Slashdot Mirror
FBI Seizes All Servers In Dallas Data Center
1sockchuck writes "FBI agents have raided a Dallas data center, seizing servers at a company called Core IP Networks. The company's CEO has posted a message saying the FBI confiscated all its customer servers, including gear belonging to companies that are almost certainly not under suspicion. The FBI isn't saying what it's after, but there are reports that it's related to video piracy, sparking unconfirmed speculation that the probe is tied to the leaking of Wolverine."
On the train on the way home there was a guy walking through the car selling the latest X-men on DVD. I think this is the proverbial "horse already left the barn" situation. However, what happened serves as a good example of what the future holds once the Federal government gets enhanced "cyber security" powers. Imagine what happens when say, for example, a Chinese botnet operator decides to launch an attack against (insert agency here) using zombies exclusively on Verizon's network. Oops... millions of Verizon customers are suddenly SOL. If you've ever had to deal with law enforcement when it comes to recovering what they took from you, you know what a nightmare this could turn into.
This is nuts, every server in a data center? do they realize the cost that might incur to all these non infringing companies? The wolverine leak nothing, no one was deprived of anything so there is no monetary loss but this? This is plain incredible. Good job FBI, you just caused many people a lot of trouble for a stupid movie.
Do the Americans now live in a police state that is controlled by the RIAA. This may sound alarmist but when innocent companies are hurt by the use of FBI force - how far away is it?
Stay tuned for new sig...
If this is true and equipment totally unrelated to the suspected parties (apart from being in the same building) was also confiscated then every data-centre in America could be shut-down due to one badly behaved server hosted in it?!
... and the memory fades with age. But I seem to remember a time when this was a free country, with due process of law and such.
It's all over p2p networks, it's in IRC channels, it's on usenet. Good luck getting rid of all traces of it.
I realize that Slashdot has long since gone downhill, but can we at least wait until there's a real story before going front page? Jesus.
Hasn't the FBI heard of data center control panel software to find the specific server(s) in question? My colocation facility's web panel tells me the switch #, power plug #and location and a whole ton of other shit. WTF is up with this?
Stories like that make one realize how risky cloud computing is...
When a police officer seizes computer hardware from a business in the course of an investigation, they can be held civilly liable for any loss or damage caused to the business by their actions.
At least thats how it is for Pennsylvania State Police.
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
They should have taken all the toilet paper from the bathrooms in the building. It doesn't do much good - but then again - it will cause lots of discomfort to people not involved - so why not!
Doesn't the F uck B ag I noramus's have any real criminals to go after?
is suspected of a crime, can the FBI just search every house in the neighborhood now? This story just doesn't make sense.
I'm assuming Wolverine is a movie not a music album, so that would be our overlords at the MPAA, not the RIAA.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
I normally don't care about privacy issues. The government can tap my phone if they feel like it, they can look into my purchasing records, they can stake out my house. They can look into my past work history. I really don't care.
But this is ridiculous. There were many levels of non-thinking going into this one. It's a move you might make if you were a dictator and wanted to remind people to stay in line. In fact, it is similar to things that happen in China. But.......this is the USA.
Qxe4
When the TPB servers were seized they also took all the other servers there with them
This is not the question to ask.
The question to ask is what good are the public getting in return for giving up such freedoms, AND paying for the giving up of such freedoms (dont forget who pay for the FBI, Police, etc), and paying for the protection of the revinue to copyright owning entities.
Now, this is supposed to be the entering in to the public domain (as in becoming free..) of creative content at the end of the copyright period - a fair and equitable arrangement one could say - we protect their profits for a period, and at the end of that, we gain the advantage of their creativity openly.
However, that was in the days of limited copyright periods, these days thanks both to DRM (an unbroken DRM means an item cannot become free after its legal protection stops) and changes to copyright periods (a lot of things we have already paid to protect should be public now, and are not..) we, the people, have lost our end of the 'bargain'.
Perhaps it is time for the copyright owners to be carrying the full costs of enforcing their copyrights, since they don't feel the public should be allowed future advantage of their content?
I wonder what the yearly government costs of copyright enforcement is, it seems more and more public resource is bring piled in to protecting it..
Or perhaps the people (that is, government) should simply cease on their end of the bargain in return, and in light of technological DRM, revoke copyright laws, as they were enacted to protect otherwise unprotectable items (such as books) - does DRM mean we shouldn't have to suffer copyright laws?
Once upon a time there was balance, an equitable deal between the state and copyright holders - the copyright holders have long since stopped holding up their end of the bargain....
are watching porn instead of this crap they seized!
This sounds worse than the Pirate Bay / PRQ raid of 2006.
Because, after all, the FBI has absolutely nothing better to do than to be the MPAA's attack dogs.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
1) Why does this shit always happen in Texas, when the Dems are in power. First Waco, now this?!
2) I hope the EFF and the ACLU form up like some Mecha-Voltron and tear Eric Holder a new one over this.
Holy shit. I don't care *why* they did it, you can't rip up some railroad tracks because someone's smuggling drugs by train. We're going to have to find a subtler, more sensible way to deal with alleged criminals who run data centers.
--
Toro
the act of taking every single server is to:
-- be punitive
-- scare other colos
-- dissuade this current target from going back into operation without screening clients
It's probably the greatest fear of every rental property manager/at-home landlord, that renters/tenants would conduct illegal activities on the premises, then subject every occupant to subpoena and total confiscation of every electronic and paper file, loss of hardware, and invasion of privacy, and stultefying disruption of business, schooling and other activities.
But, really, FBI, why not just run a deep scan using your own cracking tools? You could be on and off the property. We pay MORE than enough tax dollars that you guys & girls could arrive and spend 3 or 4 hours collecting what you need via data and paper scanners. Once you get stuff into a property room and all tagged, what is the likelihood of expedient recovery by the original owner? What if you guys REALLY find NOTHING, and there is some internal intertia to not look stupid, which might induce a decision to delay for as long as possible the return of confiscated stuff.
Hell, if i'm under suspicion, i'd GLADLY let you scan in exchange for not hauling my shit off. And, since you guys have the technical means to record virtually every electronic transaction or all traffic long before you descend upon your targets, they may never even be aware of being a person of interest. Even if they are guilt of SOMEthing, do you need to shut down every single aspect of their lives to prosecute a subpoena-limited scope of crime? You may as well seize their account balances AND take their debit cards and garnish their wages to prevent repurchase of new hardware onto which recovery tapes NOT at the target address will go. Then what, cat and mouse? Get the target to self-incriminate by demanding to know every last data archive location?
We need a more civilized form of crime prosecution that does not add insult to injury before the "suspect" even goes to jail. Oh, and for those who wish to slam me, yes, i am aware that by the time the new footage shows boxes being carried to the evidence van while the cuffed suspect is led to the warm mobile chariot seat is *likely* long under surveillance *AND* is guilty as hell even without a trial date come and gone, there STILL are times when law enforcement just goes in and scoops up EVERYthing as if to shut down someone. Many times, judges allow the suspect who is not a flight risk to post bail or be out on OR if tagged/collared. In the meantime, it is a MEAN time to be at an upsidedown-turned home, lacking all gear, and feeling watched. Yep, the pirates of nation-crumbling data and apps, kiddie-porn peddlers, stock options inside traders, illegal gambling and secrets thieves SHOULD be watched, but some crimes that are prosecuted (pursued before prosecution as well as punished by jury/judge) are done so at the behest of some foul-play-crying corporation having a hosed up business model.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Eldred v Ashcroft holding was that a copyright law (in that example the one that extended Mickey's copyright protection) is presumed constitutional if it doesn't explicitly say it's for "infinite length" and if it maintains the distinction between idea and expression.
Although your reading -- that a copyright law is unconstitutional if it does not promote Science and the Useful Arts -- makes a lot of common sense, it just isn't the case.
In America, I mean. As presently Constituted.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
"I received a call 15 minutes later from FBI Agent Allyn Lynd. Mr. Lynd would not tell me why he raided our datacenter or what he was looking for. He also accused me of hiding inside my house in Ovilla, Texas. I was actually in Phoenix, Arizona when this happened. I told him that, and he told me that he was "getting the dogs" after me, and hung up on me. I found out from an employee that there were 15 police cars and a SWAT team at my home in Ovilla."
This guy needs a lawyer ASAP for defense and counter-suit.
from the owners statements.. "unwarranted early morning raid" Fist they must have a warrant and it must specifies each piece of equipment that they are taking and why, This is why you have an attorney on call, and it also sounds like the agent threated this person, which is a crime.. Under the Fourth Amendment, searches must be reasonable and specific. This means that a search warrant must be specific as to the specified object to be searched for and the place to be searched. Other items, rooms, outbuildings, persons, vehicles, etc. may require additional search warrants. (from Wikipedia) Just like when the police came by (and had the wrong house) and wanted to see my car, I asked to see the warrant.. When they got done talking lots of crap about how much trouble I was in for not letting them search my car, they then figured out that they were at the wrong house.. just because they ask does not mean you have to let them in.. also if you are an effected business, I would contact your lawyer and have them contact the FBI about loss of productivity, and if your servers were not on the warrant, then start a suite on unlawful seizure..
reason.
There is also speculation on illegal drug communication.
Also not confirmed.
Things to remember.
A) They had a warrant
B) We are only here one side
C) There is a lot of speculation as to why.
Lets watch closely, but avoid jumping to any conclusion.
No I'm not new hear, just overly optimistic.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
More evidence that the current economic mess is the result of conspiracy.
... It's an ugly thing that people thought it necessary or even a good idea to give out pre-released movie material. To clarify my position, I like downloading movies from the pirate bay. The movies I like, I usually buy... the movies I like a little, i wait until they are in the bargain bin at WalMart. If I didn't like it, I don't buy it.
With all that said, I once ruined my interest in buying the Stargate SG-1 movie by downloading and watching a pre-production copy of the movie from the pirate bay. I might buy it one day if I have that amount of cash in my pocket at the time I see it on the shelf, but the combination of events and circumstance have to make it seem like the thing to do at the time. I might still enjoy the production edited version of the movie with all effects and stuff installed, but I will still see this "unfinished" crap in my mind because that's what I saw first. Never again will I watch a movie before it is complete.
I want to see the Wolverine movie... trailers look cool. But I am not going to get the pre-release from the pirate bay because I don't want to ruin it.
Bottom line is people need to hold Obama accountable for these things (he sets the tone for things in the Fed gov just as Bush did before him) and stop putting him on some kind of plinth.
I love the end of the story "CBS 11 News emailed Simpson about the raid, but as of Thursday evening he had yet to respond"..... I wonder why? May be the FBI took their mail server too?
You write much, but get little. Sorry.
Who profited from this the most? Even if it has nothing to do with a leaked movie.
There, all base for your reasoning is gone.
This is all just a giant theater. Psychology. Simple, but effective.
I think it is another step to a 1984 type "society".
Do not think they are stupid. They know exactly what they doing.
Maybe not the grunt who was raiding. But the guy behind the big desk for sure.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The FBI have become the copyright cartels' gestapo?
Well done US, saving your draconian measures for political agendas. Your people deserve what they get.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Romania or Belarus, where nobody gives a shit!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
I was wondering how long it would be before some idiot blamed Obama. Seems to happen with just about everything on Slashdot these days. So, can you tell us the specific way in which Obama is involved with this, genius?
A police agency disconnects 911 service and the media tries to email a guy whose email servers are all fubar from the raid.
... CBS 11 News emailed Simpson about the raid, but as of Thursday evening he had yet to respond."
I wonder who carries the liability here, the FBI for disconnecting customers 911 service, or the data center for harboring evil doers?
FTFA:
"According to Simpson, some residents' access to 911 is also being affected because some of Core IPs primary customers include telephone companies."
"Simpson claims nearly 50 businesses are without access to their email and data.
Has been that way for some time. Welcome to der Future.
I am relieved to see that the FBI has caught all the terrorists, drug dealers, and child molesters! Otherwise they wouldn't have time to chase down trivial leaks of movies that should probably handled through the civil court and lawsuits.
Brett
IANAL, but this would clearly be good grounds for those companies to sue the MPAA under a class action lawsuit for causing disruption to business, seeking monetary damages. Perhaps by arguing that their over reaching accusations intentionally caused the disruption?
s Bush at the heart of this? Wasn't he, as a favor to his daddy, appointed to a position for which he had ZERO qualifications for the job? I bet we are still paying on the BCCI thing. Wasn't it something like $5,000 for every (working?) man and woman (and if not working people, then every child, too) to pay this thing off?
I wouldn't mind getting a one-time $25,000 0-tax check from Uncle Sam in exchange for, say, SSI. Or, a deep reduction in the interest rate or the principle in my now-worthless school loan on which i am still paying and won't finish paying on without winning a lottery, or unless i live on $5.00 per day while diverting all net income to attack the debt load (or, create products to let me earn income that overcomes the level of taxes i can expect....)....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I outsource hundreds of corporate accounts to American data centers, you have the fastest and cheapest pipes. But with this latest carpet bombing raid, the police state is no longer fiction and it's a huge liability. They're all coming home to Canada where law enforcement still has some measure of accountability.
Is this even a real company? Google can't find a website for such an entity except as a listing in a couple of online company directories. All their servers confiscated and nearly 50 customers affected? Doesn't sound like much of a data center.
OK. First think about how much money was lost by the movie being leaked.... Alright. Got a figure in your head?
Now think about how much this raid is costing tax payers, legitimate businesses and individuals in downtime and labor-costs for fail-over... Got a figure in your head for that?
If you think the first number is larger than the second, please forfeit your right to be called a sane, competent individual.
The game.
Just saying that, you've proven yourself to be a gigantic asshole and/or moron.
If you really think there's any due process of law that warrants seizure of all machines in a data center without respect to ownershi, you're part of the fucking problem with this country.
Talk about the easy route to create a DoS attack. Get the government to do it for you! Good to know they've got nothing better to do though. The war on drugs is over, children are no longer hungry, all the criminals are behind bars, so now we can focus on the other important things at hand. Puleeeze.
Unlawful businesses have hosted offshore for years, but this is now a clear signal for lawful businesses to do so as well. Unfortunate for the US colo/hosting industry, but apparently the US government isn't paid to care about them.
They didn't take all the servers from the datacenter. Just the ones they had co-located there. Electronic forensics has gotten much more efficient over time. So instead of taking months to return said servers, it should take them on a few days to a few weeks. Unfortunate for those affected. However, there are many variables on how the servers were configured, how they were managed, how the data was organized, backed up and archived. They take the systems away so they can do anaylysis in a controlled environment. It does sound like they have a very good idea of what they are looking for. Local news (in dallas) reports today that they are looking for info related to a mass fraud investigation.
> Too many people are tied up in the idea that Obama is some kind of mesiah, that they forget to look into the facts.
Nobody thinks Obama is the Messiah. Nobody has ever thought that, even though the Republicans keep claiming that people feel that way. I have yet to meet someone who actually does feel that way.
I voted for Obama, but I do not support this. I will not support this and I will not stand for this. I'm no longer a Republican, so I don't intend to go off half-cocked over it, but I'm not happy with this at all.
The Libertarian Party
The Green Party
The Constitution party
etc. You have 3 years (hopefully) to research your options and report back. Do not fail us.
Now picture a future where your entire business was running on the just seized "cloud" .. remind me again how this is a good idea.
Seriously, who said this has anything to do with the movie? Way to jump to conclusions! There's bound to be another reason behind it.
Harm
We, The People, already revoked copyright laws. As Robert Heinlein once wisely wrote:
"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; If I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am responsible for everything I do."
("The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", 1966)
Nothing like easily broken laws and internet anonymity to set a man free...
Unfortunately, his only probable recourse is a lengthy and costly lawsuit. I can't imagine how much money Core IP and their customers are losing right now. All for what appears to be guesswork on the behalf of the law enforcement agency.
FBI???
Seize ALL servers from ENTIRE data centre...
Over a movie leak?
Shouldnt they have something better to do with their time?
They probably found another copy of GURPS Cyberpunk.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
They told if George W. Bush got elected...
we would be seeing over-the-top raids like this and an attack on our civil liberties.
I can hardly wait until we elect a Democrat and all of this will stop.
Well, I had no interest at all in this movie to begin with. But you got me thinking, if it's so important to "them" to suppress it, it's in everyone's interest to make "them" fail. So I joined the revolution, I'm downloading it now, from the 100000+ seeds.
As someone once said, if you're not part of the solution then you are part of the problem. Right now the problem is getting rid of those copyright nazis. If downloading Wolverine eats into their profits, let's all download Wolverine!
There couldn't be a better advertisement for dispersed compute and storage services like Amazon's S3 and EC2, which presumably are too large for the FBI to sit on in this fashion. Unless you're the droids they're looking for, you just launch new instances for your services and keep running.
servers are belong to us.
Assuming this is about the leak of some high profile action movie, does anyone else think the reaction is even a tad out of proportion to the importance of the crime? When I read about data center seizures, I hope to read that it was a child porn ring, or some botnet organization, or a terrorism conspiracy, even a spam ring... you know, something important. Not suspicion of leaking a popcorn flick. I know, there is the perception of a lot of money at stake. But it's kind of a bizarre set of values when a movie company's grievance can result in an operation of this magnitude when there's so much other stuff going on that's actually dangerous.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Indeed. I can't believe the FBI would put foot to ass in so heavy a fashion over a movie leak. Much more likely this has something to do with kiddie porn, large scale identity theft, extortion, etc. Bread and butter FBI stuff.
This certainly adds a new twist to the cloud computing - if you put all of your IT into "The Could", it could disappear in a flash due to an FBI raid on someone else.
It also adds an interesting twist to what happens if the data center is involved in supporting outsourced government services - like DNS.
And just think of what would happen to internet services as a whole if this happened to Akami or Edgesuite.
Not suprising. I got 5mb down when torrenting that film and I live less than a mile from that datacenter. I never get more than 3.8mb typically for steam downloads, let alone regular torrents (1-2mb). The dialog is awful btw
moox. for a new generation.
applying the same approach when somebody tries to brute force ssh access to 100000s of machines (and will manage with some, because some users are just too stupid). Oh i forgot. That is a "lesser crime". The economic damage is more distribute, no need for the FBI to act.
All your sevrers are belong to us.
g0t b33r?
People have said it's an unfinished product- does it have the FBI warning at the beginning? If not I think this is a moot point and the FBI is way out of its bounds. Without that warning at the beginning you'd have no clue it might be illegal.
My webcomic
Because they took his servers, duh!
Unbelievable.
I've worked in three different datacenters in my professional life, and I think I can safely say that this company is done for. Five+ days of all servers being offline... not just offline, but seized and inspected thoroughly... clients are going to cancel in droves once things come back online, if they haven't already called the company and made their intentions clear.
Whether or not this had anything to do with the whole Wolverine leak is unknown to me, but if it is, how is it OK to seize the assets of an entire datacenter? I sincerely doubt that the majority of those customers were engaging in the distribution of pirated material. What justification could you possibly have for affecting not only the longevity of the service provider, but the customers *at* the service provider, just so you can find some sleezy pirate with your movie on his servers. Is it worth hundreds of thousands (perhaps even millions) of dollars in *others' money*? Yeah, I don't think so.
The only time this would be even remotely OK is if the datacenter housed some gigantic criminal operation where the vast majority of its customers were committing crimes, and the DC was in on it.
I really wonder what this says for other datacenters that unknowingly house customers who engage in criminal behavior. Because, statistically, every datacenter that serves the public at large is bound to have at least one. As a provider, how am I to know what's going on in every corner of my DC? Am I to surveil all the traffic, all the servers, everything? And if that's my duty now, isn't that a bit disturbing?
I read that they affected local 911 services by confiscating equipment that supported that. Good to see that it may have been to help combat movie piracy.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2221962/posts
Get your f***ing priorities straight.
I've always spread my servers out across different companies in different places. Partly due to disaster recovery, partly because I'm worried about a bankruptcy interrupting service. I hear from supposed experts all the time about how they have a rack of 4 or 10 servers in one place. Nuts.
This should be a lesson that a server can go down due to hostile intrusion, software failure, hardware failure, disasters like fire or flood, business reasons (bailiff seizing machines), and now, government seizure reasons. Always have a twin for your server in another server room, somewhere else.
Dude, right now the story I get from btjunkie is "Seed 109961, Leech 155165"
You call that risky? When was the last time you had 109961 full copies and 155165 partial copies of your work?
As a direct result of this, I've been motivated to download the new Wolverine movie from bittorent
I seriously doubt that the FBI can legally do this. Warrants are not suppost to be as broad as this. something is most definitely wrong here.
Are they not suppose to image the server's disks on site instead of walking off with the hardware? I took courses in computer forensics and I could have sworn that was the protocol.
I expect it will turn out the company had poor records of which server is which; or refused to provide the information required to restrict the scope.
I hope this does not turn out to be like the ATF raid on Cavalry Arms last year. They still have not gotten their property back and no charges have been filed. (That I know of)
It would be interesting to hear whether or not they took any steps to make it easier to defeat full partition encryption. Did they just power everything down or did they try to make copies of ram while the systems were still powered up in order to grab any encryption keys that were in use?
How would the FBI approach this if my data was in some amorphous cloud like google? (technically and legally). Just thinking out loud...
I'm thinking stuff like this could be the proverbial thorn in the side of cloud computing.
IANAL, and I'm not familiar with what it takes to get a warrant such as this. This being /., that shouldn't slow me down a wit here. :) Didn't a Judge have to sign this?
If yes, then it is the Judge who really needs to have a hard long look cast in their direction. Law enforcement agencies are *always* going to apply a warrant as broadly as possible. They want to turn the case from red to black - it's the same thing as account managers making their number, whereby a lot of them will sell *any* service, regardless of whether you can actually support what they're proposing, as long as they can argue they hit their number.
The Judge should be the check/balance in the process, and force for a narrowing of the warrant's scope to a reasonable point, which allows the FBI to gather the evidence required (I mean, most of us want the bad guys to get caught, right?), while ensuring that other companies are not unreasonably hosed by the warrant. Being hosed means losing all your gear and service delivery facilities when the evidence used to get the warrant in the first place in *no* way implicates your company.
It doesn't take much grey matter or thought for a Judge to figure out that a finer granularity of shutdown than the main power supply switch for the building or data centre floors does indeed exist.
The Judge is a jerk-off, based on current facts and my wildly speculative opinions and lack of experience.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
...of a few radical groups that conspired against their governments and aspired to set up their own governments. the first group was successful. the second group came 100 years later and were unsuccessful. perhaps 3rd times the charm?
American Revolutionists, Confederate States, Independent States
This guy's corporate address isn't the datacenter - check it out, search on it, and find out his corporate info. His "corporate headquarters" is a newly built house in the suburbs. Not the headquarters of someone who runs a datacenter. The headquarters of someone who rents two racks (or less) from someone else - the owners of the datacenter.
Email for fifty companies? Likely one or two servers. E911 service? An asterisk server for 50 companies.
Shoot, I have 2500 companies on one of my servers at work for email. If that one server was seized, it would be bad for a bunch of small businesses, but hardly "a whole datacenter" worth of stuff stolen.
The dirty secret here is that neither party really respects private property or individual freedom. Both seem to make exceptions that suit their own embittered radicals that drive the whole show.
If there is any hope for this country, it is going to be that the middle is going to have to reassert itself, and start brokering compromises that restores freedom to both sides. Let's have conservatives come around and support gay marriage, if liberals can come around and support the 2nd amendment. Let's have both sides resist eminent domain. Let's trade a slightly higher tax rate for a real cap on entitlements. Let's compromise on calling off the DEA on the average joe and at the same time call off the IRS on the same.
The illusion that this country is under, is that, compromise makes you weak, but bashing your way through a majority makes you strong, and I think the opposite is true. It is easier to give into the radicals that support you, when you are in office. It is easier to avoid compromise and deadlock the government until the balance of power is on your side. It is easier to ignore the other side.
We conservatives were wrong to do what we did in 2000-2004, just as liberals are wrong to do what they are doing now. All this shit does is piss people off on both sides of the aisle, and sooner or later, this constant escalation and going for the jugular will lead to civil war.
This is my sig.
You downloaded a movie, now we're going to come in and fuck your shit up is not a society I want to live in. Fucking a lot of people's shit up to get to that one movie dude is even worse.
Obama: Fix this shit.
Then you'd have to abolish the idea of privacy over your data.
Another for the abolitionists to read.
I can hear it now: "I wanted to mail in my term paper by friday, but the FBI seized my ISP's mail server."
Free Manning, jail Obama.
...OTOH, this data center occupied two floors of a high rise. So we aren't talking about millions of computers.
Millions of servers vs. millions of people affected by a dozen servers confiscated. What the hell does it really matter on the hardware number if the impact is the same?
Bottom line is I can spot pure laziness (borderlining in incompetence) as much as the next guy. Who was more lazy, the FBI agent who didn't want to bother doing more homework to determine exactly WHICH servers that NEEDED to be taken, or the judge/supervisor approving the warrant/raid without even questioning the text that likely read "ALL on floors 33 and 34".
Depends.
If the situation is such that in order to prevent destruction of evidence of a criminal enterprise they need to take them all down, they can do so.
If it were later determined that they obtained the warrants based on information they knew was false (misconduct) or should have known was false (incompetence) there may be a case for a suit.
But just being wrong? Nope. That's not cause.
Seems your first situation pretty much gives the FBI the "master" bullshit excuse on why they HAD to take everything.
Next thing we're going to hear are the words "could neither confirm nor deny". Then again, who the hell needs excuses when "oops, my bad" seems to be a valid get out of jail free card...Talk about abuse of power.
In the letter to his customers linked from this Slashdot article Simpson lists a gmail address.
He also says that he was away in Arizona the morning of the raid and that the FBI agent in charge accused him (by phone) of hiding inside his house in Texas, perhaps explaining why 15 police cars and SWAT team were sent there.
This is nuts, every server in a data center? do they realize the cost that might incur to all these non infringing companies? The wolverine leak nothing, no one was deprived of anything so there is no monetary loss but this? This is plain incredible. Good job FBI, you just caused many people a lot of trouble for a stupid movie.
I agree. Let's not even get started on the fact that this resides within the FBIs jurisdiction in the first place. Utter bullshit that my tax dollars are being wasted on this.
I guess Mr. Mueller's a big X-Men fan and couldn't find a decent seed?
Were that I say, pancakes?
The FBI isn't going to raid his house if it was just his servers being used as a conduit for illegal activity. He himself is the target of the investigation.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Every post I've read so far assumes this wasn't a valid search.
What if it was?
The didn't take an entire data center, they took an entire customer out of a datacenter. That customer was coreip. coreip resells rackspace. coreip only has 50 machines. This puts things in perspective to me.
Perhaps the FBI is aware of some illegal operation that Core IP was fronting for? Perhaps most of Core IP's customers were dummy customers. Could be a spam network. Could be a bunch of malware hosts or something silly. If they think that Core IP is just a front and only a limited number of the customers are legitimate customers then it is a whole lot easier to take everything then wait for the couple of real customers to call you so you can confirm they are a real business.
I'm just throwing it out there, not that I really know anything. No one really does at this point so my theory seems just as likely as anyone elses.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
If this story makes you concerned, google Agent Allyn Lynd, READ www.uwwwb.com, and pray that something like this NEVER EVER HAPPENS AGAIN. Better not just pray - write letters to higher ups in the FBI and tell them to get this guy out of his position.
"OK G-Men, let's go get those comic book movie pirate f**** motherf***ers!"
Did they thaw out Walt Disney & put him in as head of the FBI?
Congrats, FBI. As if it weren't hard enough for a small business to make a living, surely losing all of your customer's servers will be a great way grow business.
Seriously. I'm sure Core IP (and all associated C*Os) are shitting in their collective pants about now.
So, let's say I'm in the data business. Let's say that one of my idiot users over on the personal hosting side of things happens to be in on a movie-leaking project. Not like it takes brains, just connections, a bit of bandwidth, and an infinitesimal bit of know-how. Can I expect a surprise FBI raid on the data center, wherein our clients' up-to-the-minute IP assets will be seized and sequestered, delaying their work and possibly exposing confidential, valuable materials, all so that they can go about the holy business of flushing out a goddamn movie pirate? It is precisely like arresting everyone in an office building because they got a hint that some one of them might be dealing prescription tranqs. This doesn't even have a think-of-the-children justification behind it; it's just a sick abuse of power that results in NO practical or even moral gain. Hell, maybe I should get in on the movie pirating thing myself, and be sure to host all the files on our competitors' servers. Except, I've a desire to stand on firmer moral ground than Darth Vader.
This is precisely the kind of abuse of authority we revolted to get rid of 200-some years ago -- general warrants to seize everything from a location on nigh-on nonexistent pretexts. Data is the accumulated and sequestered manifestation of human effort. Since our country is getting ever further out of the business of making THINGS and is focusing on the process of making IDEAS, we need some goddamn assurance that our people's PRODUCTS aren't going to get gobbled up by a bunch of cocksure feds, to be stored at an undisclosed location and returned at an indeterminate time. If they can seize the primary data, what's to say they can't pull and sit on the backups too -- might be highly incriminatin ev-dense in thar, maybe the bad folksies got wind and d-leeted the active copies. What's to say they can't subpoena the keys to all our encryption methods, copy all the clients' junk, and take early retirement to peddle it to the guys up the street -- or overseas?
Fuck these cowboys, fuck the horses they rode in on, fuck the bastard that shoed those horses, and by god fuck the sonofabitch that hired and trained that sorry bottom-feeding homunculus. Then, dump em all in the nearest pigsty, river, or slag furnace, and go take a cold shower. Maybe not in that order.
Hang on, gotta get the door. Who'd be knocking...at this hour?
I have answered subpoenas for a major hosting company. For this to happen, this company must have really pissed them off. E.g. They were not cooperating with a investigation. I doubt this had much to do with Wolverine. The FBI was probably after a much bigger fish.
Regards,
Subpoena Guy
What if this is actually, say, that they found the host/source of the April 1 worm we all laughed at two days ago?
What about the Conflicker worm? Possible host/source in that DC?
Well, my memory goes back to this: SJ Games vs. the Secret Service, which happened in 1990. So your memory must be longer than mine to recall a time when such things didn't happen.
Btw, what was the outcome of that? Oh yeah:
The judge gave the Secret Service a tongue-lashing and ruled for SJ Games on two out of the three counts, and awarded over $50,000 in damages, plus over $250,000 in attorney's fees.
and
the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
And that all occurred after a raid on a pretty small company. Imagine what will happen this time. Provided that the colo provider can survive the loss of it's tenants.
--
$tar -xvf
Not far. Not far at all.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I had never thought of it like that before. It doesn't make any sense, does it?
> You're talking potentially billions in losses to the industry.
Don't be a complete dickhead, they're not losing a single penny. It's not as if this were a commercial DVD printing and sales operation churning out counterfeit copies. This is fans creating extra buzz around the film, which isn't even a complete version.
You're buying into film industry BS about fictitious "losses", when just a moment's thought would tell you it's totally empty hot air, and probably even serves as promotion.
The leak was certainly unprofessional conduct, but there are no dollar losses here.
"Simpson claims nearly 50 businesses are without access to their email and data. Some of those clients provide internet services to car dealers and other companies."
It seems like the collateral damage could be truly huge here. If, as TFA states, 911 service was affected negatively, and something "bad" happened, there will be some 'splainin' to do here.
and FBI was the intended infection.
I told you so on the very first day.
Mr. Lynd would not tell me why he raided our datacenter or what he was looking for.
Let's see... Where was that? Oh yes;
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Agent Lynd needs a remedial reading lesson. It's not merely illegal, it's unconstitutional to search without a warrant, and the warrant has to say what they're looking for.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I mean did they really thing this through? What are they going to do with all the servers? Build their own data center in the crime lab? I guess my point is that reconnecting even one server properly would be a pain, but obviously if it has raid or virtual operating systems or whatever, you can't just pull all the drives and read them individually... Maybe they thought since they can't narrow their problem down they will just collect everything and figure it out later, but they didn't realize they just made their problem way harder. I hope they blow the buildings power grid when they hook up all the servers at once or something similarly hillarious.
I use virtual hosting too and I have a certain fear that someday my business website will be taken down because someone uploaded a copyrighted work on the same server my legitimate site is on.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In the letter to his customers linked from this Slashdot article Simpson lists a gmail address.
Next in the news: the FBI turns up at Google and seizes ALL of Google's servers!
"They continued to ask me questions for 4 to 5 hours, and although I swear on my skin I gave them nothing but the truth, this guy repeatedly told me I was lying, and he knew I was lying, because the truth I told him didn't match the stories of the their "informant" Marcus Wentrcek. The amazing thing is that this guy was fired almost 2 years ago. So NONE of the information the FBI had was even current."
"The most damaging false statements made by the "Informant", was that we didn't have a single customer, and that anything that happened from the data center or our 64,000 IP addresses, was part of my evil empire of cyber crime. So the feds seize the data center based on that 2-year old statement from a very unreliable source.
Well, one of my customers, of which I had 300 - 400 of, was Intelimate. This is a government contractor; they provide all the phone service for prisons in 3 states. All of which lost their phone services when the FBI raided the data center. We also had a Credit Card Processor, Mortgage companies, and dozens of VoIP companies as well. The FBI effectively did tens of millions of dollars in damages to dozens of businesses within a few minutes based on bad intel, and no investigation whatsoever. I actually got a copy of the 40 page affidavit they submitted to a federal magistrate to get the search warrants...it's 90% outright lies, and 10% misrepresented truth. With a lot of "my experience as a special agent of the FBI for X number of years leads me to believe..." as excuses for a warrant."
http://uwwwb.com/
There was a gmail email address right at the bottom of TFA.
Meanwhile, if this is to become SOP for law enforcement, then a lot of businesses may want to think about clustering across national boundaries.
Burglaries, Drug kings, heck free roaming so called ceoÂs who stripped their customers and companies via shady practices...
Well not important a leaked movie is almost the end of the world, the FBI has to act immediately.
I am glad they know their priorites!
shut up you self righteous Tool!
Report Shows Alleged Fraud Against AT&T, Verizon
http://cbs11tv.com/local/Core.IP.Networks.2.975776.html
I liked X-Men and i'm looking forward to W-man.
I'm not going to see some unfinished copy and have my experience spoiled by whatever is not finished yet in this copy...
Privacy is terrorism.
If I write a cloud application and use it to violate the law. What computers are they going to seize for evidence? I mean seriously are they going to take all the computers at googles multiple cloud centers? What about VMware hosted OSes what hardware is the FBI going to seize when the OS can simple migrate to new hardware. The FBI has got to stop thinking about hardware and focus on the software.
Chances that the feds think this Core is really the old w4r3z group from the 90's? (maybe they're still around, i don't keep up anymore.)
Looks like this agent is pretty famous already.
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2008/02/blind_hacker?currentPage=3
http://www.unt.edu/isrc/2.0/Seminars/Flyers/Oct2006/Lynd_Bio_Abstract.pdf
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Allyn+Lynd%22+fbi|west+point&btnG=Search
this is a major mistake by them. Their raid on this company is equivalent to person A threatening person B over the telephone, and the FBI comes in and shuts down Verizon or AT&T or (insert phone company) instead of the perp. Whoever sanctioned this in the FBI should at least be fired.
Not to defend the FBI's stupidity, but their approach is not that different from those Black Hole Lists that many Slashdotters defend.
If I put you in a black hole list you can't send mail to some people.
If I take your datacenter, you can't send to anyone, can't receive, and may have lost a lot of business.
If you can't understand the difference, you're a moron.
http://cbs11tv.com/video/?id=40667@ktvt.dayport.com
I guess we shouldn't have tried nor convicted any of the Gestapo or SS after the defeat of Germany during WWII either, then. After all, they were 'just following orders' and 'acting in good faith'.
That 'doctrine' is nothing more than weaseling out of personal and moral responsibility, and gives at least the smarter pigs a back way out for their criminal malfeasance. Then again, it happens time and time again. A black man ends up with forty bullets in his body because the piggies claim the wallet or cell phone being held in plain sight, was a gun. Oops!
I can see it now.... "He was running right for me!" (Oblig. South Park reference)
And yet companies can flagrantly break the law by spamming all corners of the internet, causing millions of dollars of costs for businesses world-wide, day in, day out, and hardly anything happens to stop the flow.
blanket confiscating servers is an incompetency fbi has to account for. if they do not know that a datacenter houses countless corporations' gear, they have to pay for it.
Read radical news here
A terrorist organization that will use internationally banned "WMD" poison gas (CS) to anhillate a whole village of American men, women, and dozens of children, and then burn the bodies, will not blink at merely robbing computers from honest men. The FBI and all their agetnts are the enemies of a free nation.
Glad they don't have anything better to do, say like protect us from actual theft, or being killed by gangs or something.
Misuse of tax dollars to stroke their contributors is all this is.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Funny google never saw a website for this supposed company and its 'datacenter,' it only appears as a listing in a couple online business directories with no real information. Nearly 50 customers out of service? As another poster suggested, I suspect this is one small potatoes colo/hosting reseller who had their rack of servers confiscated from a larger colo facility.
sparking unconfirmed speculation that the probe is tied to the leaking of Wolverine."... also who gave reports that it was linked to video piracy? some nut in a news room looking for a story? until I know more I for one will hold my judgement
Ah the wondrous FBI. The ones that withhold evidence and consort with the DOJ to make sure it can railroad people and destroy lives. The wonderful FBI and the DOJ the same ones that botched a simple ethics trial for a US Senator and instead forced the AG to toss the case with prejudice because of so many misconduct violation. The wonderful FBI that over uses force (see Ruby Ridge) to make a point. The wonderful FBI that has a whistle blower that they blew the whistle on because he stood up to his corrupt bosses. This instills in me suck a sense of security and comfort.
"Remember, politicians and diapers should be changed often and for the same reason."
The linked video (from a local CBS affiliate in Dallas) states that the raid was instigated by AT&T and Verizon r.e. a good old-fashioned fraud scheme. No mention of pirated movies.
So, is this what you confiscate if the system is virtualized - just take it all? The fact is these days - a server != a website. With VMware/Zones/(name vm tecnology here), you have the ability to run many to one consolidation. And even if you did confiscate the servers, whats to say it would even "run" once you moved the server? There may be central storage services (NAS/SAN) that may not be local or available to the server. What kind of research does law enforcement perform, before breaking down the door of a co-lo? Do they understand what is involved, or how the infrastructure is configured? I suspect not...
I care deeply about personal privacy for the same reason I care deeply about gun rights - chances are that I will never carry a weapon in my life, but our society as a whole is made safer and more resilient by the fact that law-abiding citizens can own and use them in self defense.
Ummm, yeah, the shooter who killed 14 in NY state "had a permit for two handguns and wore body armor, indicating he was prepared for a confrontation with police."
source.
You don't know what they were searching for.
You are only repeating a rumor.
The FBI employs about 12-13,000 special agents whose job it is to investigate violations of 300 or so federal statutes.
That is not a particularly large number, when you come right down to it.
In the American federal system. investigation of the "heinous" crime is almost always a local and state responsibility.
The rare terrorist act makes headlines. White-collar crime - economic crime - comes closer to the truth of what the FBI is all about:
FBI: Internet Fraud Rates Rose 33% Last Year
But... a search warrant must have the item or material to be sought described. Did a judge really sign a search order specifying only "computers?"
I have to think this story is less than complete, and other governments would be making much noise if their 911 service was really shut down.
That's evil. Note to self: automatic data deletion devices must include accelerometers.
You seem to know what you are talking about. Just how hard is it to build a secure computing resource at a remote site, that isn't (easily) vulnerable to data loss if someone steals the equipment? Something that can stop the common criminal?
I don't know how this is in the USA, but in germany cops and such have to tell you what you are accused of, before they can seize anything... not doing this reminds me to secret trials...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
ThePlanet had a fricking explosion at one of their Texas DC's that took down some boxes, took our power/networking, and basically dropped all servers present off the map. Some of our actual boxes were down for a week, but our backups were located elsewhere and we were able to restore service at another location. I highly doubt that most of their customers - and there would be a *LOT - were quite so lucky.
Slashdot carried an article on it and approx 9000 servers were affected.
Doesn't anyone have a calendar. April 1.... Duh??
After the Watchmen blockbuster results at the box office, WB realized they must generate some kind of buzz to ensure another big budget investment not fall into the black hole.
As an old-time comic book fan already tired of the umpteen "origins" of Wolverine that Marvel put out regularly for quick profit, I would not watch the movie even if somebody dropped a free DVD on my lap. Doesn't the FBI have better things to do - like finding real terrorists - or at least those who continue to destroy the economy by rehashing old trash instead of inventing the future?
The title of this book refers to a joke about the Oxford comma.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/04/1515239&art_pos=9
Now, what have you to say about retaliation and knowing what they are doing? Did you THINK that i was just pulling those comments of mine out of my ass? You DO know the reason for the statement "Do not assume", do you not?
"The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment -- which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation." A local publication quotes Pataky saying, "We have heard internally from our police sources that they purposefully did this to stop me... They took my cable modem and wireless router. Anyone worth their salt knows nothing is stored in the cable modem." "
Now THIS is a REAL case for the FBI to investigate, and if the FBI finds evidence of retaliation, then heads in PD should roll, retirement packages should be rescinded, and blacklisting from being cops in another city should be initiated for all those involved, if that blogger was telling the truth about the retaliation through raid and confiscation.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I remember the Constitution is written in favor of citizens, not taxpayers. I also distinctly remember that all those municiple corporations penned CITY OF, STATE OF, and COUNTY OF tend to be funded extensively by taxpayers while citizens tend to be too poor until they commit a *regulatory violation* (hint hint). I believe this all stemmed from commerce clause derived from their legislature's apropriation for driver's licenture. If a citizen exists outside of a legislature, and al the regulatory violations and prepared to assert taxation over a taxpayer, then a driver license would be the nexus for such carrier of disease
Hello, this is CygonX. Our Hosting Data Center has suffered a major disaster: Namely the FBI storming the Data Center and the company's owner's home (that's me). The FBI took an entire data center, hundreds of servers, routers, switches, UPS system, cabinets, monitors, printers, and even power strips...as evidence.
You would expect this kind of totalitarian storm-trooper activity in the name of the war on drugs, the war on terror, or etc. But the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation actually did NO investigation. They took the statements of two ex-employees of the company, one of which was fired for drug use, and the other of which was also fired...and has a pending FBI investigation against him that he is desperately trying to snitch his way out of...by making up crazy stories about his past employer.
What were they looking for? Well thatâ(TM)s a tricky question, and I am not even sure they know, but the short answer is $6.1 Million Dollars. Hang in there, the story gets more interesting.
As many of you may know I have played the role of Network Security guy Sean Dillion, AKA CygonX for many years. Truthfully, that wasnâ(TM)t even my real name. CygonX was a lot like Santa Claus, and has actually been played by many people over the years in order to manage the site, but I am the original and current owner. My real name is Mike Faulkner, and I have hosted the Network Security forum and community at this domain name since sometime in early 2002. However, I am not a lowly Network Security guy, and never was.
I was the CEO of a small tech company when I took over the site, and I hosted it off my own network on a pair of T1s. That company went under, taking most of my money with it, and UWWWB was actually hosted off a cable modem for a period of time from an equipment rack in my home. This is my forum and community that I have nourished for years.
Over the years, I have bought, sold, and built a large number of small tech companies. I worked my way up, with 100 hour work weeks, and by taking almost no money out personally for many years. For the past few years I have been a very active venture capitalist. Investing in various small technology businesses, and using them to support each other. My VoIP Companies used my Hosting Companies, which leased space in my Data Centers, and etc. This was the Crydon Capital Corporations family of companies. Crydon Technology, was the data center and hosting company that the FBI raided in Dallas MArch 12th, 2009. UWWWB was tucked away on a tiny server in the data center for years, and we never even got a single complaint from RIAA, or MPPA, or anyone. This is not just about UWWWB, although the FBI certainly is holding it against me for running a security site.
Here's what happened: March 12th, 2009, at about 5:AM in the morning, my home alarm system goes off. I get up to see whatâ(TM)s going on, on maybe 3 hours of sleep, and my wife points out there are two people with flash lights in my back yard. Now, this may not be unusual for everyone, but I live in a $700,000 home in Southlake Texas, the United States highest per-capita income city for 2008. A very nice community, virtually no crime, and excellent schools. That is to say, I do not live in a shack in the hood, this is the high-income suburbs, no one had any business in my backyard at 5:AM. So I run out the back door of my home, thinking I was about to confront some crackheads trying to steal the copper off my AC unit or something. And although I couldnâ(TM)t quite see them yet I heard the very authoritative voice of what appeared to be law enforcement officers, with the radio noise to go with them. They proceeded with the expected dialogue, "stop", "show me your hands", "hands in the air" etc. They didn't shoot me, and sadly that really was the highlight of my day. I assumed my alarm had triggered by itself and the cops had been called, as we had problems with the alarm system before. They handcuffed me, while I was telling them I was the home owner. No big deal, they
The Judge that signed off on all 3 data centers that were hit in Dallas is a new "magistrate" it seems with less than a year's experience. If you can't trust the FBI who can you trust? LMAO
http://cbs11tv.com/technology/Core.IP.Networks.2.975776.html
This looks to have been about fraud involving AT&T and Verizon and may not have had anything to do with a movie. See http://cbs11tv.com/technology/Core.IP.Networks.2.975776.html