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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."
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?
I'm not sure I understand a full scale FBI raid for determining who actually leaked the copy... this is a civil contract issue right?
Nope. This is criminal (Section 506(a)(1)(C)).
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
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.
Your example would never happen.
Apparently you have never heard of the RICO Act, a law passed to fight organized crime.
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=215
RICO has metastasized from its original intent, which was to deal more effectively with the perceived problem of organized crime. Federal prosecutors have discovered that RICO is a powerful weapon that can be wielded against most business owners, should the feds choose to target them. Rudy Guiliani's prosecution of Michael Milken and other Wall Street luminaries in the 1980s--the springboard from which Guiliani rose to become first the mayor of New York City and ultimately a popular public speaker collecting $75,000 per speech--involved some of the early attempts to expand criminal RICO provisions to prosecute private business figures who clearly were not mafiosi. Today, federal prosecutors use RICO routinely to win easy convictions and prison terms for individuals who in the course of business run afoul of federal regulations. For every John Gotti who is brought down by RICO, many obscure business owners and managers are also successfully prosecuted under this law.
In tracing the development of RICO, we find that the law was little more than a "bait-and-switch" statute that has had little or no effect in stopping or inhibiting the crimes--murder, rape, robbery, and so forth--that most concerned the public in 1970. Instead, RICO has enabled federal prosecutors in effect to circumvent the constitutional separation of powers between the national and the state governments. Since RICO's passage, the once-clear jurisdictional boundaries between state and federal law enforcement have been erased as more and more individuals find themselves in the federal dock with almost no chance of acquittal.
The idea for the acronym RICO came from the character Rico played by Edward G. Robinson in the 1930s gangster movie Little Caesar. Nixon signed the bill into law on October 15, 1970, declaring that the new law would "launch a total war against organized crime, and we will end this war" (qtd. in "Nixon" 1970). Indeed, the new law empowered federal law enforcement authorities to engage in activities that seemingly deprived defendants of due process of law as guaranteed by the Constitution. Writes Daniel Fischel:
To achieve its objective of preventing the infiltration of legitimate businesses by organized crime, RICO gave the government sweeping new powers, including the power to freeze a defendant's assets at the time of indictment and confiscate them after conviction. Traditionally, criminal defendants are presumed to be innocent and face punishment only after conviction. RICO, by allowing the government to seize entire businesses connected even indirectly with a defendant at the time of indictment, before any proof of guilt, is a major exception to this general principle. The government is authorized, in effect, to act as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the same case. The government under RICO is also able to make it more difficult for the accused to wage a defense by, for example, seizing the funds that a defendant would have used to hire an attorney. And if a defendant is convicted, RICO provides for onerous criminal penalties. (1995, 122-23)
In answer to your statement that it "could never happen" you should know that RICO is used at least 10,000 times a year in the US, mostly against ordinary citizens like you and me. Most raids are made on the basis of information from jail house snitches who are trying to make a "deal".
Like the infamous "PATRIOT ACT", the RICO ACT is an abomination to the Constitution. With its expansive vagueness prosecutors can use it to criminalize any activity for any reason or no reason and be fairly sure of a conviction. As Justice Robert Jackson [warned], few things are as dangerous as a prosecutor who finds a target, the
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