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!"

Comments

fanatical support

[Anonymous Coward]

that's fanatical support alright!

for a police state!

Mistake

[Knome_fan]

Ah, if it's only a mistake than it's no problem.

After all, everybody makes mistakes from time to time...

Re:Mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it faster to tear down installed rackservers rather than burn *.log to a cd?

Once the appropriate files had been extracted, Rackspace sent them, and the FBI sent back the drives.

If Rackspace sent the FBI the drives, how could they then extract the files and send them to the FBI?

Re:Mistake

[demachina]

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.

Knee Jerk Reactions...

[__aaclcg7560]

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.

Re:Knee Jerk Reactions...

[Ubergrendle]

Ever dealt with Law Enforcement? There's always what they ASK you do to and what the IMPLY you should do... unlike normal people doing normal jobs, Law Enforcement officers are trained never to rationalise, never to second guess, and to always assume that they're right. There's good reasons for this, but sometimes it has bad results.

ISP:"We won't give you our records without a court order."
Police officer:"Well, if I get a court order I'm going to ask for your whole ISP to be shut down. Don't make me waste my time."
ISP:"Oh crap! Here's not just the logs but the harddrives! Please don't shut us down..."
(10 minutes later) ISP Lawyer:"Call me first next time, this cop was yanking your chain."

A very likely set of events IMHO.

Re:Knee Jerk Reactions...

[jmp_nyc]

Providing more information than requested is also a pretty standard way of stalling an investigation without being technically guilty of obstruction. The tactic goes something like this:

• 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

Re:Knee Jerk Reactions...

[Rasta Prefect]

A very likely set of events IMHO.

Unless, you say, RTFA, and found they _had_ a court order. Thats what a subpeona _is_. The Feds appear to have actually acted quite reasonably. Rackspace were the ones who pulled the drives instead of making an image of them. I'm failing to see how this is in anyway the feds fault.

Seriously, I realize that most Slashdotters don't like the Bush administration (frankly, neither do I. I voted Libertarian where possible, democratic elsewhere). But having read the first couple dozen posts here most of you come across as being just about as objective as the people pushing Intelligent Design - You've got your world view and you're willing to ignore any number of inconvenient facts to advance it.

unlike normal people doing normal jobs, Law Enforcement officers are trained never to rationalise, never to second guess, and to always assume that they're right. There's good reasons for this, but sometimes it has bad results.

And totally unlike a bunch of people on Slashdot who haven't bothered to read the article and find that it was in fact, Rackspace and their employees who chose to pull the harddrives and not the feds.

Re:Knee Jerk Reactions...

[Tom]

(10 minutes later) ISP Lawyer:"Call me first next time, this cop was yanking your chain."

That's the point. When you're a business, and the police comes calling, the first frigging thing you do is get your legal eagles involved.

Obviously, Rackspace is an incompetent company you shouldn't do business with.

Re:Knee Jerk Reactions...

[Error629]

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.

Re:Knee Jerk Reactions...

[networkBoy]

I like my ISP.
I ost a gripe site, which is obviously not popular with the company. They sent a C&D e-mail to my ISP and to me.
My ISP said blow me, talk to the admin, the site is not against our TOS we won't shut it down.

While they are not the feds, I hear about many ISPs terminating a site because a large company sicks their lawyers on the host rather than the admin.

the site (if you're interested) is http://farmersreallysucks.com/

The takedown notice is a good read:
http://farmersreallysucks.com/E1_First_Takedown.ht ml
-nB

Re:Knee Jerk Reactions...

[Rasta Prefect]

Again, this situation begs the question; what kind of people are accessing Indymedia? Why, people looking at the other side of the argument--Liberals and Progressives.

Right. It's a Liberal/Progressive site so it _must_ be part of the evil Dubya conspiracy. Way to make solid connections there. I think you need to invest in a better grade of tinfoil.

More likely this is being used for a Republican pollitical pollster--it would not be the first time they have used FBI or Homeland security data for Republican pollitics.

The request was initiated by the _Italian_ government as part of a co-operative law enforcement treaty. I'm sure thats Republican all the way. Cause those Italiians just love their Dubya.

Re:Knee Jerk Reactions...

[Rasta Prefect]

The point you missed, and the parent was alluding to, was there is a potentially BIG difference between what was actually required by the court order and what the officers who came banging at the door actually demanded, verbally and for which there is no evidence trail other than the poor admin's word and he probably is either gagged or to scared to talk.

The parent described a "very likely set of events" that he would know was not correct if he'd RTFA. The Rackspace people _knew_ what was required of the - The Fine Article makes that clear. They searched for the relavent logs and weren't able to extract them in time to make the deadline, and therefore decided (for some reason) to hand over the disks instead of just making copies of the whole thing. Rackspace took their customer down, and then tried to paint it as the Feds fault. (Besides, why the hell doesn't a provider the size of Rackspace have a plan for dealing with federal supoenas? You can't tell me this is the first time they've ever been visited by law enforcement).

Zealotry is bad, no matter who does it

[ReformedExCon]

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.

Re:Zealotry is bad, no matter who does it

[SlashEdsDoYourJobs]

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.

Indeed. If I were a Rackspace customer, I'd be looking for a new host right about now. Who wants a host that gives you a week of downtime for absolutely no good reason? What business can afford a week of downtime? That's essentially what you are risking when you go with Rackspace, because they have just demonstrated that they don't have a proper process in place for handling subpoenas and that their employees aren't smart enough to handle them without adult supervision.

Re:Zealotry is bad, no matter who does it

[Vitriol Angst]

Indeed. If I were a Rackspace customer, I'd be looking for a new host right about now.

Since these investigations are now secret, how do you know the new company just doesn't allow the FBI or Homeland Security continual remote access? It's not too big of a conspiracy theory to suggest that the Government has already requested and received access to Slashdot's member list--because a lot of reactionaries discuss things on this website.

Now, under the Patriot Act, if Slashdot was told to give up its member list, they could not respond to my comment. If they haven't been contacted, they would tell me I'm crazy.

But this is my point about how horrible this "new secrecy for security is" -- I have no clue whether I am anonymous or not. I figure that, if the Gov had access to this blog, posting as an Anonymous Coward would not be any protection either, because the IP address can be backtraced to your ISP, and your ISP could then reveal the user -- or if you are constantly sniffing addresses on a regular basis, you could use statistical analysis to discover all users.

So, I would think that after this controversy, Rackspace might actually be the one place you had a chance of privacy. Better the devil you know than the one you don't.

Re:Zealotry is bad, no matter who does it

[SlashEdsDoYourJobs]

Since these investigations are now secret, how do you know the new company just doesn't allow the FBI or Homeland Security continual remote access?

Now, under the Patriot Act...

You are referring to USA laws. Pick a hosting company that isn't subject to USA laws.

"Information wants to be free!"

[mrRay720]

I wonder how believers of that tired incorrect cliché will tie that in with this.

Surely the FBI were liberating imprisoned information from it's overbearing masters?

Re:"Information wants to be free!"

[anthony_dipierro]

Most people who don't agree with that cliché don't understand it - and they are usually the ones who bring it up in the first place.

Just copy the disks before turning them over

[jurt1235]

If they just decided to copy the disks so they would have had limitted downtime. Downtime=How long it takes for dd take to make a bit by bit copy of the drive depends on the size, use multiple machines to do one drive per machine, so it goes as fast as possible.

That would have made them make the jump of the previous posts and still have limitted impact.

Re:Just copy the disks before turning them over

[arivanov]

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.

Re:Just copy the disks before turning them over

[phreaki]

I doubt that anyone at rackspace had the authority to approve a free service use. When I was down for over 5 hours, they made me copy their drive back to a new one after it failed. They made -NO- attempt to do it for me, and this was after 320 days of uptime on that bsd box. I went down, they waited for 5 hours to get a new box with another hard drive, and make me copy it over, errors and all. They obviously didn't have the ability to do in my case, or just didn't. I'll ask again, why does FBI get fanatical support, I get fanatical billing, and indymedia get fanatical judgement calls?

A good mistake IMHO

[Adult film producer]

Otherwise nobody would have known the FBI was harvesting log files, or am I wrong about that? Hopefully all ISP's when faced with sneaky orders like this will do the same. Regardless, the damage has been done, the FBI has their log files.. it's really too bad about the victims of this witchhunt.

Hanlon's Razor

[GozzoMan]

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

(From TFA: "A Rackspace employee mistakenly used the word 'hardware' to describe the contents of a federal order,")

Re:direct link

[Yeb]

Here's a link to the unsealed documents themselves:
http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Indymedia/
And the EFF's press release

-Jeff

"mistake"

[Anonymous Coward]

When it's a pattern of behavior, it's not a mistake, but an MO. Judging by the majority of responses, it works, as most are excusing what happened.

Dropped the ball indeed

[SimilarityEngine]

Talking about dropping the ball: (from the EFF site)

the logs that the government requested didn't exist, so Rackspace should never have given the government anything at all.

Just what is going on here exactly?

Looks like...

[Phil John]

...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.

Re:Looks like...

[SimilarityEngine]

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.

Re:Large Mistake

[Bimo_Dude]

While it is a large mistake to make, I can almost see this mistake as a good thing.

The reason for this is that it brings to light how aggressive the US government can be (or is assumed to be, arguably), in cens^H^H^H^H protecting the people from those 'dissenting terrorists.' [sarcasm]After all, if you're not with us, then you must be a terrorist. [/sarcasm] ... and this seems to include reporting on anything that is not approved by the Ministry of Truth.

The interesting thing to me is that this apparently has not happened with the /. servers, given some of the comments that some people make here (extreme on both sides of the fence).

log:THIS PORTION OF THE DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REDACTED

[Yeb]

In Certification of the log files some US govt Attorney writes:
"[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:

LogFormat "noip - - %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\" %T %V" noip
CustomLog /imc/logs/italy-access_log noip

Also, finding the location of the logfiles on the servers would have been as simple as a `locate access_log`...

-Jeff

bending

[El_Muerte_TDS]

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.

"compelled to produce a copy of the server"

[Yeb]

Another interesting line, perhaps meaningful, perhaps not, is from Certification of the log files.

[Rackspace] was compelled to produce a copy of the server owned and operated by Rackspace containing the data as outlined above. The compact disc provided herein is the true disc as provided by said entity.

"Produce a copy of the server"? Does that mean the whole system? Rackspace has said they turned over complete hard drives. The data certainly wouldn't have fit all on one CD (we're talking gigs of data on the servers). If the FBI just wanted log files, why did they take complete hard drives (which would have been around 6 drives or so)? The FBI certainly had the opportunity to look at all data on the hard drives. Do you think they did that or restricted themselves to a couple logfile lines? ;)

-Jeff

Re:Large Mistake

[SimilarityEngine]

Don't you send your posts from an anonymizing location via someone else's rootkitted system?

Absolutely. Nice box you have too :-)

Re:Yet another reason...

[imroy]

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.

Guess about what really happened.

[Futurepower(R)]

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.

Re:Guess about what really happened.

[vector0319]

I feel our government is as corrupt as you say and I feel you are right-on about the intimidation, but I think you are wrong about this being a Christian country. It's stopped being a Chrisitan country long before they took prayer out of schools.

See an Anabaptist (Christian) perspective here: http://www.brfwitness.org/Articles/2003v38n3.htm Here is small part that explains it all:

"America is not a Christian nation. It never was and it never will be. This is not to say that America was not founded on some biblical principles. It was established on some Bible truths. ... But America is a nation in the world and it behaves like a nation in the world. The United States Constitution does not contain the words "Christian" or "Jesus" or "Bible." Many of the founding fathers were deists. The power of the United States government rests in the 11 consent of the governed," not in the Word of God."

Re:Guess about what really happened.

[damian cosmas]

We'd take you more seriously if you didn't contradict yourself so quickly:

"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."

and, based on that no information at all

"Certainly it seems... that there was illegal activity on the part of the government."

As for the US government killing people, I might dispute your number, but 50,000 a year isn't really that many people to kill, considering that some secular governments have killed far more people in shorther periods of time. Stalin and Mao, for example, are estimated to have killed more people together than all of WWII (including the Holocaust). You, sir, are an ass.

Re:Guess about what really happened.

[Anonymous Coward]

Christian country in this context doesn't mean written with Christianity in mind (in the case of the Constitution). It's a matter of the ideals that the country holds dear and how the leadership behaves and believes. And recently, from that point of view, yes, we are a Christian country. The only part of our three-branch government that hasn't been behaving like part of a Christian theocracy has been the Supreme Court, and thank goodness for it.

Re:Guess about what really happened.

[Frymaster]

How many mosques did the Government burn down in America this week?

none. but, to be fair, they do occasinally bomb them 500 lb, laser-guided missles, like this one.

Re:Guess about what really happened.

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article the Frymater has provided a link to:

The fight began when a Marine vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired from the mosque, wounding five Marines, and a large U.S. force converged on it, Byrne said.

Anyone reading the linked article might note the following:

"It is a holy place, there is no doubt about it," Kimmitt added. "It has a special status under the Geneva Convention that it can't be attacked.

"However, it can be attacked when there is a military necessity brought on by the fact that the enemy is storing weapons, using weapons, inciting violence and executing violence from its grounds," he said.

Once you start attacking people whilst hiding in what would normally be considered a neutral or protected structure, any neutrality or protection that structure previously enjoyed goes out the window at the discretion of those you attacked.

In other words you can't start whining when someone drops a JDAM or Paveway into the mosque you've been firing RPGs at them from.

Article in the Register

[Yeb]

Documents relating to the seizure of Indymedia's servers at Rackspace's Heathrow premises have finally been unsealed by a Texas district court. Some information remains under seal, and the documents released by no means provide the full picture, but it is now clear that yes, it was the Italians, and no, there was no obvious legal basis for the seizure of the servers themselves. And as regards the British Government's apparent insouciance regarding the (faulty) operation of US court orders within British jurisdiction but without any British authorisation, well, that remains a puzzle.

More: US court files reveal Italian link to Indymedia server grab

-Jeff

P.S. insouciance...

Not a mistake

[pavera]

It states in the article that Rackspace tried to turn over just the log files but then had to send the entire hard drive to comply with FBI rules.

Do any of you work for an ISP? I used to. If the FBI asks for logs like that you seriously have 12 hours generally to comply or the ISP is fined heavily. If they ask for something specific, and you're slogging through 6TBs of data, you can't possibly find exactly what the FBI wants in less than 12 hours.

The EFF lawyer says it would be like turning over a whole warehouse of documents instead of just one document... Well, good luck finding that needle in a haystack in 12 hours or face a fine that will bankrupt your company.

Re:Not a mistake

[Yeb]

It's clear you didn't read any of the unsealed documents to see the various timelines. It sure looks like they had more than 12 hours...

See: Commissioner's Subpoena page 27.

-Jeff

Re:That's great...

[Ironsides]

Anything about why they wanted those log files? What did I miss?

It was for the Italians.

With apologies to Monty Python

[Marko DeBeeste]

No one ex[ects the Spanish Inquisition. Our main weapoms are are surprise, fear and almost fanatical devotion to support.

Conspiracy Here, Conspiracy There

[N8F8]

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.

A bit of context...

[Yeb]

Indymedia is an open-posting site that allows anyone to submit articles, photos, audio, and video to their site. In many ways it's similar to slashdot (both in good and bad ways).

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)

Rackspace, Indymedia, and the FBI

[Steev]

"Rackspace, Indymedia, and the FBI" kind of sounds like a hip-hop group. I can't wait for their next album.

Re:So all those /. reactionaries...

[xappax]

The problem, I think is that although for you the lynchpin of the argument is whether or not the government seized Indymedia's hard drives, that's not really the issue at stake. We're not outraged that the government borrowed Indymedia's hardware for a week, we're outraged that they, in cooperation with an independent server company, blatantly violated the reasonable expectation of privacy of a whole bunch of totally innocent people.

It's not really the hard drives that are the issue - the only thing on those drives that would interest the government in the first place was the logs...everything else is publicly available web content! 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?

While it's good to find out what happened, and I'm willing to admit that we were wrong about the drives being taken, it really doesn't change the core problem here.

It's wrong, but I'm not suprised they did it

[defile]

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?

quite off topic, but...

[Ogive17]

The viewers of /. are becoming more and more conspiracy oriented each day.

I've rolled my eyes so many times from misguided posts that I now have a headache. :(

To some people (a vocal minority, I realize), people can't make a mistake, the government is to blame for everything.

Re:quite off topic, but...

[quarkscat]

I'm sorry, but exactly which DHS server are you posting this from?

Even a delusional paranoid can be right, sometimes, that others are out to get him/her. One of the basic problems with liberty and open democracies is that they are reliant upon each other. The regime currently in power in the USA has shown an affinity for (1) ignoring international treaties and laws, (2) instituting draconian and repressive domestic laws (eg. US Patriot Act), and (3) embracing government secrecy (now SOP) as a cloak for all their policies and actions, even to the point of restricting Legislative and Judicial branch oversight. These are not the actions of a government sworn to preserve either liberty, open democracy, or the US Constitution.

That, in a nutshell, is why "The viewers of /. are becoming more and more conspiracy oriented each day." With good reason IMHO.

(Now, I have the perfect thing for both your "headache" and your lack of "paying attention" to events around you -- a 2x4 smack up between the eyes.)

#*^!~#$%@**#

You're welcome.

Re:fanatical billing

[phreaki]

You can be a customer of Rackspace for 2 years, miss the cancel deadline by less than 24 hours and they will tell you it's impossible to stop a credit card card charge 8 days later.

This is a funny twist, when I had a hard drive fail over there about 8 months ago, it took over 6 hours to get a new one swapped in.

They do give fanatical support to police though, and fanatical billing to customers.

Re:So all those /. reactionaries...

[Yeb]

Yes, that is the issue at stake: though they ended up with the drives in their possession, the FBI did not seize the drives.

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

Re:I'll Never Forget My One Boss

[putko]

Well, the fact that he was anti-authoritarian Jew that fit a certain type celebrated by some Jews was germane. The guy even had a pet parrot named after a Yiddish vulgarism, which he carried around the office. So yeah, he was very aware of his ethnicity, and quite in-your-face about it.

The comparison to Woody Allen, who had made fun of obstreperous Jews in the past was meant to evoke the type (Al Goldstein, Abbie Hoffman, Irv Rubin, etc.). When my boss rebelled against the authority figures, it was entirely habitual and natural to him, it would have taken great effort for him to comply entirely with their wishes. I genuinely wish more Americans were like this.

The fact that Rackspace rolled over like this and sent in the disks when the govt. just wnated logs makes me think they could use more backbone, which I why I brought up this guy. He never would have overcomplied like this, unless it was going to cost him big money.