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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
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.
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)