unilaterally give away their right to decide what is and isn't confidential?
More lawyer weaseling.
And that's sad
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Law enforcement is sometimes done for good reasons?
I know that's hard for a whacked out hippy to understand, since all they know about police is that they want to take their drugs away.
But think about it, WTF would any investigator unseal the records of an ACTIVE INVESTIGATION!!!
If that were the case you may as well legalize murder, because you'll NEVER put anyone away with that sort of disclosure.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
That's why we have this crazy idea of a judge who sees the evidence and makes a ruling..... If all data were public, smart criminals (and smart terrorists) would never get caught.
Anyone remember the raid on Steve Jackson Games? ... the sealed search warrents, computer equipment that was never returned, the reasoning for the raid kept secret.
At least the al qaeda terrorist cells report back to someone that the US claims should be held responsible. The "US Secret Service" terrorist cell on the other hand seem to operate freely in the US without having to report to any higher authority or be held accountable for their illegal activities. Or has Bill Cook and the rest of his cell ever been held in judgement for their actions?
Why, the UN of course. They did not want us to continue. Need I go on?
Yes. If we act according to the UN, then why did we invade in the second war against the wishes of the UN?
We should have invaded the first time, or not invaded the second time. Either way, a Bush was wrong. So which one was wrong?
Learn to love Alaska
>what good does it do that you have the right to protest, if you have no job, no income, bombs explode every day, and you can get shot when making the use of the right to protest?
The logo of Heinlein's Space Patrol was three circles, representing Peace, Law, and Freedom. They were interlinked so that if any one were removed the other two would fall apart.
Worth thinking about.
Yes, the government did not have to agree and if they had not at the beginning, there would be no standing in the court to keep it confidential.
Furthermore, as long as the other parties involved say "we want this information kept confidential" and because the U.S. agreed to do this at the beginning, there really isn't anything our courts can do about it (again, because of this section of the treaty). UNLESS, it involves an United States citizen. Then it is a whole different ball game.
I agree with your assessment about the War on Drugs and Terror being used to chip away at our rights. I also am sickened by the fact that I am actually defending the government on this case because of my understanding of International Law and the U.S. system of law. I want to make it clear that I think what my government is doing is morally wrong, but perfectly legal. To me, that makes this one sad case.
P.S. Thanks for checking up on me on the grammar. ;)
Why would the Gubmint really care all that much about Indymedia unless it was a big deal.
For all the chomskyist-libertarians here screaming about the repression of YOUR rights, there is an equal number of people deluded into believing that Indymedia or their Blog is something so momentous that the government felt the need to randomly quash it.
That's kind of the same worldview that alien abductees have, that they themselves are so significant that beings from the Horehead Nebula would hump it all the way over here to examine them.
Sorry but no, more than likely something Indymedia did, or some funding source attached to them did something to raise some red flags. Indymedia PRIDES itself on being subversive and doing tangential things with groups that are on the fringes to begin with. Why would this be any different? It probably is not different.
We didn't start it, he did with the invasion of another country
In point of fact, had Bush told Saddam that he didn't approve of the invasion plans when he FUCKING ASKED FOR PERMISSION, none of this would have happened. Yeah, Saddam's a nasty guy, but we aren't angels either.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Even if the US army drops bombs and kills some civilians, it was for a military objective such as taking control of a city, or bridge. 9/11 was an action, like most "terrorist" actions, that was not towards a military objective, but rather just an act to get attention and cause fear in the populace affected.
How about if it was an indiscriminate kill free-fire zone, like we had in Vietnam? Or what if the ojective really was to get attention and cause fear, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What if we started arbitrarily kidnapping and holding people hostage without any form of due process, like Guantanamo? What if we shoved people into roofless huts until they froze to death, like we did to the Japanese in WW2? You can say that's all in the past now, but as we are repeating most of the same pattern it really isn't.
The "terrorists" didn't do what they did because to "get attention and cause fear." They did what they did as an attempt to dislodge us from our complete financial support of Israel's occupation of Palestine. The "terrorists" didn't occupy the school in Russia to get attention and cause fear, they were attempting to convince Russia to dislodge their troops from Chechnia. Heck, the Basque sepratists didn't blow up the Madrid underground to cause fear, they did it to change the cost-benefit equation of continuing to occupy the territory.
It's not a big difference. If anything the terrorists are more noble in their cause, as they are spending their lives for an ideology they believe in, as opposed to the current administration who is merely risking other people's lives for financial gain.
We live in a morally ambiguous universe. Not because "They" are clean, but because "We" are dirtier than we imagine.
The ______ Agenda
Well, thanks to the internet, the protesters are taking pictures of the troublemakers and they're sticking up the pictures and saying 'Who the fuck is this person breaking this car window? If anyone knows who this is, tell us.'.
Well...they're undercover cops. Duh. Everyone suspected that, but that's what all this racket is about.
Logically, it makes no sense, if you've infiltrated an organization, and they post pictures of stuff, to say 'Hey, that's our undercover cops! Take those pictures down!'. That's just crazy. If they don't know they're undercover cops, don't tell them. If they do know, well, you're screwed anyway, pull them back in.
But these undercover cops are there to cause problems so the police can escalate the force used against the protesters. Having their faces plastered around is likely to be rather bad PR.
Except, of course, the traditional news is completely ignoring this.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Didn't anyone notice that the motion to unseal was denied because the movants did not have the legal standing to file such a motion? Moreover, did anyone notice that unsealing the document would break international treaty? Granted that if those two reasons weren't there I am quite certain that the third would still be upheld, however, it's sad that so many people overlooked those.
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
Very observant. Yes indeed they are nurished by the same thing. While King George seeks to remake the world into a neo-con Christian-capitalist utopia, Osama and crew seek to remake the world into a Islamic Empire known as the Caliphate. They are the two sides of a very ugly coin. You should also realise that they need each other badly. In the absence of Osama, Bush would have difficulties frightening his sheeple into spending trillions and giving him near absolute power. In the absence of the Bush's Crusdade, Osama would have to deal with a reasoned and shrewd leader who would alter US policies in the Middle East, thus making Osama to be considered by Muslims to be a criminal instead of a hero and thus cought in a short order and his group rendered powerless.
B) Kill anyone that gets in our way
While I agree with you, these are only some of the components of the mosaic of motivations and goals of the present US administration. Bush understands oil well, but at the same time he and his crew are hate-filled megalomaniacs. While Hitler really believed that expansion East was crutial for his Third Reich to become powerful economically, his disdain and hatred of Slavs and Jews was a core element of that plan. The same is true of Bush. While an imperial power struggle to secure oil and energy sources is on the mind of some neocons, their disdain and hatered of Arabs and love for Israel is also the heart of their actions.