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."

Comments

Umm

[TheKidWho]

WTF is indymedia?

Re:Umm

[EiZei]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indymedia All hail the wiki.

Re:Umm

[c0p0n]

Long story short, it's a worldwide network of internet resources for communists and anarchists usually located around local indymedia pages. They use these resources to organize social events and stuff like that. Sometimes I participate of such events, they are mostly orientated to civil rights and antiglobalization stuff.

Apart from that, they also provide hosting solutions to social and radical groups, specially local Hacklabs on which I partitipate frequently.

Re:Umm

[ColaMan]

Perhaps we should try and persuade google to link "WTF is" with "define:" on google. Would make it a lot more natural.

Ridiculous

[skazatmebaby]

That's absolutely ridiculous - but gives (to me personally) credibility that Indymedia is seen as a force of change.

Word has it that they're going to move to Sealand/Havenco - Take that UK!

Re:Ridiculous

[eclectro]

Word has it that they're going to move to Sealand/Havenco [havenco.com] - Take that UK!

Which means that the UK government sends a group of commandos to seize Sealand.

It might take 15 to 30 minutes to accomplish.

Speech isn't as free in England as the U.S.

[gbulmash]

AFAIK, and IANAL, the UK does not have the same protections for free speech and a free press that the U.S. has. In fact what freedoms the press has are more a matter of gentlemen's agreement (the king agrees not to shut down our newspapers and we agree not to behead the king) and some common law foundation (relying on prior judicial decisions rather than a constitutional edict). In fact, the Crown's ability to squelch and silence voices of dissent was one of the reasons the right to a free press was amended into the U.S. constitution.

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

Re:Speech isn't as free in England as the U.S.

[dr_strangeloveIII]

Putting AFAIK at the start is a license to write any half-baked bullshit really, I think you might find that we have a very free press (and some of ours isn't even owned by McDonalds and Microsoft) and as for the Crown interfering with free speech (we have a Queen at the moment not a King by the way) I think you may find you are a few centuries out of date.

This was nothing to do with free speech but it was everything to do with someone bragging on the internet about a £100000 vandalism they'd committed and the Police duly investigating it.

Re:Speech isn't as free in England as the U.S.

[Gordonjcp]

AFAIK, and IANAL, the UK does not have the same protections for free speech and a free press that the U.S. has

Bollocks, matey. If anything we have more.

Re:Speech isn't as free in England as the U.S.

[ettlz]

I thought only a court injunction can prevent publication of material in the UK, and judges are often loathed to issue these except where personal privacy or safety is at stake. As far as I understand, there isn't even a Government mechanism to legally force newspapers to keep quiet over military secrets; the "D-notice" mechanism is an advisory system, based upon mutual agreement.

Re:Speech isn't as free in England as the U.S.

[julesh]

> some of ours isn't even owned by McDonalds and Microsoft

No, it's owned by Rupert "Bloody" Murdoch, instead.

Although we do have some good laws that are supposed to protect journalists from this kind of behaviour, it does not extend to preventing the seizure of the server.

Section 10 of the 1981 Contempt of Court Act states: "No court may require a person to disclose, nor is any person guilty of contempt of court for refusing to disclose, the source of information contained in a publication for which he is responsible unless it is established to the satisfaction of the court that it is necessary in the interests of justice or national security or for the prevention of disorder or crime."

If a court was satisfied that the information was necessary in the interests of justice, they have a right to demand it.

Re:Speech isn't as free in England as the U.S.

[rich_r]

from the horse's mouth.

Re:Speech isn't as free in England as the U.S.

[julesh]

Yeah, the UK is the most primitive EU state in this regard.

Actually, I'm informed that most journalists believe France to be the worst EU state for freedom of press.

England, France and some other countries have very unpleasant things, such as colonialism, in their histories, and it would be so much easier to forgive them for this if they put their current affairs in order in some way.

I can't think of any EU state other than Belgium that doesn't have a colonialist, imperialist or otherwise expansionist past. Europe had a very violent middle-ages.

Set up a proper legal system which guarantees the same results to everyone for the same actions

The only possible such system is one in which actions either always succeed (i.e. a police state) or always fail (i.e. anarchy). Any other system recognises that justice is subjective and leaves the eventual decision up to people, and as nobody is infallible sometimes decisions are made in the opposite way to the way they should go.

created electoral systems in which multiple parties can truly succeed,

Based on the evidence that a significant number of seets in the House of Commons are now held by Liberal Democrats, it seems clear to me that it is possible for 3 parties to succeed in the UK.

But as the UK loses its security council seat to the EU and moves its army into EU control, we'll start civilizing them.

These things are many, many years away. Don't count your chickens 'til they're hatched.

Re:Speech isn't as free in England as the U.S.

[cliffski]

and over in the US, you have Fox News, and are not allowed to show the flag draped coffins of your war dead.

hang on, which one has the free press?

Re:Speech isn't as free in England as the U.S.

[exKingZog]

Congo was the personal empire of King Leopold II of Belgium, whose colonial excesses sickened Europe and led to the Belgian government seizing control of the colony from the monarch.

So even Belgium has a colonial past. But hey, so does America (war with Spain, the Philippines, anyone)?

Re:Speech isn't as free in England as the U.S.

[CmdrGravy]

I've never understood the need for these marches and must admit that I find the concept of "marching season" fairly amusing.

We should just ban them and be done with and in fact a much better law than this Religious Hatred Bill would be a law which banned any public display or expression of religious belief in circumstances where non religious or people of opposite religions may be exposed to it.

You may get a bit of whining to start with but in the long run it would be a good thing.

Re:Speech isn't as free in England as the U.S.

[Skjellifetti]

btw. the US has a banned books list too, as I found when googling writing this post... surprised me.

The US banned books list is a list compiled by the ALA. The books are not banned by the US Gov't. Instead, they are typically books that some local yocal (think of the children!) found offensive and persuaded their local public library or school to ban.

Well....

[gowen]

on approx 17 June an anonymous post to the Bristol Indymedia

I hope they get their kit back, but I think this "journalist" defence won't have any legs. There may well be excellent journalists working for indymedia, but responsible journalists do not allow anonymous, unchecked "facts" into their news output.

In fact, that just encourages scurrilous rumor mongering -- which is diametrically opposed to good journalism.

"One cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God, the British journalist.
But seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to."

Re:Well....

[hhghghghh]

There may well be excellent journalists working for indymedia, but responsible journalists do not allow anonymous, unchecked "facts" into their news output.

You mean like the BBC did? As pointed out by the Hutton enquiry? Though as it later transpired, the BBC was entirely right (and the Government should have sued them or put in a complaint with the Press Complaints Commission, in stead of a blatant attempt at cencorship, much like seizing Indymedia's servers?).

In fact, that just encourages scurrilous rumor mongering -- which is diametrically opposed to good journalism.

You see, the thing is, rumor mongering is covered by Freedom of Speech to a very great extent. After all, who is to say what is Good Journalism? The Government??

Seizing servers without a judicial verdict is kind of iffy. Usually if you slander/libel you'd get a fine and the instruction to retract your story. The Government doesn't get to impound printing presses, nor servers. Not in civilized countries, anyway.

Re:Well....

[lysergic.acid]

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?

Re:Well....

[the_womble]

responsible journalists do not allow anonymous, unchecked "facts"

I do not think the law does (or can) differentiate between responsible and iresponsible journalists.

In any case if you think that, you could not possibly have read the British tabloid newspapers any time in, say, the last century or so.

Re:Well....

[aussie_a]

Seizing servers without a judicial verdict is kind of iffy.

Lucky that didn't happen in this case. FTFA:


On Tue 21st June, the police contacted an IMC Bristol volunteer asking for IP logs.

They didn't get the logs, so they contacted a judge and received a search warrant.

Fool me once...

[Duncan3]

Fool me once, shame on you...
Fool me twice, use an encrypted filesystem fool...

Was that so hard? And random bits are so much fun :)

Re:Fool me once...

[DrSkwid]

not handing over your password will get you a spell at Her Majesty's Pleasure

Linux Users, Take Note

[skazatmebaby]

At least this time, the Blag Servers at http://blagblagblag.org/ aren't affected, as they were the last time.

Encouraging stupid posts?

[Propagandhi]

Thanks for the heads up, but perhaps it's a good idea to mention the reason for these seizures alongside the fact that it just happened.

For those of you left wondering by the initial post these seizures are apparently related to an investigation of a bit of vandalism that cost somewhere around a hundred grand...

That's a little background, it's not like some evil government was seizing their servers simply because of a difference of opinion (although, depending on who you listen to, that may be the case)...

Re:Encouraging stupid posts?

[FooHentai]

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.

Re:Encouraging stupid posts?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Encouraging stupid posts?

[ray-auch]

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.

Don't be so melodramatic...

[gowen]

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.

Re:Don't be so melodramatic...

[gowen]

RTFA : the one labeled press release

On Tue 21st June, the police contacted an IMC Bristol volunteer asking for IP logs.

They asked for the logs. They didn't get them, so they went to a judge and got a search warrant instead. Completely correct procedure.

Re:Don't be so melodramatic...

[coastwalker]

Common sense suggests that the police should be provided with any evidence that enables them to trace the criminals who dropped rocks onto a freight train off a bridge.

Common sense also suggests that Indymedia have a right to control the disposition of the private information that may exist on their servers in the same way that any business information would normally be expected to remain private.

We have a legal system and laws that should be capable of resolving the two conflicting interests. However it would appear that the seizure of the server in order to obtain information on the rock dropping criminals does not ensure the normal expectation of privicy that the Indymedia business would expect to enjoy. The police have the opportunity to take a copy of and browse all of Indymedias private information at their lesiure and this is clearly not normal.

The solution is either that the police should have an expectation that Indymedia releases all relevant information about the rock droppers or that an independant body be allowed access to Indymedia servers to obtain forensic evidence.

The problem is that both parties are right and that the detail of the application of the law is broken.

Re:Don't be so melodramatic...

[PeterBrett]

RTFA : the one labeled press release

On Tue 21st June, the police contacted an IMC Bristol volunteer asking for IP logs.

They asked for the logs. They didn't get them, so they went to a judge and got a search warrant instead. Completely correct procedure.

RTFA yourself. They were told that said logs did not exist, via the server owner's legal counsel, but nevertheless the police decided to confiscate the equipment anyway.

Re:Don't be so melodramatic...

[lost_n_confused]

Of course no one in the world would ever lie. If there are no logs then the equipment will be returned if there are logs then who ever stated there were no logs should be arrested for impeding a police investigation. They might have wiped the logs upon receiving the request. The police might be checking to see if they were lied to so they can press charges for tampering with evidence in a criminal investigation

Mixed feelings...

[vialation]

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.

Re:Mixed feelings...

[Richie1984]

"leftist media stations of the US"

Most Americans don't seem to realise that they have one of the most right wing societies in the west. You 'liberal' democrats would be considered rather right wing in most European countries. Just like most of your media. This is most likely the same with your 'leftist' stations.

"the sole purpose of pushing leftist heart string stories to gain the support of the global public. This kind of manipulation outrages me."

I don't really see how a heart string story can be considered left or right. If a newspaper prints a story about Timmy losing his pet cat, does that make it leftist? Similarly, if a website wants to print the views of ordinary Iraqis or Afghans, that does not instantly make it a leftist website?

I take it your outrage at manipulation doesn't stop there. You must hate any sort of biased media. Given that, do you watch Fox News?

Re:Mixed feelings...

[erikkemperman]

.. organizations [like IM] have the sole purpose of pushing leftist heart string stories to gain the support of the global public. This kind of manipulation outrages me.

Just curious, wouldn't you agree the US administration (the corporate interests they represent, and by extension the mainstream media) are guilty of precisely the same kind of manipulation? For instance, pushing heart string stories about "free" Iraqis to attenuate the opposition of the global public?

Re:Fascism Here We Come

[PrivateDonut]

don't you mean. 1984 here we come?

to paraphase; hope lies with the proles (peasants/working class/majority), but the proles are incapable of seeing any alternative to the current society because none exists that they can compare the current system to, therefore a revolt will never occur.

Indymedia are not going to be prosecuted here...

[gowen]

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.

Not true

[Sanity]

The UK is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights:

Article 10
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

Re:Not true

[elander]

How about quoting the entire article instead of just the first paragraph:

ARTICLE 10
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or the rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

Article 10 isn't a carte blanche to publish anything you want, it comes with responsibilities too. In this case, "for the prevention of disorder or crime" seems applicable, since someone apparently boasted about their own violent criminal behaviour on the site.

Re:Not true

[DrPizza]

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).

In this case, "for the prevention of disorder or crime" seems applicable, since someone apparently boasted about their own violent criminal behaviour on the site.

I don't think so, no. You can't prevent an event that's in the past, after all....

Re:Not true

[KDR_11k]

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.

I was hoping for more information

[Dancin_Santa]

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.

Re:I was hoping for more information

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Indymedia covered the Tlalnepantla massacre [1] where a lot of other news sources didn't. They do seem to be very, very biased, but it's better for information to be collected for me to sort out what's useless, biased drek than it is for someone else to decide what's drek and filter it for me (both because that person is in a position of power to be corrupted and because I hate not having all the information).

If you want to find out about Indymedia, read some of the sites and issues they cover and some of their editorials. At the very least, you can gain terms to Google for from Indymedia (try it with Tlalnepantla).

[1] Citizens of this town tended to decide elections via a town council, then when a consensus had been reached, the official vote was cast using the Mexican ballot. Because everything was hammered out in the council beforehand, you could walk away from the thing knowing who the elected candidate was going to be. At the end of 2003 (or the beginning of 2004), this election was held again, but instead of everybody going to vote after the council, only about 10% of the people cast ballots. The result was that a local do-nothing politician (these kinds of guys really are everywere) who'd screwed up several positions in the past was elected mayor. The citizens had decided at the council who they wanted using the same process they'd used before Mexico was a country, and now the Mexican government was forcing them to accept the elected-by-ballot screw-up.

The Tlalnepantlans declared fricken autonomy. You hardly see that these days, but it's a significant event, and it's hard to imagine actually doing it when autonomy has been just a word for so long, but they did it.

The Mexican government reacted in the same way European nobility reacted hundreds of years ago. They moved to put down a full-tilt revolution and stormed the town with guns-a'blazin, killing dozens of unarmed Tlalnepantlans. There's video of the thing floating around somewhere if you want to see for yourself.

Some more objective news sources

[jeorgen]

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?

Re:Some more objective news sources

[Tony Hoyle]

Nothing in reuters, or ITN either (or CNN for that matter).

Thre is:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24242

That's it so far.

Re:Well i would say...

[eclectro]

..you can blame all those simpering faggots who voted for Tony Blair

At least you didn't call Tony Blair "Dubya's lap dog'.

Now that would be mean.

Whatever happened to the idea of back up servers?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

One would think that as soon as the Bristol server went down, a secondary mirrored server in, say, Paris, would be right back up. It's not like a given indymedia node has terabytes of data to serve up or store.

And given they could easily build their own server for PEANUTS that would at least be able to get the minimum news out the door, they would have done this kind of redundancy the day after the last time this happened.

I'd be inclined to call them Stupid Hippies, but they're not Hippies or Stupid. I just guess they don't have the few hundred pounds per node to set up a back up server somewhere.

RS

Timing

[fullofangst]

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.

Nice job injecting opinion into your review.

[Adolph_Hitler]

It's not just for communists or anarchists. In fact I'd say its mostly filled with socialists. I admit its left wing, and I agree its news for people who support universal healthcare, education and other social programs. I wouldnt say the majority of people want anarchy or communism, thats the far fringe of even the left. Common sense, we will never have communism or anarchism for the basic reason that too many humans want power over another and it would eventually end up as corrupt as capitalism and the systems we have now.

The purpose of these networks are to give news to the working class, and if people can ignore all the crazy anarchists and communists who don't have a very realistic plan or concept of global government, theres some articles and news worth listening to or reading.

I think this site exists for the same reason FoxNews exists, and these outlets have to exist. The left factions overall are bigger than the conservative right, so I see this as their foxnews.

If you agree with their ideas then go ahead and listen to them, if not then keep watching FoxNews.

Re:Nice job injecting opinion into your review.

[bani]

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.)

Re:Nice job injecting opinion into your review.

[sg_oneill]

AS an indy editor I'd disagree its filled mainly with socialists, at least in the conventional sense of the term.

Its mostly a left-libertarian thing, where anyone can play as long as they arent bigoted pricks.

for the record I dont speak for the network.

Re:Nice job injecting opinion into your review.

[tha_mink]

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.

Re:Nice job injecting opinion into your review.

[Smuttley]

If you agree with their ideas then go ahead and listen to them, if not then keep watching FoxNews.

Only the Sith deal in absolutes

Re:Nice job injecting opinion into your review.

[danheskett]

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.

Re:Nice job injecting opinion into your review.

[Compenguin]

Maybe in the future anyone to the right of michael more will be considered a bigoted prick.

There was a time when it was generally considered that a pro-slavery opinion was a legitimate opinion.

And maybe in the future they will laugh at the pro-choicers instead.

Re:Nice job injecting opinion into your review.

[j_rhoden]

I don't get it. Why does it have to be either indymedia or foxnews? Why impose the arbitrary limit?

Haven't you figured it out yet? Your news source is always wrong, and whoever's posting's news source is always right.

Re:Nice job injecting opinion into your review.

[Zeinfeld]

Fox News really is not journalism. They just take people with different points of view and let them argue on television. Then they give more air time to the conservative guy who yells a lot.

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.

Re:Nice job injecting opinion into your review.

[gowen]

Sure, you should try for an unbiased point of view

Which is why Indymedia and bloggers (and Fox news correspondents) deviate from journalism. No-one there even tries to be impartial. At best, they produce what would be editorial pieces in actual newspapers.

Re:Nice job injecting opinion into your review.

[Zeinfeld]

Maybe in the future anyone to the right of michael more will be considered a bigoted prick.

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.

Re:Nice job injecting opinion into your review.

[Experiment 626]

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?

Re:Well i would say...

[CommunistTroll]

I would be much more sympathetic to Indymedia had they offered a truly uncensored and wide range of views (including extreme Right instead of their own incestuous agenda for world change. That would have made them truly a force to be reckoned with. Sadly it seems Freedom of Speech was never their plan.

Yes, I was just admiring the wide range of communist and anarchist views on Fox News only the other day. It's good that the mass media is there to show us what unbiased and uncensored media looks like.

Speech isnt free anywhere.

[Adolph_Hitler]

In the USA we don't have an Indimedia at all. There is no left wing media in the USA unless you want to call Air America and CNN liberal, but liberal is not the same as the socialist left you see on Indymedia. Most liberals support free trade and don't really care about helping the poor, the socialist left on the other hand is busy fighting against CAFTA and fighting for fair trade. Free speech only exists anywhere because of the internet, and while you think you have free speech in the USA, if you are too much of a socialist or communist here you could lose your job, and this is if the government decides to be nice and not declare you a terrorist.

Re:Speech isnt free anywhere.

[timbrown]

Indymedia was born in the US. I can assure you that it exists state-side.

Re:Speech isnt free anywhere.

[aussie_a]

In the USA we don't have an Indimedia at all.

Incorrect. Thankyou for trolling Adolf, please have a nice day.

If I could mod the article 'troll' i would

[REBloomfield]

Nowhere in the article does it highlight the reason the server was taken, which can eventually be found buried in the links, but the response by Indy is: "As the G8 summit approaches, threats to our freedom of expression, and action, appear to be increasing rapidly." So, Indymedia contacted the Police in the firstplace, and now something is being done, they're crying about it.

More information

[Exter-C]

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.

This is the tip of the iceburg...(hope not!)

[TiddlyPom]

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.

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- cards.shtml

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!

Re:Indymedia are not going to be prosecuted here..

[kfg]

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, an illegal invasion?

[kt0157]

Come on, sending in the commandos would be an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation. Would the UK seriously contemplate such action?

Err..

K.

Re:Indymedia are not going to be prosecuted here..

[blane.bramble]

Suppose the Police seized the printing presses of the Sun newspaper because a letter to the editor contained some nasty words

We can live in hope...

Non-nutty news coverage

[zoney_ie]

Choose the BBC. It's not perfect, but it's a huge amount better than the alternatives. The World news site does indeed cover many stories that aren't otherwise in mainstream attention.

Having the stories edited professionally is a big plus. Also, while some stories can be biased, one is likely to see differing points of view, particularly in the editorials, and ever-increasing comments sections. The "Have your say" articles are perhaps more interesting because all comments aren't published, but rather a selection of differing views from people in different locations.

They are quite accountable, with a "Newswatch" section where corrections and responses to criticism are published. Readers can email and offer comments on or corrections to any story - indeed I have done so in the past myself, and the response (changing the article) has been swift.

For a mainstream news organisation, that hails from one country, I don't think you could expect anything of a higher standard than this.

Re:Whatever happened to the idea of back up server

[timbrown]

When the UK servers were seized, I was the first techie to put up a mirror. FYI, I was shipping around 200k/s for over 40 odd days. The UK mirror alone is around 9Gb in size, not to mention the other sites that the original UK server was hosting. The fact is that we now have 8 servers handling www.indymedia.org.uk, spread globally around the world. Hosting a mirror takes serious amounts of good will.

One thing governments appear to miss is the fact that we DON'T log IP addresses.

G8?

[taskforce]

Anybody get the feeling this has something to do with the G8 summit being held in Gleneagles in a short time? Considering Indymedia's past association with AntiGlobalization maybe the Police thought they could take some of the pressure off the inevitable protests which will occur outside and around the summit by taking out an information hub, or maybe Indymedia were inciting violence, which IANAL but in the UK is a reason for a court injuntion.

("Public safety" tends to overrule civil liberties in the UK, just look at the banning of Hoodies in shopping centers.)

Re:G8?

[blowdart]

("Public safety" tends to overrule civil liberties in the UK, just look at the banning of Hoodies in shopping centers.)

Bad example;

1. It was, afaik, one shopping centre, Bluewater.
2. It was the centre that banned hoddies, not the government, police or any other civil agency. Bluewater are perfectly entitled to place rules on the use of their private property.

On the other hand the ABSO backed curfew zones are an example of civil liberty curtailment.

Re:G8?

[Triskele]

("Public safety" tends to overrule civil liberties in the UK, just look at the banning of Hoodies in shopping centers.)

Poor example (not that your original point was completely invalid) - the banning of hoodies was made by the private management of the shopping centre involved. This could happen just as easily in the US if not more so where private rights tend to supercede public rights. But in the UK we have old protections of public (in the public use them, not public owned sense) space that basically say if you're open to the public that means everyone unless you have a good reason. All the govt did here was support Bluewater's decision and say that was a good enough reason for them.

bandwith

[pooly7]

FTFA Indymedia UK needs additional http mirrors to help decrease bandwidth costs. but you just slashdot it !!

Calling Indymedia Journalism...

[TheLoneCabbage]

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?"

Re:Indymedia are not going to be prosecuted here..

[gowen]

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.

They asked nicely for the logs, and explained why. Indymedia refused, because ... well, that's the kind of people they are. So the police took the next procedural step, because that's the kind of people they are.

Re:Indymedia are not going to be prosecuted here..

[gowen]

Suppose the Police seized the printing presses of the Sun newspaper because a letter to the editor contained some nasty words

Shockingly bad analogy, because the presses don't contain information that would be useful, like IP logs or fingerprints.

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.

Unbiased?

[samjam]

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

No not really

[Sycraft-fu]

Seland claims they are a nation, that doesn't make it so. What is and is not a nation is partly in what the world agrees on, and partly what you can enforce. If you have the might to break off from another nation and enforce that right, you can become a nation. This is pretty much how the USA started (though they also had help from France). They beat off their founding nation and thus established themselves as independant. In contrats the Confedracy (the states that broke off and rebelled during the American Civil War) failed to do that and are now again part of the USA.

It's also partly in what others recognise. There are a number of nations that are incapable of self defense, yet are widely recognised as legit and have countries ready to go to bat for them. The Vatican is such a country. It is a small district, entirely contained in Italy and without any sort of defense, save that provided by the Swiss. However it is internationaly recognised as a soviregn state and any attempt to conqure it would lead to a massive backlash from most of the world.

Well, Sealand has neither of these. It has no military, no security force to speak of. A division of regular troops from just about any nation would be sufficient to conquer it. Nor does it have any diplomatic status. Nobody appears to recognise it as a legit nation.

Thus if Britan took it over, I imagine most would view it as a recapturing of a military installation they built in the first place and legitimately own.

Re:No not really

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

You seem to have a romantic notion shared by a large amount of /. 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.

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.

G8 Summit.....

[mindwhip]

A footnote in the Evening News today hints that the server was suspected of being used to organise 'civil disorder' in Edinburgh during the G8 summit. Living in Edinburgh and watching the City bracing itself for full on riots, offices and shops closing, wide spread road closures, non critical surgery being canceled to deal with possible injuries, local - family run businesses going to the wall, supermarkets saying they may not be able to sufficently stock their shelves with food.... I'm happy at any steps being made towards limiting the anarchy that some groups are planning.... Even Edinburgh Castle (realy nothing more than a tourist attraction now...) is stepping up security. How would you like it if the world Invaded (and I use that word deliberatly) YOUR town, shutting it down for a week, potentaly destroying a large part of it and making the residents lives hell? Everyone seems to assume that everyone that claims to support freedom of speech should also have freedom to do whaterver they dam well please... With Freedom comes responobility, Freedom to state your views also comes with the need to consider the concequences of those views on others... If you incite a riot you must accept to be held accountable....

Re:G8 Summit.....

[localzuk]

WHAT? What a stupid rant. Have you any EVIDENCE of this? All that has happened is that grass roots groups have planned a series of marches, demos and information shops for the summit. There is no evidence of 'inciting riots' other than moronic articles in news papers designed to scare people.

Freedom of expression is a right. Just because many, many people want to do it at once doesn't meant they are terrorists or rioters etc... It just means they are all making their opinions shown.

Stop buying into propaganda and wait and see what will happen. If there are riots, look at what caused them. (The riots in genoa were started by the police).

Why does it make your lives hell if people turn up to your town?

The protesters aren't doing this, the authorities are - apparrently to prevent crime but there is no real evidence that anything will happen.

Re:G8 Summit.....

[Martz]

Isn't this why Glen Eagles was chosen for the G8 anyway? If it's held in a major city the potential for millions of people to turn up and protest is possible. If you choose a smaller town or similar for a meeting of such high profile people, the numbers can be limited and more tightly controlled. Personally as a resident I'd be annoyed at the goverments for agreeing on such a location instead of London, Manchester or similar. I don't know who made this decision, but I assume it must have been a combination of world goverments.

Re:Why?

[AndrewRUK]

I'll have a go at doing what you think is impossible.

The ahimsa seizure last October:

1. Swiss and Italian authorities made a request ot the USA under Mutual Legal Assisstance Treaties
2. The FBI issue a supoena to Rackspace (A US-based hosting company, who were hosting the Indymedia servers in their UK facility.)
3. Rackspace co-operate with the FBI, and hand over the servers

As far as I know, no information about what the Swiss and Italians wanted from the servers was released, but it has been suggested that is was relted to photos from the 2003 Switzerland G8 summit.

The Bristol seizure yesterday:

1. An anonymous author post this message, on 17th June:

   with the G8 on the horizon, we looked for a simple yet effective way to stick two fingers up to this oil-addicted society.we found one! a train that carries brand-new cars from portbury dock nr avonmouth through the avon gorge to ashton and bedminster to desperse at temple meads for the rest of the country. Some questions that came into our little minds were:is portbury dock fianancially-competative? [yes], who paid for the tracks and maintance from portbury to parson St bedminster?. has anyone ever seen a passenger train on this route?,and sitting on a hot coach because you can't afford hiked-up train fayres, you see yet more new cars you can't afford to buy being transported by rail,to consume more oil, that our enviroment can't take. So we did an oxygen-grab as a kind of work-out up to the summit.Lifting and then dropping rocks onto useless pieces of metal.[17/06/05] We are feeling fit now for the greedy-ate, we suggest others should take aim and practice. The forth-coming event around gleneagles will not automatically mean a head-on confrontation with the old-bill, they have more spiteful weapons than us, so let us side step them and unbalance them using our minds. good luck stay free, S.P. ray.

   (copy & paste from my Firefox cache.) This post was hidden within 24 hours, for violating Bristol Indymedia (BIM) policy. (I don't know exactly when it was hidden.)
2. An individual with a history of conflict and disagreement with BIM then contacted police about the post, since it hints that the poster threw rocks at trains, or the cargo on trains, or the train tracks ("dropping rocks onto useless pieces of metal.")
3. Police initally contacted BIM last monday, 20th June. BIM take legal advice.
4. Police request IP logs from a BIM member on 21th June.
5. Later on the 21st, BIM inform police via their solicitor that they will not voluntarily hand over and information. (NB: for non-Brits, a solicitor is a type of lawyer.) BIM also inform Indymedia UK at this point, and contact Liberty
6. Yesterday, 27th June, police visit the home of the BIM member who hosted the server with a search warrant, and seize the BIM server and the individual's own computer, and arrest the BIM member.

Various posters on Indymedia sites have suggested that police may be trying to shut down Indymedia sites in the run up to the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, next month. I doubt that, in general, that is the case (Indymedia sites can be quite helpful to police, since they can use them to find out about planned actions, and spot people bragging about what they've done.) This appears to me to be more like someone with a grudge against Bristol Indymedia causing the police to act a bit excessively in a criminal investigation.

Let's see...

[dipfan]

I can't think of any EU state other than Belgium that doesn't have a colonialist, imperialist or otherwise expansionist past. Europe had a very violent middle-ages.

Hmm, let's see - as pointed out, Belgium does have a particularly nasty colonial past in Africa. But the EU states that don't have any colonial nasties in their history include:

Finland
Ireland
Luxembourg
Malta
Cyprus
Lit huania, Estonia, Latvia
Poland?
Slovakia
Slovenia

Czech Republic (unless you count expelling the Germans after WW2, and, er, the defenestration of Prague).

Certainly, Finland, Ireland, Slovakia and the Baltic states (and others) were themselves the victims of colonialism, as was Poland, for long stretches of their history.

Sample Indymedia Content

[jac1962]

This link is representative of typical Indymedia content - judge it for yourself.

uglf communique 05.01.2005"

Re:Indymedia are not going to be prosecuted here..

[CmdrGravy]

So you think the best way to argue to the point that cars can damage is the environment is to drop concrete blocks onto freight trains ?

What you are really saying is that criminal dropping concrete on trains, and quite possibly yourself, hold a particular view and hold anyone elses views on the matter as being irrelevant.

This allows you to then ignore any democratic process and justify ( to yourselves ) any action you believe is necessary to impose your agenda on everyone else.

Re:A bunch of tree-hugging libertarian fascist cra

[-Harlequin-]

Isn't "libertarian" a right-wing thing? I'm sure the "left-wing" "equivalent" would be "anarchist".

Don't take this the wrong way, but it's really funny to watch someone's brain asplode as they try to artificially twist real-world politics down to a mere two pidgeonholes.

The reason you can't do it is because politics is not one-dimensional. The childishly crude left vs right garbage is something you only get in obsolete or broken political systems incapable of supporting anything other than two main parties. Having only a lousy two reference points, a line is the result - and from that is drawn left and right, a retarded one dimensional political concept.

You wouldn't happen to be American by any chance?
(Fisher's deduction states: "The more issues a person crudely shoehorns down into a liberal/conservative dichotomy, the more certain you can be that the person is an American" :-)

Anyway, if you haven't already seen it, check out Political Compass, which at least expands things to two dimensions, and will make your brain stop hurting :-)

(No offense intended in all this, I'm not exactly being entirely serious here. Hence the liberal sprinkling of smileys :-)

Re:BBC Bias

[gowen]

The BBC has a very left leaning liberal agenda

Well, if that "very" was a "slightly" I met let it slide but ... really? Very left leaning? Which left is that?

Do you see the BBC campaigning for renationalisation of the railways, or higher taxes, or a stronger welfare state ... or, well, anything really? In fact, your opinion of the BBC reveals far more of your own biases than the Beeb's.

They Should've had Two Servers

[bayers]

If you are running an indy newspaper, and you want to have public forums, for God's sake, put the public forums on a separate server. That way, when someone commits a crime on the forums, the police will only sieze the server the forums are hosted on.

This is a case of not having the proper disaster strategy in place.

They probably don't keep logs.

[gimpboy]

I work with Indymedia here in Pittsburgh --- more so in the past--- and we do not log IP addresses for this very reason. We log pages served for generateing statsistics, though we cannot determine things like the number of unique page views.

If they ever kept logs in the UK, I would be surprised if they still do given the past seizures of servers in that country.

UK police were overheard saying on their way out-

[B11]

Your Server are belong to us.