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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!"
Ah, if it's only a mistake than it's no problem.
After all, everybody makes mistakes from time to time...
I guess when the government asks someone to jump, no one bothers to ask how high. Some people just assume that jumping out the window is a correct response.
Rackspace, in their desire to stay on the good side of the law went far overboard in their zeal to help the police. This is a common theme in many cases.
The law specifically protects people from incriminating themselves and also from unreasonable search and seizure. It does not protect them from turning themselves into the authorities, nor does it protect them from others doing it for them.
You would like to think that companies would consult with their lawyers that could advise them on their legal rights and responsibilities before they took drastic, unnecessary steps like turning a lot of personal/private documentation over to the police.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
...Rackspace could be sued (successfully) for violations of the Data Protection Act as there was no lawful warrant for the data on the server (as it resides in the UK and the subpoena was server to rackspace in Texas).
Personally I hope rackspace get raked over the coals for this one to serve as an example to other ISP's that this kind of flagrant disregard for privacy and the laws of the land cannot go unpunished.
I am NaN
Nice to see that some ISPs don't bend over at the first sight of a possible legal issue about one of their customers.
Oh wait, they did.
Unless you can see the part of the subpoena that they won't let you see, it is best to assume that you have been given no information at all.
From Secret Documents About Indymedia Server Disappearance Unsealed: "It cannot be determined from the unsealed documents whether or not the government informally pressured Rackspace to turn over the servers."
Certainly it seems that is what happened, that there was illegal activity on the part of the government. Otherwise you have to believe something like this:
U.S. government (Calmly): We just need some log files from you.
Rackspace: Oh wow!!! We will damage our reputation by giving you far more than you asked!!! Our customer's trust means nothing to us!
It is a better guess that someone at Rackspace was very, very scared because of being intimidated.
Most people in the U.S. don't want to know how corrupt their government has become. In this thread from yesterday, someone claims "Christianity has matured - it's a peaceful religion" when the U.S. government, a government of a Christian country, has killed more than 3,000,000 people since the end of the Second World War.
For you paranoid freaks outthere, sooner or later you need to come to the realizationthat the folks enforcign the law are just like you. They don't like their rights trampled either but they are just as prone to making mistakes.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Service providers deal with a lot of shit from authorities. Even when I worked at a small mom & pop ISP with 5000 customers we'd have to respond to a search warrant on a monthly basis, and they just don't won't accept "the log files were deleted 5 months ago" for an answer. The owner had to show up in court many times and swear that yes, the systems do purge them periodically.
I can only imagine what Rackspace has had to deal with in the past, so when the FBI came by and said "terrorism" they must've shivered at the thought of answering why they can't find something. So they just make it the FBI's problem by handing over the whole disk.
Does this qualify as a chilling effect? The letter of the order said that Rackspace just had to produce specific files, but Rackspace was so afraid of the FBI (from past encounters, perhaps) that they went that far above and beyond?
No, they just happened to wind up with them. Do they still have copies? Where are they? What have they looked at?
Except they didn't. They asked for the logs; Indymedia violated the reasonable expectation of privacy by handing over much more than was requested. The targeted request for specific logs was not the issue IMO.
Indymedia violated privacy? Surely you mean rackspace here.
[content]
There were a few other things besides publicly available content on there. Some of my email, for one.
What if the FBI had hacked into Indymedia to secretly monitor their logs, so that Indymedia never had a second of downtime and got to keep all their hardware. Would that undermine our argument about privacy and freedom of speech?
BZZZT! Absurd slippery slope argument: -5 points. :-)
So you disqualify that based on "slippery slope"? But it's what the Italian government has done, and something tells me the US govt is probably more tech saavy. So were already at the bottom of the slippery slope you think will never happen. We know that the Italian government took the private key used by https of an activist server to monitor webmail using a man-in-the-middle attack. See:
Alternative Servers Attacked: "Not a Private Question: A Question of Privacy"
My point was that the foil-hat crowd soiled themselves when they saw the original story and were positive the FBI was a bunch of jackbooted thugs, etc; now that Indymedia has been identified as the reason for the excessive disclosure we shall hear nary a peep from /. [re: the behavior of the ISP]. That's all, really. Cheers!
The FBI isn't a bunch of jackbooted thugs? I guess you're right. In Guantanamo they were complaining that the military was being excessive. They're nice folks. Read their history and you'll see the great things they've done.
Again, you say "now that Indymedia has been identified as the reason for the excessive disclosure"--what the hell are you talking about? Do you mean rackspace again, or do you not know what's going on, or what? Indymedia didn't turn over anything. Indymedia wasn't asked either, FWIW.
-Jeff