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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)"
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
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.
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.
...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).