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Rackspace, Indymedia, and the FBI
chill writes "Remember when Indymedia hard drives were seized as part of an international 'criminal terrorism investigation'? Rackspace pulled the whole hard drive and shut down a dozen websites, and the Slashdot community cried 'Say it ain't so!'
It ain't so.
The documents have been unsealed and CNet is reporting that Rackspace made a mistake. The government wanted only copies of logs, not entire hard drives. It seems the week of downtime wasn't really necessary. Oops!"
http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Indymedia/
And the EFF's press release
-Jeff
"[I] certify that packaged herewith is a true and correct copy of log files in relation to the creation and updating of the web spaces corresponding to the following URLs during the period from THIS PORTION OF THE DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REDACTED"
As the sysadmin of ahimsa (the seized servers), I'm wondering what he's certifying here. Our httpd.confs substituted "noip" for IP addresses in the logfiles. Like this:
Also, finding the location of the logfiles on the servers would have been as simple as a `locate access_log`...
-Jeff
You might get your wish, as according to the EFF investigations are already underway to see whether Rackspace violated the UK Data Protection Act or the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Er, no. EV1 (aka Rackshack) bought a SCO license, but Google doesn't turn up anything about Rackspace. I think you've just gotten the names (Rackspace vs Rackshack) mixed up.
Agreed.
It appears that Rackspace, in a desire to meet the FBI's turnover deadline went ahead and sent the entire drive rather than the specific logfiles. This appears to be a simple effort to meet a deadline, rather than 3v1l kowtowing to teh m4n.
Once the appropriate files had been extracted, Rackspace sent them, and the FBI sent back the drives.
There's no story here. Much as it might disappoint some of our Slashtrolls, for once the FBI wasn't just being the bootheel of the evil imperialist police state, and Rackspace wasn't being complicit in the pillage of civil liberties.
Nice to have more of the story.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
See: Commissioner's Subpoena page 27.
-Jeff
- Government requests some small piece of crucial information, probably a single document.
- Target of the subpoena turns over 30-40 unlabelled boxes full of hard copies of documents.
- Government asks where the thing they requested is
- Target says "it's in there somewhere. Enjoy finding it."
(This tactic also works with IRS auditors. In the 1980's the IRS asked my father for documentation of a few of his transactions. He gave them a full list of all his transactions for that tax year, which was a stack of tractor-feed paper as thick as a phone book with a transaction on each line, single spaced. The IRS has pretty much left him alone since then.)Also, the article says that Indymedia gave copies of the drives, not the drives themselves. Last time I checked, copying a drive from a server didn't shut down the server...
-JMP
OK, here went my moderation.
Complete and utter bollocks. Rackspace can do real-time backup snapshots to their SAN of any of their standard config machines. They do not offer this is you have a custom config, but this does not mean that they cannot do it. So there was no need for ANY DOWNTIME WHATSOEVER.
They offer this under the name of managed backup service. So, if the order was exactly as unsealed by EFF and they wanted to comply to it literally it would have taken them a few seconds with no downtime. Few minutes at most.
If Indimedia was not a managed backup service customer Rackspace would have had to install the agent first. They are a fully managed service provider and they have root on the box under normal circumstances and can install the agent in a couple of minutes.
If Indimedia was a managed backup service customer Rackspace could have handed all old snapshots outright and initiated a new on the spot with a click of a button on the "fanatical support" console.
In fact, it may be worth it to ask was or was not Indimedia a rackspace managed backup service customer.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Indymedia has political content, typically from an anarchist/feminist/leftist/libertarian/green/anti- war
whatever viewpoint. This tends to piss off many governments (Italy, U.S., France, etc.) and corporations (e.g. Diebold, the manufacturers of the U.S.'s electronic voting machines using the DMCA against Indymedia; in the end Diebold was found guilty...).
The Italian government seems to particularily hate Indymedia. One parliamentarian, who happens to be the granddaughter of Mussolini (yes, that Mussolini), has called for Indymedia to be shut down.
In 2001, the Italian government raided an Indymedia center (legally) set up during the G8 meetings/protests there. They sent scores of people to the hospital, including putting people in comas. It was not nice. They beat the hell out of people, smashed cameras and computers. The Italian govt claimed they found molotov cockails and other weapons--the cops later admitted they planted the evidence. Just like fascists of "old".
Last year, around the time of the server seizure, the Italian government had an ISP shut down a server so they could steal the private key used for https encryption. They could then mount a man-in-the-middle attack reading all "encrypted" content, including webmail. The Italian govt got away with this attack for a year before it was discovered. The server was used by many indymedia and activist folks (the server was run by autistici--"the autistics" in italian).
So when some Indymedia sites disappear off the 'net and it's tracked back to the Italian government with FBI cooperation it's not too big of a surprise. I'm sure they are thrilled that rackspace is getting nailed for the whole thing.
-Jeff, ahimsa* admin (which hosts italy.indymedia.org, the targetted site)
This is BS. I work in a data center. The only ones who don't follow a procedure are citizens holding a grudge against a webmaster, i.e. "Little tommy's website is against your TOS!!! Shut it down now!!!! I'm at a stakeout in his front yard! We are awaiting the site to be shut down before we move in!" A.k.a the anti-social engineers. Those are always a laugh. The rest usually send formal abuse complaints, and in the case of the FBI or large companies citing copyright violations, they usually send paper documents.For FBI inquiries, like the one in this article, they usually ask for logs. One major exception is child pornography, they usually ask for everything, but even then, we usually tar up the files.
_________
The world doesn't just disappear when you close your eyes, does it?
There are some substantially more serious problems in the UK as of today's speech by Tony Blair anyway. Among other things he is planning to:
- Outlaw bookstores the government decides are promoting Islamic extremism
- Outlaw web sites promoting extremism presumably including any outside of the UK viewed in the UK.
- Outlaw anyone promoting, condoning or rationalizing extremism, which could for example include people speaking on behalf of Palestine or maybe news outlets showing the latest video of Al Qaeda leaders. Needless to say no one really even knows what qualifies as extremism, the UK government and courts will decide when they see it.
Anyone in Britain who is not a citizen who frequents or maybe even has frequented said bookstores, web sites or made statements justifying extremism will be swiftly deported often to countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia where they may be dealt with swiftly and harshly if they are suspected Islamists which they will be when Britain deports them.
British citizens doing the same may be charged with crimes.
You better hope you don't Google something and go to one of these web sites inadvertently because Scotland yard will now come knocking.
If you've listened to the prosecution underway for the London bombings, two women and man have been charged under the new "withholding information" statute. In Britain now if you are falsely accused and can't tell them about a terror plot you go to jail. It creates an interesting situation where people falsely arrested are given incentive to make up a plot and falsely accuse other people to avoid being charged with withholding information, resulting in a pyramid scheme of false accusation.
If you do have information you are apparently pretty much compelled to divulge it even if it entails self incrimination. Either you confess and are sent up the river or you don't confess and you are sent up the river for withholding information. Nothing resembling a fifth amendment in the UK now. Innocent people are totally screwed if someone has falsely implicated them. Based on terror cell investigations in the U.S. there is a high frequency of false accusations.
Two Muslim men in Detroit, in a showcase DOJ terror trial, were convicted based on a tourist tape to Disneyland which the government said was a terrorist planning tape, disguised to look like a tourist video, and on the word of a conman charged with fraud who got his charges reduced for implicating the two men. He later admitted in jail he was lying to get his sentence reduced and the convictions were overturned. The government insisted the Disneyland tape was evidence of terrorism and even more so because they had made it "look" like a tourist tape to conceal it was a planning tape. It really looked like a home made movie of a trip to Disneyland. Apparently everyone needs to stop using video cameras on vacation because THAT is terrorism now, especially if you are Muslim.
@de_machina