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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 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!
And that's sad
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
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
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?