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FBI Demands Logs From Radical Website
sunbird writes "The details are as yet unclear due to a gag order, but apparently the FBI is once again demanding IP logs from dissident webservers. The sysadmin for flag.blackened.net, best known for hosting infoshop.org and the Anarchist FAQ has responded to an FBI request for server logs. Although he cannot reveal the details of the request due to the gag order, the sysadmin has issued an informal press release discussing his reasons for turning over the information. Slashdot articles on similar topics: (1) (2) (3)"
Whenever I read articles like this I think two things:
1. So happy I live in Canada. It could be almost anywhere that isn't the US though. The rampant paranoia there is baffling.
2. So happy I'm on a dynamic IP pool. You want my address? Have it. I'll just cycle mine if I'm ever worried.
I mean I don't doubt he got the request, but his giving in and what follows is just so much drama:
"Freedom of speech does not exist, don't try to test it. They will come bust down your door - for real - point a gun to your head and pull the trigger if you refuse to comply."
No, actually, they won't. In a case like this they'll send you a subpoena asking for the infromation they want. If you fail to respond, the court will issue an order for your arrest, and a warrant allowing them to sieze the comptuers that should have the logs. When they come to arrest you, you won't get shot unless you do something stupid, like threaten them with a weapon. They'll just cuff you, read you your rights, and then gather what they came to get.
However, as you stated, he could have avoided the whole thing by just not keeping logs. I've run more than one server that doesn't keep logs, not for secrecy, but because it lacked a lot of storage and it just wasn't imporant to log what kind of access happened.
"Freedom of speech does not exist, don't try to test it. They will come bust down your door - for real - point a gun to your head and pull the trigger if you refuse to comply."
For some reason, I think there is more truth there than most of us would like to believe or admit.
I am absolutely shocked that the FBI doesn't already own and control the site to troll for anarchists. Everytime I see a site that preaches radicalism, my first reaction is "Fed".
I have a friend who worked undercover investigating racist groups and he said he would look around the room and try to figure out who was connected to which agency. For all they knew, they ALL were cops.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
refer to the FBI as the Gestapo
Ever heard of Ruby Ridge?
I'd say comparing certain certain arms of the government to the Gestapo is legit.
yes, nothing like being modded up for doing nothing other than copy and pasting pieces from a one page long forum post.
Way to go David. Thanks! Maybe some clueful moderator will bring you back down to where you belong for this crap: -1 Redundant.
I just can't understand why someone running what is apparently a popular site would ever keep logs for more than a very short amount of time?
Along the same lines, have you noticed that most companies now have an explicit official policy on information and records retention? Old emails will be deleted after 30 days, 1 year, etc.
The obvious reason is to avoid legal liability (Microsoft's emails) and embarrassment (Monica Lewinsky).
[Regarding this particular case: if the FBI is on a bona fide investigation of criminal activity and the courts have issued an order directing compliance with the investigation and this is NOT some post "Patriot Act" "sneak-n-peak" fishing expedition action exempt from judicial oversight then go ahead and provide law enforcement with what specific information they need and nothing else.]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
It's not uncommon to read posts that suggest that having a policy of deleting logs regularly might be prudent.
I was thinking that an extra measure of protection would be to add a script to automatically delete all logs as soon as any FBI phone number appears in the caller-id of an incoming phone call. The application could use a black(-ops;)-list of known phone numbers, exchanges and id strings for lawyers, organizations or agencies that are privacy challenged to check against for automatic deletion... hey, they keep black lists, why shouldn't privacy threatened groups?
The key question is, however, whether such a thing would be legal or interpreted as obstruction of justice? Having a policy of frequent deletion as a means of limiting exposure to privacy challenges doesn't seem to be a problem, but my proposed script might be. It might be possible to argue that before an actual request is received that preemptive deletion is not any different than frequent deletion. INAL, so I don't know, but it might be interesting to see what the courts think.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
This guy doesn't seem very smart.
1. He stupidly keeps logs
2. He caves under a subpeana
3. And then to cover his ass he plays "the spooks are going to kill me if I don't co-operate card."
What good are you to your cause if you aren't willing to risk incarceration or bodily harm for it? Anyone who tries to change the way of the world ends up dead, he should have kept his mouth shut if he wasn't willing to risk that.
If I were one of his comrades I'd be very pissed at him.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Though it pains me to comply with the State in any manner, I have to choose option #2
So, what you really mean is that while you preach a damn good sermon, you're really sleeping with the devil, and the choir can go to hell for all you care.
In addition, the trains would run on time, there would be no homeless (these would be in labor camps), and we would be standing in line to buy toilet paper.
I suppose anarchists are like canarys in coal mines: as long as you hear them twittering and flapping around in their self-imposed cages, freedom of speech is safe.
I have been effected by terrorism in my life , i lost a close freind in the Lockerbie bombings Yet i do not see it fit to shut down any anti gouvermental website just for some mesure of security . I value my freedom and unexplained actions for some supposed security check scare me
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
He averted a mess by complying. flag would've been taken down if he claimed to not have logs, period. Dave doesn't keep logs for long, though, but he provided recent ones because he had them.
I agree. This guy rolled over. It would've taken about 10 seconds to destroy that hard drive (faster if he has a gun). This guy's just another Internet blowhard. He was even keeping logs. What an ass. I hope he's drummed out of whatever community he's a part of.
I don't respond to AC's.
The question that all the pros out here want a answer to.
Why for FFS did you keep logs in the first place?
And why for the love of all that is good and right were your users coming from traceable IPs?
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Why wouldn't a popular site keep logs? If someone were to attack that site I would imagine you would want a record/audit trail for use as possible evidence? Also there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. If someone has made viable threats on this web site (i.e. Someone saying they are going to kill person X or something of that nature) then I am fully for the FBI stepping in and getting the logs. Everytime the government steps in and requests logs/audit data there are people that always scream OMG Freedom of Speech violation. Freedom of Speech does not mean you can say whatever the hell you want to and there will be no consequences. Ever heard of Lible and Slander? If someone made a plausible threat here (or perhaps somewhere else and that person also posts to this site) then the FBI is in the right.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
If someone were to rob me at gunpoint, and I choose to comply and give them my money rather than have my brains scrambled by a bullet, does that mean I'm "sleeping with the devil"? Should I instead make some sort of principled stand about my right to not be robbed?
Hell no. Any competent and sane self-defense instructor will tell you to give the nice man with the gun your wallet. Same principle applies whether the thug with the gun has a badge or not.
We all have to make choices about what's worth risking life and freedom fighting for and what's not. Like your pocket cash, server logs fall into the later category.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It's always the way of it.
There was a big protest at my university during my time there, and during the course of the protest, they blocked a major throughfare to all traffic for an extended period.
It goes without saying this wasn't a liscensed protest.
Turns out there was an ambulance tied up in the traffic jam, and all the ringleaders of the protest got charged with felony obstruction of emergency vehicles.
They went from revolutionaries to crying children in the blink of an eye. The charges were upheld, and they were all convicted. Sentences were light, but a felony on your record isn't pretty.
If you play the game, you have to accept the consequences. And they can be nasty.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
...are emblematic of the times or more to the point, their growing number is. When they whine about speech what they are really whining for is a world with no reprocussions for their actions.
Basic to the very concept of good and evil is that we have free will to choose our actions and paths through life and only by this can anything be judged one way or another. That which is compulsory as with a machine has no evil or goodness to it. It just is. Like a nearby star going nova and wiping out all life on Earth. Act of nature, G-d, whatever.
These so-called radicals always want to throw stones at the government and big business and so on and apply the term "evil" but they never take any responsibility for what they do, only credit. Free will doesn't work that way. Your actions have consequences and speech requires action to convey it.
Generally, most speech doesn't have reprocussions of an immediately actionable criminal or civil nature, but sometimes it does. Like telling someone to go some place to set them up to be murdered, or agreeing not to disclose classified documents and then doing so, or what have you.
He and his fellow poseurs lack the courage of their supposed convictions.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
I'm surprised that someone with such a low userID would think that the anarchist cookbook had anything to do with anarchism.
Wikileaks, no DNS
::rolls eyes:: Dude, that's just -- embarrassing. Really. You're not that important. Ironically, he then goes on to say...
Resist the extra y-chromosome influenced urge to sound more hardcore than the guy next to you. Nobody is impressed and the powers that be are sitting on the edges of their seats waiting for an excuse to shut down flag.
Indeed. You don't sound hardcore, you sound like a pathetic loser in this diatribe.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
This is one of the most often overlooked aspects of information security: Not only do you need to make sure that people only have access to the information they need to perform their legitimate functions, you need to make sure the you only have access to the information you need in order to to perform your legitimate functions. All knowledge may be power, but that's only a good thing if you have full control over how that power is used.
I regularly run into trouble with this with our sales/marketing people. I have to convince them that we should collect and store no more information than we have to. If you have information you don't need lying around, then you become a liability to anyone who may depend on that information being secure. You become a weak link and a tempting target because you're less likely to be vigilant about securing information that's not of value to you.
I'm quite astounded that the admin of such a website hadn't considered such things.
...America is a great and free nation. Just don't compare us to any other western nation...
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Or, rather, only if it's your government.
/dev/null". Maybe thermite charges
The good old USA has been busy changing
OP (other people's) governments they don't
like for at least a century. Ideology is
sometimes the impetus, but often it is
nationalist commercial interests, be it
a threat to "nationalize" bananna plantations,
building canals across Central America,
keeping a competing foreign power out of
the hemispere, or trying to control who is
selling whatever (oil) resource to some other
country/commercial interest.
Only this time around, a foreign power (SA) has
interceded in the affairs of the United States,
to the benefit of a specific (current regime)
interest group. The tipping point was 9-11-2001.
Without that tragic event, the current regime
would never have had their political agenda
succeed, and Dubya would have been yet another
no-name one term president. Instead, we have
the current situation, which can best be described
as a quasi-police state, reinforced by government
propaganda at every level of media access.
Iraq's non-existent WMD was a "crisis", tax cuts
and tax reform welfare for corporations was a
"crisis", lack of wage competition with third
world countries was a "crisis", and now Social
Security is a "crisis". Terrorism is a "crisis",
except when it comes to protecting our borders,
seaports, and air cargo, at which point, wage
competition with 3rd world countries takes
precedence, and cheap imported goods takes
a precedence. North Korean nuclear-tipped
ballistic missles are a "crisis" (hence our new
non-working Star Wars program), but smuggling
a dirty bomb/nuke into the country by terrorists
is not a "crisis", hence, we still have open
borders (for all that cheap imported labor.
The moment that Dubya spoke out about his amnesty
program for the 28 million illegal aliens in this
country, and then about paying social security
benefits to illegal aliens, and resistance to
better border security, I knew beyond a shadow
of a doubt that the entire issue about terrorists
and terror "threat levels" and our reasons for
the preemptive war in Iraq were all bullshit.
Just like the "non-crisis" in Medicare brought
about by the Prescription Drug Plan, versus the
"crisis" in Social Security, which will be bank-
rupted at an even faster rate with Dubya's "plan".
The revolution is already here, the neo-cons
already won the revolution, and it is only a
matter of how the "spoils of war" are divided
up amongst the "friends of the revolution". The
era of populist democracy is over, and the era
of Corporate National Socialism has arrived.
"rm -rf *" isn't good enough, and it's way too
late for ">
in amongst the hard disks would have been an
answer. It certainly would buy a longish stay
at Camp X-Ray (but that sure beats a one-way
ticket on an Argentine military aircraft over
the south Atlantic).
Hi folks. I hate to provide actual info when everyone is getting into a self-righteous frenzy about what idiot radical admin keeps logs, but...
This came out literally three minutes ago over a listserv for radical tech folks:
"While I can't comment on the specifics of these cases, I'm sure that quite of few of you will go "Doh!" when the details come out.
The problem here isn't logs. The problem is forum and weblog software that stores IP addresses. In other words, PostNuke, phpBB, Geeklog and other need a system to delete IP addresses from the MySQL db on a regular basis. If this is even desirable."
Someone else immediately replied with, "If they're stored in a database, a daily/hourly/whatever SQL query to zero the field should suffice"
So there you have it. Not the box admin's fault, but the folks putting in their blog software to move content. Feel free to argue about whether THOSE folks should know better.
Forgive me if this has already been asked and answered 72 times. It's too late and I'm too tired to read through this whole topic. :)
Are there laws regarding log retention? What if a site does a very poor or non-existent job at storing logs? What if the site only stores logs for 48 hours? When the FBI comes calling and says "Give me the logs", what happens if the site owner honestly replies "But I don't have those logs. I only keep 48 hours' worth of logs."?
Few sane people argue that Bush is another Mao - but many sane people and students of history argue that the laws and processes being brought into place under Bush (and some previous presidents) make it considerably easier to start down that path - and are arguably of no benefit to citizens.
See, one of the fundamental assumptions in our society is that the government is legitimate and that it obeys the rules set out for it.
Actually a fundermental rule of government is that it will always try to bend it's own rules or seek loopholes in them.
The first thing you need to realize is that the people who created our government were smarter than you are.
The people who set up the US government saw little wrong with a government being overthrown. After all that is what they had just done.
They concocted a system of government that works under all conditions, past or present. Our system of government has never yet failed.
The US Congress having a greater proportion of criminals than the general population is not a failure?