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Second Indymedia Server Seized in UK Within a Year
GarconDuMonde writes "For the second time within the past year, an Indymedia server has been siezed in the United Kingdom. This time it is the Bristol Indymedia server (currently redirected to the United Kollectives IMC site); this follows on from the Ahimsa siezure last October.
The current siezure was carried out using a search warrant by the UK police at approximately 16:30GMT on June 27th, 2005. This was despite being warned by lawyers "that this server was considered an item of journalistic equipment and so subject to special provision under the law" (press release). Bristol Indymedia is currently being supported by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), Liberty and Privacy International. Other media organisations have declared their support."
WTF is indymedia?
While we may think this is terribly wrong from a moral/ethical standpoint, it may well be completely legal in the U.K.
Remember, I'm not saying this is right, but if you post a comment where you judge its legality by U.S. standards, you may be very wrong.
Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Someone commits a crime, and boasts about it on IndyMedia. The police haul in their server, probably hoping to arrest the dickwads who dropped concrete from a bridge onto a train, endangering lives in the name of "protest".
I'll bet you $100 dollars this has been seized for evidentiary purposes, in an attempt to trace the IP addresses of these hooligans, so they can be arrested. And I say "good", because the sort of cocksuckers who drop concrete weights onto trains deserve to go to prison.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Indymedia...."Independant Media"....
The whole idea is to provide a supposed outlet for the emotional side of horror stories related to human crisis', etc. I personally would find it analogous to the the dreams of the leftist media stations of the US (although I am sure that other countries have it worse)...
Yes, I would say that the removal of free speech in any situation is bad, and things like this just shouldnt be allowed. Furthermore it just provides more support for the ill-treated organization.
However, Just to throw my personal view into the mix...I find that such organizations such as this are more biased than most news, and have the sole purpose of pushing leftist heart string stories to gain the support of the global public. This kind of manipulation outrages me.
The police nabbed the server because someone boasted of violent criminal behaviour on it, and the police want to trace them.
Suppose a kidnapper used my typewriter to write a ransom note. Would my freedom of speech be curtailed if the police took it down the station to dust it for prints?
Don't get your panties in a wad, folks.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
But all the links lead to either Indymedia or pro-Indymedia sites.
It would be nice to get an unbiased source of this news, especially since Indymedia can't be expected to report on itself without bias.
Why are practically all the links to indymedia itself? What about having links to some other news sites so that we can get, like, more view points into this?
At least you didn't call Tony Blair "Dubya's lap dog'.
Now that would be mean.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
But if you want to know what Indymedia is, its an underground network of journalists. You can check it out and judge for yourself
Here are the sites
Radio4All
Live Radio
Wikipedia IndyMedia
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Did anyone else notice the timing co-incidence here?
From Indymedia.com: "The UK Indymedia site will be facilitating independent coverage of the actions and events. - G8 summit is running 6th-8th July.
Now I don't want to sound paranoid or suggest a conspiracy, but come on, the timing of this seizure is extraordinary. And there's about 0.00% chance of getting the server back before G8.
What exactly are you quoting? You seem to think that because Indymedia is a hub for independent journalists that their reporting automatically has less journalistic integrity than say CNN or the Times. Most of the news being reported on indymedia isn't posted anonymously, and if it is posted anonymously, most people have enough common sense to be skeptical of its accuracy. The point of indymedia is to provide journalistic diversity because people should always have access to a variety of news sources so they can do fact-checks themselves instead of just assuming that what's on CNN or the Times is accurate and unbiased, when it's often not the case.
Allowing people to post anonymously does not somehow take away from the integrity of the majority of the news posts which aren't anonymous. Similarly, attatching a name to every news article does not ensure that those news article will be more accurate. How often does times or CNN cite anonymous sources for their news? Does allowing a few anonymous news articles to be posted harm the public more than suppressing journalistic diversity and preventing people from doing fact-checks themselves or being able to access reporting on the same issue from varied perspectives?
not handing over your password will get you a spell at Her Majesty's Pleasure
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
If you agree with their ideas then go ahead and listen to them, if not then keep watching FoxNews.
I don't get it. Why does it have to be either indymedia or foxnews? Why impose the arbitrary limit?
IMO it can certainly be neither.
Both indymedia and foxnews are equally nutty.
indymedia is full of cranks and wild-eyed woo-woos, but at least they dont try to hide their bias (honest cranks? heh.)
As issues like this are becoming more and more common internet law neutral hosting enterprises are starting to sprout up in places that would normally have fishing communities as their primary income. As governments begin to make laws and regulate more and more information across the internet it will only force these new "bastions" will begin to flourish. In many ways it will benefit the internet more and more to have more of these friendly countries hosting content that cannot be seized.
As a UK citizen I am ashamed and appalled at the continuous erosion of civil liberties that have taken place during the last couple of terms of government.
- cards.shtml
B'liar is in the process of forcing through optional (year, right!) ID cards through parliament today that will cost an average of over $200/citizen (to be bourne by taxpayers of course). In addition everyone who wants to have a passport renewed will be forced to be finger-printed and iris scanned.
http://www.no2id.net/IDSchemes/faq.php
http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/privacy/id
All of these pieces of information will be stored and cross-linked with other personal details totally ignoring the data protection laws in the UK (that all businesses have to comply with and were put in place to try and prevent this sort of gradual slip into a surveillence society). In addition, the UK is the process of testing out road charging that will require all cars/busses/lorries to be fitted with a satellite tracking system so that the location of *every* vehicle continuously and this information will be available to the police.
I don't know about anybody else but this scares the hell out of me - especially with changes to the court systems to avoid the use of juries in certain cases and the 'anti-terrorism' laws (currently being contested) that allow *anyone* whom the state deems to be 'a threat to the state' to be detained without trial. I wonder whether there will be a ban on reading George Orwell's '1984' next...?
I have a young family with children in school and family here but if I had less attachments then I would be getting the hell out of here fast!
The police nabbed the server because someone boasted of violent criminal behaviour on it, and the police want to trace them.
It is not necessary to seize anything to do this. At most all they need to do is mirror the drive, which can be done without even removing it. In the previous case all they really needed was the cooperation of Rackspace in supplying the needed data.
Seizing of computer equipment not actually needed for evidence is very simply a means of discomfiting and intimidating the owner and the case of the siezure from Rackspace itself illustrates that they only really need the drive at most, not the entire computer, as only the drive contains the evidence in question.
Would my freedom of speech be curtailed if the police took it down the station to dust it for prints?
Why don't they just dust it where it is? They're perfectly capable of doing the job. In any case, as per above, this particular case is more like they impounded your typewriter, your desk, everything in it, all of your files and all of your customer's files.
KFG
What sense does it make to confiscate hardware in relation to a crime reported using the hardware? Were the drives taken out and used to smash some windows? Perhaps they are looking for glass fragments or greasy hippy fingerprints on the case.
A reasonably close analogy here would be if an anonymous coward on Slashdot bragged about a crime they'd committed, and the FBI responded by seizing all the Slashdot servers.
There is no evidence that the crime in question was committed or endorsed by the owners of the server. Instead, the server was seized because they refused to give the police access to its logs, claiming journalistic privilege.
Yes, the police seized the server because they were legitimately investigating a genuine crime. But this is basically getting back to the question of whether the media can be forced to reveal their sources. There is a real freedom-of-speech issue here. While you are right to try to forestall many of the predictable kneejerk reactions, it is equally the case that nobody, whether British, American, or from any of the other many countries where people read Slashdot, can afford to dismiss this story without first considering the real issues at stake here.
Indymedia was born in the US. I can assure you that it exists state-side.
Tim Brown
awe man i suck!
Instead, the server was seized because they refused to give the police access to its logs, claiming journalistic privilege.
Nope, they claimed that they didn't keep logs.
The police then said ok we'll hahve the whole server then.
Then they were advised to claim journalistic privilege - for the server, not for the logs, which (if you believe them and they would be silly to lie on this point) they don't have.
But yes, many of us believe its much more honest to be up front about our biases.
And EVERYONE has them.
Everyone might have them, but it's what you DO with them that makes you who you are. That's why Fox News is horrible and indymedia (huge generalization) is just as bad. If you could seperate your bias from your journalism then you'd be...a professional.
You'll have that sometimes...
Calling Indymedia journalism, is like calling '10 PRINT "HELLO WORD" ' a C.S. Masters Thesis.
Every wahoo get's on indymedia, and makes up half of what they say out of their imagination. Even if they, by freak chance, are well informed they manage to mangle the 'facts' to the point of propaganda.
I was all for the concept when it started, and I followed it regularly. But it became quickly aparent that IM had nothing to do with news. It has long since degenerated into a reched sesspool of incestous self congradulation. Liberal or not, IM has no 'news value' that can be decerned.
I'm just cynical enough to believe that the only reason 'journalists' would get behind indimedia is that they have paranoid delusions that the New World Order(tm) is out to get them. And as long as Indymedia is around they have someone to point to who is vastly worse than them. "How can you come after us before them?"
I would rather be ashes than dust!
But carte blanche exists nowhere anyway. The scenarios listed are there to permit secrecy agreements made between citizens and government (they exist in the US), trials perfomed behind closed doors (those exist in the US), prosectuion for shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre and hence endangering those within the building (that exists in the US), and slander and libel laws (those exist in the US).
I don't think so, no. You can't prevent an event that's in the past, after all....
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
PS : ever wonder why every national UK newspaper has a clause that says something like "correspondence intended for publication must contain your full address and daytime phone number." Well now you know why.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
where anyone can play as long as they arent bigoted pricks.
My experience has been that anyone to the right of Michael Moore is considered a bigoted prick within the Indymedia community.
And what unbiased source are you going to use to tell you whether or not your sources are unbiased?
eh?
What you are asking for is bias that is too hard for you too see.
If thats all you need, just close your eyes and everything will be ok, eh?
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Pretty much any article in the Human Rights Convention has a clause that says "unless limited by laws". Even the right to life, physical health and freedom. I'm sure it was intended to only apply to the freedom part but the wording would allow for death penalty which is usually seen as a human rights violation.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I'm fairly certian that a divison of troops (about 10,000) would make short work of any and all defenses on the structure. For that matter a brigade could probably handle it. As for a civilan matter, it probably wouldn't be. Remember the structure they are on was orngially military in construction and, as I noted, isn't a recognised soverign nation. If they wanted, the British could take Sealand in a single day, probably without losing a single man.
/. that because Sealand declares themselves independant that makes it so. No, not so much. For the best proof, see Iraq. It was an independant nation, with diplomatic representation from a number of nations, a large standing army, and so on. Didn't stop the US form comming in and rolling their military and taking over.
You seem to have a romantic notion shared by a large amount of
What's more, Sealand isn't what you'd call well connected. IT could easily be severed from teh Internet with just a few block at major providers.
The BBC has a very left leaning liberal agenda and Newswatch is a vapid farce.
I don't mind either of these using private money but unfortunately we Brits go to jail if we don't pay for it.
As someone said recently, Murdoch is a (expleted deleted) but we do have a choice about whether we read/listen to/watch his products.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Do you see the BBC campaigning for renationalisation of the railways, or higher taxes, or a stronger welfare state
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Actually a closer description would be that they take people with the same point of view and have them argue about how evil liberals are.
The head of Fox News was one of the major figures in Watergate, he was deeply involved in corruption and political dirty tricks then, he is utterly unsuited to being in charge of a news organization.
Faux news is simply a 24 hoyur propaganda outlet for the Republican party and it will break them in the end the same way that Murdoch destroyed the British Conservative party. At this point the Republican party listens to nothing other than Fox news, they are completely out of touch with the country outside the beltway.
What will happen sooner or later is that a single event will occur that causes people to suddenly decide that the Republican party cannot be trusted. In the UK what happened was that the UK fell out of the exchange rate mechanism and people suddenly lost their faith in the Conservatives as being competent on eceonomic affairs.
Once that point is reaches Murdoch will do what he has done many times before, he will switch sides. Republicans who think they have a solid ideological aly in Murdoch are fooling themselves, Murdoch has never looked out for anything apart from his own wallet. He supports socialists like Blair and outright Communists like the Chinese government. Supporting the republican party in the US is a tactic, not a commitment.
The same thing would happen with indymedia if any significant political movement relied upon it for news. Since their readership is negligible and confined to the fringes this is not a major risk.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The real problem with Moore is not where he is on the political spectrum, its the fact that he is almost as sloppy with facts as the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
Being sloppy with facts is even worse when the majority of the facts are on your side. Take the whole memogate incident. The evidence that Bush went AWOL from the national Guard is overwhelming but when CBS introduced one piece of evidence from a source that nobody in their right mind should ever trust the GOP was able to pretend that the whole story must be fake. (Contrast this with the media treatment of the Smear Boat Liars for Bush who were repreatedly proven to have lied and contradicted their own contemporary accounts)
Ideological zealots like Bush or Moore can be very popular for a short while. After a time however people tend to tire of them and when they do the result is usually that the party that embraced them is out of office for a very very long time. Bush is not worthy to lick the boots of Margaret Thatcher or Clement Atlee but once the country tired of them they turned against their party for more than a decade.
Ideology is a very effective tool for mobilising your base, it also cuts you off from everyone who is not part of your base.
The indymedia crew appear to be a bunch of hard left zealots whose only real common platform is that they hate everything about the current political scene.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Everyone might have [biases], but it's what you DO with them that makes you who you are. That's why Fox News is horrible and indymedia (huge generalization) is just as bad. If you could seperate your bias from your journalism then you'd be...a professional.
While it's fashionable here to bash Fox News, they're hardly the best example of bias getting in the way of journalistic professionalism. Take a look at media outlets like the New York Times or CBS where political spin manages to supercede news reporting so badly that you have a complete breakdown in journalistic integrity. While Fox News may lean to the right about as much as your typical news organization (ABC, CNN, whatever) does to the left, and imply that they don't with their "fair and balanced" slogan, how exactly does this make them "horrible" and "just as bad" as some fringe news source for political radicals?
*sigh* another wikipedia source cited as the great authority.
great social experiment guys, but not exactly the authority of the wealth of universal knowledge.
Think "Don't Panic"
The world according to SComps
For a site that features both moderated and unmoderated content, it makes more sense to judge its quality by the stories selected and featured by the editorial collective than by the unmoderated posts of individual random yahoos.
Surely you could have at least come up with a poorly written feature rather than some random schizoid post, if you're trying to dis indymedia.