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Indymedia Server Seized By UK Police, Again
timbrown writes with word that "On 22 January 2009, Kent Police seized an Indymedia server hosted by Manchester-based colocation facility UK Grid and run by the alternative news platform Indymedia UK. The server was taken in relation to comments on an article regarding the convictions in the recent Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) trial. Seven activists were sentenced to a total of 50 years in prison."
The complete story is worth reading; timbrown continues: "I'm posting this as a concerned UK administrator who hosts a number of sites. The message appears to be clear: the UK establishment does not want political content, legitimate or otherwise, hosted from these shores. The message has been noted, however free speech must be supported even where it may not be agreeable."
freedom of speech..
btw I run a site along the lines and I have an interesting setup, the database server is in one country and the web frontend is in another with secure tunnel between so if someone does a traceroute to the site and then goes datacenter and pulls the server out of rack all they get is a proxy, its far from perfect but at least the database is safe
This bugs me. Freedom of the press is a vital tennet of our society, and it needs to be protected vigourously by everyone both inside the media and out. Without it we would have no way to stand up to the sort of tyranny that is all too common in countries where people aren't free.
Which is why I think Indymedia should shut the hell up in this case.
What does this have to do with freedom of the press? The name, address and other details of a judge were posted on an Indymedia site and mirrored to this server. That's not journalism. Trying to claim that the police investigating it is an infringement of the free press just undermines the real press and makes otherwise rational people wonder if freedom of the press is really important after all.
Other people's private personal information is not "political content".
http://twitter.com/onion2k
So now we know that the UK is by far worse than the US on similar issues.
"You updated a website protesting animal cruelty vs drug companies. Now we're gonna smack you with a conspiracy charge for 4.5 years in prison."
Damn.
The UK government doesn't seem to really bother trying to hide all of the atrocities they are comitting and condoning against the common rights of the common man, knowing full well that at the end of the day, MOST people would rather bury their heads in the sand and go back to sleep when someone starts explaining to them what the fuck exactly is happening than stand up and face the truth. They know that they can stage panels with hired actors on bs talk shows to come up with altruistic-sounding arguments to condone the removal of the rights of the people, and quote text from books out of context knowing full well that very few will bother to get off the couch and do the research themselves. Watching the bullshit start to trickle down into New Zealand is starting to really piss me off, all the more so given that we have no constitution and a lot of the rights we take for granted don't implicitly exist. /rant
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
In the UK I have been seeing how a 1984 situation is being established:
1) Speed cameras to the wahzoo....
2) Camera's to watch people to the wahzoo...
3) Rights being taken away and people sent to jail on issues that would otherwise seem "ludicrous.."
It has been proven that the cameras do squat to stop crime. Yet there they are and more are coming. Why? It is an issue of the establishment in the UK wanting to control the people. 1984!
The result of Indymedia and the posters is a direct reaction of the restrictions. No more no less...
All that has to happen in the UK is that they start loosening up! Though I doubt that will happen, until a "revolution" occurs. You might think it is funny and cannot happen. I on the other hand say, sure it can happen, but we have gotten so used to "law and order" that we think it cannot happen.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I know everyone is going to jump up and down about the right to free speech, but that isn't really the topic here.
The police regarded the comment as an implicit threat to the trial judge, which would not come under "free speech" laws in many (most?) countries.
They seized a *mirror* of the main server (the main site is still up a running just fine), in order to try to trace the original poster, and requested that the comment was removed from the site, which it has been.
The main issue I see here is one of oversight, who's there to check that the police only look for forensics on the original poster, and don't start a fishing expedition on the seized server?
I have no problem with the police taken the action they have, far from using their powers to "repress" anyone they are taking appropriate action to prevent groups like SHAC from harassing people, blackmailing them and generally making their lives a misery.
In the article linked to in the header they are 'concerned' that the police have been instructed by their political masters to clamp down on anyone daring to threaten 'the corporations'. The author has obviously totally missed the point that primarily the activism isn't targetted at 'corporations' but at individuals who happen to work at them. It's usually not the 'corporation' which is branded as a paedophile in a leaflet campaign in it's neighbourhood, it's not the 'corporation' who has masked terrorists driving around his house at night shouting abuse and making threats and it's not corporations whose dead relatives are dug up and then held for ransom. Usually it's a delivery driver, admin assistant anyone who is unlucky enough to be targetted by these groups.
I personally would not want to be relentlessly attacked in this matter because some random group of nutters took exception to something the company I worked for is involved in and I welcome any attempts by the government or the police to stand up and do something about it.
This happened in 2004 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/08/fbi_indymedia_raids/ - FBI confiscated its servers in London (how the hell does that work, then? US law enforcement in the UK?) based on comments on the G8.
It also happened in 2005: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/28/indymedia_server_seizure_bristol/ in Bristol, UK, again relating to the G8 conference.
Tor
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Imagine if /. servers got seized everytime someone saw fit to post comments with the addresses related to the "bad guy" in response to a story. Indymedia had already pulled said comments, does /. even have such a facility? I find some of what gets put on Indymedia to be massively disagreeable, OTOH I'm not a big fan of servers being pulled at random either.
Tim Brown
...this concerns me. I've just sent off an email to their support division asking for information about their policies for dealing with police requests. I am skeptical that Indymedia is giving us the full story, but if UK Grid handed over physical hardware without a warrant it makes me wary of continuing my contract with them (not that I'm doing anything illegal, but it can be argued Indymedia wasn't doing anything illegal either)
From the details available, it appears this may relate to information that could be used to threaten the judge in the SHAC trial, the trial of some pretty unpleasant and violent people http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7837064.stm.
I know everyone is going to jump up and down about the right to free speech, but that isn't really the topic here.
Oh really
The police regarded the comment as an implicit threat to the trial judge, which would not come under "free speech" laws in many (most?) countries.
Which is one of the reasons why Indymedia removed the comment
They seized a *mirror* of the main server (the main site is still up a running just fine), in order to try to trace the original poster, and requested that the comment was removed from the site, which it has been.
Yet the original poster can not be retrieved from the "mirror" (or from the main site for that matter).
The main issue I see here is one of oversight, who's there to check that the police only look for forensics on the original poster, and don't start a fishing expedition on the seized server?
The main issue here is what was the intention of the police. Obviously it can't be to trace the original poster (why seize a mirror, or anything at all since Indymedia does not log ips), nor can it be to remove the comment (this had already happened). Would it just be a form of punishment for a "critical" organization? Indymedia is entirely volunteer-run and depends on donations. Taking a server offline and a potential court case will seriously increase the workload and will have financial consequences too.
It's like being a scientist in a way. At the end of the day, you want the answer to be right. In pursuit of that goal, scientists and journalists have developed a certain ethic and certain procedures that more or less work.
It's easy to be a pretend scientist: all you have to do is mix pretty solutions in some test tubes. Likewise, it's easy to be a pretend journalist. Easier, these days. But, in either case, the difference between real and pretend is not the web site or the test tubes, but whether or not someone is digging away, really trying to get at the truth.
Now, when Indymedia posts that kind of personal information that could reasonably imply a threat and isn't relevant to the story, it's the equivalent of a chemist blowing up his/her lab. At the very least, it doesn't give you confidence in their competence.
Obviously it can't be to trace the original poster (why seize a mirror, or anything at all since Indymedia does not log ips),
Well, yes, I agree the motivations of the police could partly be to put pressure on a "critical" organization. Putting a check on how eager the police are to investigate a crime like this would be part of the oversight I mentioned.
However, the point about the logs is irrelevant:
"No officer, there's no need to come into my house, even if someone had committed a crime, I keep it so clean there'd be no evidence in there"
If the police believe a crime has been committed, they *have* to investigate it fully, and not ignore potentially useful evidence just because someone else tells them so.
Please mod this up:
You could always make another internet to get away from the bullshit on the current one.
Freedom of the press does not apply to "journalists" only, because once you start applying it only to an arbitrary and subjective definition of "journalism", you now have a loophole the size of a galactic cluster.
It doesn't matter if it's CNN or little timmy's html experiments, if you kill people's websites and jail them for what they SAY, you are a tyrant!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The police did not seize the server to stop free speech. They did so to find the identity of the wider network of people who have, and maybe still do, support violent acts against those involved in scientific research which involves testing on animals.
I will avoid the obvious reference to nuts and fruitcakes.
Other people's private personal information is not "political content".
Below is a story from the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times:
ST. PETERSBURG -- A 54-year-old man was struck and killed by a truck Friday night while walking his bicycle across U.S. 19.
James Allen, of 2445 38th St. N in St. Petersburg, was crossing in the 3700 block about 6:45 p.m. when he was hit by a northbound 2000 Ford pickup driven by Brian Aldrich, 39, of 3776 28th Ave. N, St. Petersburg, according to a St. Petersburg police report.
linky: http://blogs.tampabay.com/breakingnews/2009/01/st-petersburg-2.html
Ignoring for a moment the (significant) differences between the US and UK... When the mainstream media freely publishes names and addresses of the people involved in newsworthy events, it becomes problematic to censor that information when it's published by non-mainstream media.
Is shared-hosting... and backups, off-site naturally.
In that case, if they seize the server, they are seizing my site... and the site of more then 1000 other hosted sites...
And with the backups, you are ready to just setup another host, and update everything in no time... ;)
Something people forget is that it isn't an unlimited right. Really, no rights are unlimited in a free society. Why? Well for you to have an unlimited right, implies that your right could infringe on my rights to some degree. For example suppose you had an unlimited right to speech. That would mean you could call for me to be killed. You could tell everyone that I should die, explain how best to kill me and so on, and I've have no recourse. You could lie about me continuously to people I care about in an attempt to harm me, you could harass me at every opportunity, and so on. While you having no limits to your right might make you more free, it would make me less free. In fact you find that the only place where people have near unlimited rights are dictatorships. The dictator has the right to do basically whatever they want. However that comes at the expense of more or less everyone else.
Thus in free societies we have to have some limits to rights. We can't have a situation of "You do whatever you want." It has to be more along the lines of "You can do whatever you want, so long as that doesn't interfere with other people." Thus we get laws that restrict rights to an extent. You can say what you like, but not if you are threatening others. You can own all kinds of property, but you can't own other people. You can burn a flag but you can't burn your neighbor's flag and so on.
So people need to get over this idea that you can just say whatever you want and there are never any consequences. No, not the case. You can say a whole lot, speech is one of the most permissive rights in most free countries, but there are limits. A threat would certainly be a limit just about everywhere.
Any time you see a limitation like that, and you think it is unfair, ask yourself how you'd feel if you were on the receiving end. If your life was being threatened, would you be ok with that, or would you then want the person threatening you arrested? Because remember: You can't have it both ways. It can't be ok for you to do it to someone else, but not someone else to do it to you.
Since this was a mirrored server that does not log IP addresses, is there any way we can think of that the police could use information stored on the server to identify the individual poster?
Just off the top of my head, if the original post was still stored on the server, they could perhaps obtain the time punch as to when the comment was submitted.
Well yes, Europe's states learned the hard way that they need to protect themselves from unconstitutional forces, be it political parties or nutjob politicians.
It's not "democratic" in the truest sense of the word, but why exactly whould a democracy protect those who're trying to get rid of it?
Of course it's hard to know where to draw the line between legitimate political opposition, and people out to undo the constitution. Which is part of the reason the attempt to ban the NPD in Germany failed - they wanted to really make sure the people they're banning actually need to and can be banned, and kind of overdid it, to put it mildly.
Those things are complicated, and warrant an extended (public) discussion - but this is hardly the platform to do so, and it's _not_ an free speech issue. It's about how far a state can go to protect itself.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
Democracy per definition demands tolerance to non politically correct views and beliefs. Democracy cant exist without totally free speech since whats forbidden today is totally ok tomorrow. Just step back twenty years and there is plenty of stuff that was forbidden to talk about then thats just plain PC nowadays.
A democracy without free speech is just a scam and not a single bit better than communism, nazism, monarchy or dictatorship. I hate it when people try to redefine free speech to be some quasi-free expression where you can only express politically correct stuff and nothing else. Thats not free speech at all.
HTTP/1.1 400
Unfortunately it's not SHAC who are getting shafted, it's indymedia, who as far as I can tell have no association with SHAC except SHAC were posting there as ACs.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
This is a pointless discussion. You and I have no idea what transpired here with reguards to indymedia co-operating with the police. We don't know if the police said "let us send over one of our experts to check your server and make sure you are telling us the truth". We haven't a sweet clue.
When it comes to anti science terrorism I'm prepared to give the police the benefit of the doubt until I hear evidence otherwise.
It isn't like I'm being intractable here. You go find me evidence that the police didn't seek the co-operation of indymedia first (and had no grounds for believing that indymedia might tamper with evidence) and I will happily call the polices actions heavy handed.
If I was in boy george's house at the time, I would fully expect to be called in for formal police questioning which I wouldn't be able to refuse without penalty. No one has been arrested here.
Sounds like the police turned up without a warrant, asked the people running the hosting company, and they just handed it over.
Not a "freedom of speech"/"police"/"big brother" issue. More of a "watch out who hosts your servers".
If I had hosting with that company, I would remove it immediately for that.
And "free speech" too...
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
SHAC members [...] threatened people with violence and otherwise intimidate people, they'd print out leaflets saying that contractors working with Huntington animal research were paedophiles and put them through their neighbours letter boxes.
Christ, John Grubor did worse than that to me back when he was ranting his way through Usenet. It never even occurred to me to call in the cops. We're talking tens of thousands of hate messages. I should have demanded Google's servers instead of just asking them to turf the spam?
If the site doesn't log IP addresses, then it doesn't log IP addresses. A mirror of the site will *certainly* not have IP addresses on it even if the original server did... so this doesn't seem to have been taken to gather information, it was taken to punish them for not being able to provide the IP address of the poster. And the expectation that the IP address *would* be logged because there's an EU directive requiring it is disturbing.
The toughs now in jail were not even bright enough to harass employees of the company doing the animal testing. They were not even bright enough to harass employees of companies doing business with them.
They would find names of big conglomerates doing business (in ways that often were extremely derivative, like messaging companies), choose a company from the group (that had nothing to do with animal testing) and then start harassing lets say the janitor.
Anything the police does to put those individuals in jail should be applauded, freedom of speech has nothing to do with this,
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
We are smarter than they are. Remember "Tubes"? Don't want government in your server? Serve the pages from country X, put the database in country Y. For that matter distribute the database from Y, X and Z.
There are solutions. When what's available today quits working by then very smart college students will have designed a web server similar to P2P. They had better get used to having the free flow of information. We're only one generation removed from the catch phrase "Information Wants to be Free." It's what the Internet is based upon.
JMHO -[d]-
Unfortunately it's not SHAC who are getting shafted, it's indymedia, who as far as I can tell have no association with SHAC except SHAC were posting there as ACs.
Well, that's just tough luck. They lost a mirror server (temporarily, I hope. Maybe we should note that you should always have a physically separate mirror server so that the police can take it away without touching your main server; a RAID mirror in a closed box together with the "real" server would have been a bad idea); they'll probably have to spend money to get a replacement which will then be a spare.
However, they are lucky in so far as nobody has attacked or threatened any of their staff members, nobody has found out where their dead relatives are living and dug them out and hidden the bodies away, nobody has got a list of all Indymedia employees and warned all their neighbours that they are pedophiles, nobody has called their suppliers and told them to stop selling hardware to them.
the web site or the test tubes
Who cares about test tubes? I want production-quality tubes for my website!
Yeah, but by not helping the police to catch the SHAC posters, Indymedia have put themselves in a rather precarious position.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
They seized a *mirror* of the main server (the main site is still up a running just fine), in order to try to trace the original poster.
Yet the original poster can not be retrieved from the "mirror" (or from the main site for that matter).
Thanks to your insight, I have developed a foolproof method for the Perfect Crime:
1) Commit crime
2) When the police ask you whether or not anything in your possession implicates you in said crime... (and here is the genius bit): tell them "NO!"
3) !!!!
4) Profit!
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
This is a personal privacy issue. This site was posting personal details of a judge who put away some nasty and violent criminals. I don't care where you stand on the animal testing debate but it's a debate and not something that can be solved by terrorising people because of where they work. The judge who put them away deserves the right to have his family protected in the same way that the personal details of a judge taking on the mafia would expect to have his family protected. Let's all calm down and put this in perspective, if the site hadn't published something it knew it shouldn't have published then it wouldn't be in that situation. Trashy home made media outlets need to learn some responsibility for their actions.
Be nice, sponsor me: http://jailbreak.ragabonds.org.uk
In other words, "fuck anyone who gets caught in the crossfire"? Congratulations, you're actually endorsing SHAK's methods whilst superficially condemning them.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
In what way were they not helping? By not handing over information that they didn't have? Gosh, that means that we're all not helping!
There's a lot of knee-jerk going on because of the odiousness of SHAK, but Indymedia seem to have done everything right and seem to have done everything they could to help, but they still got stomped on, which does suggest that there's another agenda.
And without in any way condoning the actions of SHAK, free speech isn't an issue when it's speech that I or the powers that be agree with, it's only an issue when it's speech that I or the powers that be wish were not spoken.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
The main issue here is what was the intention of the police. Obviously it can't be to trace the original poster (why seize a mirror, or anything at all since Indymedia does not log ips), nor can it be to remove the comment (this had already happened). Would it just be a form of punishment for a "critical" organization? Indymedia is entirely volunteer-run and depends on donations. Taking a server offline and a potential court case will seriously increase the workload and will have financial consequences too.
Who says they can't find anything? So some Indymedia guy says they keep no logs. Well, some admins are not the brightest, and it is entirely possible that while Indymedia _believes_ they don't keep logfiles, they might actually have logs. Or "not keeping logs" might mean "delete the logs every seven days". Or their servers might keep some other information that is not obviously usable but can find IP addresses after some forensic examination. Or that Indymedia guy might be lying. They might have a policy to tell all their users that no logs are kept, but they still keep them, just in case some user does something _really_ shitty. If that judge, his family and twenty neighbours were murdered, would you be very surprised if log files suddenly turned up?
They might both have common law, but both France and the former USSR used civil law. Having the same general legal system doesn't mean that they have the same laws or same legal process for that matter.
You (or the USA, if you're not from there) have a box on your Visa Waiver form which Communists are required to tick. They are then denied entry. Freedom of speech?
Kent Police had e-mailed imc-uk-contact in the morning requesting that personal information about the Judge from the recent SHAC trial in the UK be removed from the site. However this information had already been quickly removed in line with IMC UK policy. The e-mail also requested information relating to the poster be retained. Indymedia as an open posting news service does not log such information about its sources.
The machine was handed to the Police by the management of UK Grid, a Manchester based colocation facility, without a warrant being shown. It is believed that a warrant for this one server may exist and have been issued by a Chief Inspector. As the server was a mirror of the site, it can be concluded that the validity of the seizure wasn't checked, and the police attacked Indymedia infrastructure in the UK.
...
Andy Robbins, the cop whose name is on the document posted here, is the main person behind the repression of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) over the past few years.
How about setting up a server that does not keep logs, allowing the SHAC to post on it and then claiming the whole operation was part of "the repression of SHAC"?
They've also blocked out the UK Grid's contact name on the warrant and left Andy Robbins' name readable despite their privacy policy.
Even though you and I think SHAC is odious, it seems like it's pretty clear where their sympathies lie. And that's the reason they have legal troubles.
Imagine if a right wing website hid anti abortion, KKK or Neo Nazi terrorists' identities from the police like this? Indymedia may not be terrorists themselves, though one Indymedia activist was arrested on suspicion of criminal damage, but they're clearly acting as a forum for them.
Seems like if they want to stay in business they need to both disown these people and help the police trying to catch them.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
and, in keeping with free speech, they (the police) should be dragged out and shot.
THAT will be enough to get this server seized, yes?
another me-li mass (acure). big bro thrashing around in frustration.
pat
packrat ; writer-informer. http://packrat.comicgenesis.com http://www.youtube.com/area163 https://www.smashwords.com/
that kind of thing pushes customers away.
Read radical news here
Hozza, thanks for explaining that.
But so what. I have a business, and we allow people to post messages in a mostly anonymous way. Kinda like a big corkboard outside a grocery store where anyone can post a flier. If someone posts something illegal, the government shouldn't be allowed to take the wall because we already pressure washed the fingerprints off.
The grocery store should not have to keep a record of every person that may potentially post an illegal message. And a website should not be subject to search and seizure because of an anonymous post. We the people do not want to be tracked all the time. We want anonymity. Anonymity cannot be stopped.
This article makes me imagine a scenario like this:
Cops: Give us your surveillance tapes.
Business: We have no security cameras, or tapes.
Cops: We will decide who has cameras or not by seizing everything in your business indefinitely.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
"Whether you believe killing jews is right or wrong, that is not the way to go about protesting it."
how does that sound ?
Read radical news here
Your freedom to swing your fist stops an inch away from my face.
I'm generally supportive of freedom of speech in general and IndyMedia in particular (it certainly serves as a counterweight to Little Green Footballs, the Drudge Report and Free Republic). However they have shown a shocking lack of discretion on who they implicitly support in what they allow to be published (stories AND comments).
I'm going to look askance at anybody who supports terrorists, whether they kill in the name of Allah, or in the name of cute furry little animals.
I am a member of the ACLU and believe, fundamentally in free speech. However, it is not "free" speech when you threaten or create danger, like yelling "fire" in a crowded movie house. That is an abuse of your rights.
Your freedom to swing your fists stops at my face, as it were.
With all rights there must be responsibilities. This is one of those contentious problems when people exercising their rights are not being responsible. There is *no* good answer to this situation.
When one uses their freedoms irresponsibly, it creates a threat to all freedom because it offers legitimate precedent for those who's aim it is to repress.
Other people have made a similar point. But I think it should be reinforced that Indymedia might not be telling the truth. So many people have been so quick to believe the story that they have neglected to ask themselves, if the story is accurate.
The one thing the police have done is not trust the word of a site that might not have an honest track record. Why give the police anything if they haven't got a warrant?
I wonder if the police just decided that they might still be able to get the IP because they have better hackers than Indymedia. I imagine SOCA (like the feds)would have an interest in this one.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
It is important to be clear about how Indymedia differs from other news organisations. Indymedia provides a platform for people to speak freely at the same time as guarding their anonymity. It does this on principle, and its systems are configured to promote this by not recording IP addresses. See http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/security.html and http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/privacy.html
The question is whether _this_ freedom should exist and be defended and if so, what limits should be set on that freedom.
I think the freedom is worth defending. Certainly if you live under a repressive government, this capability may be essential to protect people who want to report on that repression. Whether the UK is or is not repressive is disputed, but if this freedom is defended, it makes it harder for it to become repressive. For this reason, Indymedia should be free to provide the service that they offer without unreasonable interference - they should also have a duty to behave responsibly.
The downside of this open publishing approach is that the platform might be abused by some in ways that threaten the rights and freedoms of others (as in this case). There is a need to moderate and remove abusive content. Indymedia acted promptly to remove the offending post.
If Indymedia should be free to operate as they do (no-one has brought legal proceedings against their right to work in this way), and they behave responsibly in terms of moderating abuses (which they have), then they should be allowed to do so without interference.
I have no sympathy for SHAC, but I am glad that some people give up their time, energy, money and equipment to enable our right to free, anonymous 'speech'. I think these volunteers deserve similar protections against interference as do commercial journalists and publishers.
I have to wonder whether you posted AC because you already knew your point was nonsensical. The article was pointing out how under California law Juries names cannot be hidden, it has no relevance whatsoever to UK law.
The American public didn't have a sweet clue what it was doing when it gave money to Sinn Fein. That some American's had sympathy for terrorists doesn't change a thing.
Nor does the fact that the current government is prepared to say Sinn Fein and the IRA are distinct alter the matter.
Incidentally I'm not completely unsympathetic to the Republican cause in Northern Ireland. My country repeatedly abused the Irish for hundreds of years. And the original settlement with Dublin was unfair. Thats why I support the peace process. I'm also appalled at some of the police antics (including bugging Sinn Feins). As long as Sinn Fein/IRA have put their guns down they get a seat at the negotiating table. Doesn't change the fact that the distinction between the two organisations is beyond questionable.
If someone posts something illegal, the government shouldn't be allowed to take the wall because we already pressure washed the fingerprints off.
Says you, but how would the police know that you actually did this or actually know how to make it forensically "clean"? They don't and therefore should examine that cork board. They'd be negligent if they didn't.
The grocery store should not have to keep a record of every person that may potentially post an illegal message. And a website should not be subject to search and seizure because of an anonymous post. We the people do not want to be tracked all the time. We want anonymity. Anonymity cannot be stopped.
No, they shouldn't, but they should also be prepared to have their board examined if someone does post an illegal message.
This article makes me imagine a scenario like this:
Cops: Give us your surveillance tapes.
Business: We have no security cameras, or tapes.
Cops: We will decide who has cameras or not by seizing everything in your business indefinitely.
Now imagine this one:
Cops: Can we inspect your hunting knife? We suspect it was used in a murder.
Murdering bastard: I have no knife! You're mistaken.
Cops; oh, OK, sorry to have bothered you Sir.
The police have to follow up on potential evidence or they'd just be taking every bodies word for it.
the police still have to obtain a warrant to seize property without the owners consent. A scenario like yours requires the judicial system to become completely corrupt (yes, yes, people already say it is but many judges still believe in the law) and when that's happened we've got more problems than property seizures.
Silly rabbit
While I'm not fan of the triple-K, it seems to me that the above exerpt is more of a "rally to us if you're against a black president" (distasteful for sure, but not visibly advocating violence) as opposed to "rally to us and help us track down and kill Obama during event X at Y etc etc"
Nobody's posted what the original comments on the IM server was, but I could see the line being drawn as "group of assholes" VS "notice of group planning specific criminal action" (however much they may be associated with such in a broad aspect).
I wonder who actually runs the servers for groups like the KKK though. I get a "connection refused" when trying to do a whois, probably because it's blocked by Canada's anti-hate laws etc, but I do wonder about being intelligent enough to be a sysadmin but dumb enough to be a member of such a group...
Perhaps it's time for Indymedia to move to a cloud computing service such as Amazon's EC2. I imagine it becomes quite a lot harder to sieze a server in this kind of environment. Their server could be running pretty much anywhere (and would easily be restartable,) and their data could be replicated in multiple geographic locations.
Of course, the police could just get Amazon to shut down their account instead. It depends on whether the siezing of the server was to recover data, or to take down the service.
"Pokey, are you drunk on love?" "Yes. Also whiskey. But mostly love... and whiskey."
for there is nothing to explain. you are way too immersed in your opinion, and therefore cant leave the particular perspective of the animal rights-activism issue.
that analogy was based on pure logic.
think.
where does the 'peaceful protesting' obligation end, and the necessity for physical/armed action begin ? when does it begin ?
should the revolutionaries in 1774 have instead protested peacefully and tried to achieve their ends that way ? or, should the dissenters in french revolutionary period not take up arms, and protested peacefully ? what would the world you live in today be like, if they had done that ?
today's analogies :
there are neonazis who think that jews should be burned. there are a lot of islamist groups that everyone should be muslim, and those who are not should either be killed or put under yoke. a goodly number of them believe that any means to achieve this end is justified.
they not only believe those. they actively recruit people to their cause, seek funding, do whatever necessary. all the while using the liberties of the more liberal regimes they live under.
they are not mounting an armed revolution. they are not kidnapping or beheading anyone. yet. but they are increasing their numbers arithmetically.
with your logic, this is something that should be peacefully protested against, and within the limits of personal liberties.
but is it ?
Read radical news here
It's not the free speech of the poster people are concerned with, it's freedom of the press. Since the mirror server doesn't contain any information that could conceivably help in finding out who the poster was, taking it is nothing more or less than harassment of the free press for the 'crime' of existing.
Except this is more like taking somebody's second car when they are investigating a hit & run involving car you used while on vacation in another country.
And they know the car is still in factory mint condition and there won't be any evidence because they've seized it several times before, it has the new car smell(and have probably contracted cancer from it), and the eyelash they taped to the door is still taped to it.
Yay, a car analogy. I feel so dirty now.
Given this comes just after the police were given the powers to infect peoples computers i sincerely hope that when the server is returned it is sold on ebay and a replacement is bought.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Or, Indymedia could realize that the post itself is dangerous to society as a whole, and should be looked into by the police.
Of course, this is a slippery slope that they may not want to walk down on, but then they shouldn't complain when their servers are seized. I don't know if they have "searxh warrants" in England (I suppose they do) or not, but when the police want the poster's ID, it is clear that they serious about getting it.
They simply should have said ... "Releasing the info under duress". Because the government now has more info than they really wanted, and that doesn't really serve anyone.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It's not "democratic" in the truest sense of the word, but why exactly whould a democracy protect those who're trying to get rid of it?
Because by failing to, you destroy the democracy yourself. How can you commit undemocratic acts in defense of a democracy? That's like curing the disease by killing the patient. If you don't fight for the rights of the worst among us, the KKK, the Nazis, Fred Phelps, etc., you don't really believe in democracy.
The only way I can be secure in my own rights, is to see others exercising their rights to a more extreme level and seeing their rights protected.
Of course it's hard to know where to draw the line between legitimate political opposition, and people out to undo the constitution.
There is no line. Promoting the overthrow of the government is by definition political speech. It must be protected if free speech is to mean anything.
Those things are complicated, and warrant an extended (public) discussion - but this is hardly the platform to do so, and it's _not_ an free speech issue. It's about how far a state can go to protect itself.
It's the same issue. Damage to the principle of free speech IS damage to a democratic state. If you destroy the ideal of free speech, you have destroyed your democratic state just as surely as if you had blown it up. The real threat to democracies doesn't come from external threats, but from those claiming to protect you.
There is no trade-off between freedom and security. If you are not secure, you can never be free. If you are not free, you can never be secure.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
But so what. I have a business, and we allow people to post messages in a mostly anonymous way. Kinda like a big corkboard outside a grocery store where anyone can post a flier. If someone posts something illegal, the government shouldn't be allowed to take the wall because we already pressure washed the fingerprints off.
</quote>
The police would still come and dust the wall for prints. They would still send a SOCO (Scenes Of Crime Officer)out to dust the wall if they had seen you with the pressure washer because it is easier to send the SOCO than it is to explain why they did not if the judge gets murdered.
<quote>
Cops: Give us your surveillance tapes.
Business: We have no security cameras, or tapes.
Cops: We will decide who has cameras or not by seizing everything in your business indefinitely
</quote>
They will also search your shop for security cameras and tapes.
The law has deemed that the police can spend a reasonable amount of time searching your shop thus keeping you closed and the law has deemed they police can take your servers for a reasonable amount of time thus keeping you offline.
Maybe the police are keeping servers for too long but they can not stop you from implementing your disaster recovery plan and getting back online that way.
If you are hosting fringe political groups websites you are going to get your servers seized, I am not defending fishing trips by the police but sys admin to sys admin I advise you to include search and seizure to your disaster recovery plans.
For an added bonus if the police are seizing your servers to silence you this will a/ really piss them off and b/ if they keep coming back give you a good case for harassment.
Andy Robbins is a police officer, he's not (normally) entitled to privacy as regards being identified in connection with his work as a police officer. The British Police Force is not quite the STASI yet.
You think SHAC is odious, GP thinks SHAC is odious, I think SHAC is odious. Perhaps Indymedia doesn't think they're odious, the fact that you condone the police harassing them (and causing damage to their operation that costs real money to put right) because of that viewpoint is the exact problem that GP is complaining about.
FGD 135
You bring up some good points, of course, and I have no idea why you were modded down. But that might be an indication that this is not the right forum to discuss this particular topic. Moderators have their own agenda, just like everyone else.
Yes, the government changes the constition, sometimes explicitely, often implicitly. I'm not defending or condoning that behavior.
But that does not mean they're not also defending it - it's not like the government is some homogenous entity with a single goal. Case in point, while there has been downright unconstitutional behavior on the side of the government, none in recent history (that I know of, I might be ignorant there) has undone the whole constitution and established what, e.g., the NPD wants in Germany, namely a fascist state.
The important difference is, none of the governments has actually taken the step to change the form of the state. It's not just the government those radical forces intend to change, it's the entire _form of state_.
I do think that should be considered.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
My reply to the AC applies to your post too, at least in parts.
Also, there's a difference between exercising your right for free speech, expressing your political viewpoint, and acting on it.
E.g., you can talk about getting rid of immigrants all you want, but some people go a step further and create a fait accompli. It's only consequential I suppose, but I won't accept that to be a form of free speech. And that's what Germany tried to ban the NPD for.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
They seized a *mirror* of the main server (the main site is still up a running just fine), in order to try to trace the original poster
Siezing an indymedia server to find logs of people using it is like siezing a section of tarmac to find logs of people driving over it -- the information simply doesn't exist, and the police knew this before stealing the computer.
I agreed 100% with the main gist of your comment. However, this particular point stood out to me:
Since judges are the ones that name their "customers" criminals, it's quite obvious to me that some cyclic logic is going on here. Judges may or may not deal with criminals, depending on guilt or innocence, but by the very nature of their job they almost always claim to so. Whether they actually do so regularly is a matter of debate. Especially when discussing articles like this one, where we're talking about government seizure of legitimate press equipment.
I had been looking for a way to anonymously set up a web server and stumbled apon the .onion domain which runs on the tor network. I think, but not sure, that this is the same network that bitorrent runs on.
Anyhow, it allows you to setup a server that you can provide a domain name for others to find, but the actual physical location of the box is hidden behind several layers of proxy redirection.
If I was looking to setup a system where it would be difficult for others to seize the online assets... I would start with an .onion server... and then add proxy and other hidden mechanisms on top of that.
One problem is that it requires the browsers to be running a tor client in order to interpret and make proper requests to access .onion pages. This makes the site somewhat less useable to the general public. As a solution to this.. I'd put up multiple front end proxy cache servers to pass the anonymous data through a regular (.com, etc) domain. That would allow faster access to the data and to a wider potential audience.
For more info, check out: ".onion" on wikipedia.
You misspelled 'tyranids'. Though I'm not sure what 'anti-semitic' has to do with anything. Or indeed 'hate'. Tyranids are very even-handed: they destroy and devour pretty much everything in their path, quite indiscriminately.
I'm not clear on why you think they should not be allowed on Indymedia. It's a bit nerdy, obviously, but harmless. It's people who play Dark Eldar you want to watch out for. Fucking perverts.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
It's not a question of whether they are odious or not. They are terrorists - quite literally. They terrorise people to fulfill their political objectives.
Once you start to do that the police will try to lock you up. And if people try to stop them or even don't help them to the best of their ability, they will lock them up too.
The point is that political speech has limits, and one of those limits is violence or incitement to violence. Here's a handy cut out and keep guide to where the limit is in this case.
* Saying Huntingdon Life Sciences should be shutdown. This is protected political speech and is ok
* Demonstrating outside Huntingdon Life Sciences. Once again, so long as the demonstration is peaceful, UK law protects the demonstators.
* Calling for boycotts of HLS. Once again, completely OK.
* Dressing up in masks and beating employees of HLS half to death with baseball bats, planting fire bombs or sending letter bombs, posting leaflets around the homes of contractors for HLS accusing them of being pedofiles. Sending letters to HLS employees or contractors threatening them with 'terrorism' or calling their house every hour of the night and screaming death threats at their kids. Digging up dead relatives of employees ( really - see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/staffordshire/4176446.stm ). All these things have been done by SHAC or its allies. And none of them are protected political speech. In fact they are terrorism, literally KKK/mafia tactics.
The original reason they got involved with the police is because some SHAC activist posted a judge's name and address on the site to encourage the goon squad to go after him. That crosses a crucial line to being incitement, and inciting violence against judges is the best way I can think of to get yourself raided by the police.
The problem with Indymedia is that they don't differentiate between SHAC and other legal protest groups.
It's not about odiousness and it's not about free speech. If protect people like SHAC, you should expect to have problems with the police. What they did was like refusing to help the police find the name of a KKK or mafia thug who was trying to intimidate a judge back in America back when the KKK or mafia was at war with US law enforcement.
Actually I think they sort of want a confrontation so they can scream about 'state repression' and accuse the police of being Gestapo/Stasi etc. However if you step back and look at this, you realise that SHAC are not a legitimate political group that has renounced violence. In fact quite the reverse, they avoid politics completely and work exclusively through violence.
I think in a democracy, regardless of how you feel about animal experimentation you should not try to get shield people like them from law enforcement. Actually legally you don't have much choice. If you know anything about a crime and don't report it you can be prosecuted as an accessory.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
You do realise the whole fucking article is about the UK? What's you point with this shit?
I really wouldn't be surprised if this group is run partly by people on the inside of the government or Huntington themselves as it seems like its only out to attract violent guerilla types who are willing to carry a pitchfork and a torch at the first possible opportunity.
That's a pretty reasonable assessment. One of the ways civil rights groups in the 60's were combated was to insert agents into groups whose job it was to sow dissent and splintering. Having seen how something as simple as a D&D game can dissolved by the introduction of just one new person who is brought along (because s/he has no friends and wouldn't it be nice to take pity on this difficult person), I have no doubts whatsoever that the larger and much more complex work of organizing a city, state or even country-wide activist group would be vulnerable to this kind of counter-intelligence tactic.
And you can see why. --When people DO manage to gather together into a cohesive and like-minded group which is clear of head-cases, the power to do big things effectively skyrockets. Groups like that could easily alter or even topple governments, so it is no surprise to me that the intelligence community also recognized this and had the problem analyzed, solutions proposed, and money diverted to make it happen.
If counter-intel programs were running forty years ago, why would they have stopped today? Especially with initiatives like the whole Homeland Security nightmare to juice it all up.
-FL
When it comes to anti science terrorism I'm prepared to give the police the benefit of the doubt until I hear evidence otherwise.
What's with all this "anti-science" nonsense?
Where does it say to be pro-science you need to believe in the torture of animals?
I'm a pro-science as anyone, and I think anyone who denies the blatantly obvious fact that animals are sentient beings that feel pain is clearly putting their own prejudices and bigotry before scientific reality.
A good percentage of Western societies are rapidly approaching that point.
Are they, though, really?
I'll be the first to agree that a lot of the laws passed this millenium are not shining examples of how to do things. That tends to happen when a culture of fear pervades politics, as it did after the 11 September attacks, and as it does again today with the state of the world's economy.
Typically under those circumstances, politics takes over for the remainder of the current term of office. The incumbents are often returned at the next election as well, because the fear and emotion are still running high. It's the next election after that where you find out whether a more reasonable balance will be restored, bad laws undone, and those people who were unfairly treated compensated as much as possible.
I submit, therefore, that the resilience of nations' freedoms should be judged not by how they are attacked, but by how quickly they recover. To me, civil disobedience is what comes between "jury" and "ammo" on the four boxes scale. On the timeline above, most of us are still on "ballot". Judging by the dramatic change in emphasis in US politics since 20 January and the all-but-certain total annihilation of the Labour Party in British politics at the next general election, ballot is doing its job.
There have certainly been cases where things have gone too far, but in the UK they have been on a small scale (which doesn't make them any better in principle, of course) and more importantly they have been soundly thrashed by the press and opposition politicians. In many cases, corrective action either has been taken by government voluntarily or because a court ruling said they had gone too far. In other cases, corrective action is likely to be taken after the next election.
In the UK, the most likely justification for genuine civil disobedience in the near future seems to be the rise of the database state. This represents a profound and permanent shift in the balance of power between the people and the government, and it is very much a creation of the current, highly authoritarian Labour administration. It is interesting that on the issue of ID cards and the National Identity Register, a very large number of people have declared themselves willing to engage in civil disobedience, from the grass roots to the leaders of major political parties.
So yes, there are bad laws being made and right now a government with no real mandate is abusing its claimed authority for a couple of years. This sucks, but the system will deal with that particular administration fairly soon, just as it has done in several other countries recently, and in all likelihood much faster than any forcible revolution and overthrow of the government would. If it doesn't and the problems persist, or if the government attempts to accelerate the downward slide while it still clings to power such that waiting until the next election is too long to prevent serious or permanent harm to the nation's freedoms, then we may yet reach the point where civil disobedience is justified.
But we are still a very long way from the kind of dictatorship we see in Zimbabwe, the corruption endemic in politics in Russia, or the level of daily violence around Gaza. When contemplating actively stepping outside the rule of law, I think it is wise to remember how lucky we still are in the grand scheme of things, and to keep a sense of perspective.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
-- Apparently not.
...Perform abortions? Free Speech!!
Publishing home addresses of Judges is fine when it aligns with your politics..
Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organisation. Being a member of Al-Qaeda is an offence in itself. Is being a member of SHAC an offence in itself?
I don't know for sure, but I don't think it is - a large number of their members may be involved in criminal, specifically terrorist, activities, but that doesn't make them as a whole a terrorist group, and it doesn't make anyone who isn't opposed to them as much as you are fair game for extrajudicial punishment.
Obstructing the police is a crime, refusing to assist with an investigation isn't. Even if you can, and the police know that you can, it's still not illegal for you to refuse.
The police may take extrajudicial action against people who refuse to assist them, but that's supposed to be illegal (hence; extrajudicial), and I'm suprised that you seem to be cheering the idea on.
In a democracy, everyone should shield everyone else from law enforcement. Nothing will walk you into tyrrany faster than a population who are willing to shop each other.
Actually, legally, you are supposed to have the choice. If something has changed since 1998 (when I last knew for sure), I'd like you to quote the law which criminalises simple failure to hand over information.
Also, "you can be prosecuted" is weasel words - can you be sucessfully prosecuted? Or can you be prosecuted by an embittered prosecutor who wants to pin something on you for not helping them, thus giving rise to a sucessful countersuit for malicious prosecution?
FGD 135
When contemplating actively stepping outside the rule of law, I think it is wise to remember how lucky we still are in the grand scheme of things, and to keep a sense of perspective.
But that's the point, isn't it? When it becomes illegal to promote free speech, I think you're in serious trouble.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's exactly the problem and why anyone providing this kind of facility has to moderate and remove such content promptly.
When it becomes illegal to promote free speech, I think you're in serious trouble.
As I've said from the start, if the proper warrants weren't in order for the action the police took, then they screwed up and should be dealt with accordingly. I've never claimed otherwise, and in one of my other posts I suggested a rather strong set of conditions that I think could reasonably be enforced on the authorities in cases where it is absolutely necessary to remove hardware in circumstances like these.
I just don't believe in using the magic words "free speech" as a convenient excuse to bypass other laws protecting personal privacy, reputation, and so on. Life isn't that black and white.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
So in which country should Indymedia puts there servers to have minimal trouble with the police ?
http://johnmayer.wikispaces.com/ http://hyundai-cars.wikispaces.com/