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."

Comments

Too late FBI

[dave562]

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.

Re:Too late FBI

[ottothecow]

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? Guy working at effects shop or whatever has contractual obligation not to steal shit from work (and probably signed an NDA with the wolverine job). Guy then breaks contract by taking a copy of the movie and then either uploads it or is careless with it and it gets uploaded.

Sure, there is some punishment in order but the guy who leaked a work print probably isnt responsible for the "billions of dollars" that the industry will say the leak cost them...he is at most responsible for one act of infringement when he uploaded it plus breaking a contractual obligation not to do so (and any punishment that shows up as too serious in a contract will just get invalidated).

Re:Too late FBI

[johnsonav]

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)).

Re:Too late FBI

[Jerry]

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

Re:Too late FBI

[nizo]

Meanwhile, thousands of actual criminals commit much more heinous crimes and go unpunished while the FBI wastes their time on this.

Re:Too late FBI

[mOdQuArK!]

Just because it's the law doesn't make it right, either.

Re:Too late FBI

[bradkittenbrink]

I think perhaps the fact it's largely other people's UNRELATED stuff is where the issue really begins to rub people up the wrong way.

There were a bunch of raids like this in the UK. The police keep taking entire sets of Indymedia servers and not giving them back for ages.

Seriously. How about if the FBI confiscated the luggage from every room in a hotel, just because 1 of them had 50 kilos of cocaine in their room? I have no idea how they've been getting away with these tactics.

Re:Too late FBI

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh...anything with blinkenlights.

Note to self: Removing blinking LEDs from computer.

Umm

[Anonymous Showered]

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?

According to my (cop) Digital Forensics Prof...

[JimXugle]

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.

Re:All servers!!!!!

[davidbrucehughes]

This is exactly why we relocated to Chile six months ago. We had already moved to the end of a dirt road in the mountains of Mexico, but that wasn't far enough away. Now we're at the end of a much, much nicer dirt road in a country that is not ruled by mad-dog copyright censors. (And where you can rent a furnished, 5-bedroom house with cedar paneling on 2 acres of land for US$400.)

Not that we are into downloading copyrighted material; far from it, we generate our own material and publish it under a Creative Commons license. But there are such things as principles...

Is Copyright still a fair deal?

[thesupraman]

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....

Re:Getting old, I guess...

[rewt66]

A search and seizure warrant for all servers in the datacenter, no matter what company owns them? Either they exceeded the scope of the warrant, or it's a horribly over-broad warrant. Either way, that's not "reasonable" search. It's still a violation of due process - what due process is supposed to mean, that they can't just take people's stuff on a whim.

Re:All servers!!!!!

[sgt_doom]

A resounding YES!! The FBI, headed by unindicted co-conspirator to the coverup of the BCCI investigation (and probably the Iran-Contra affair as well, when he was head of the Justice Department's criminal division - appointed by George H.W. Bush), Director Robert Mueller, is the last person in America I would trust with any investigation. The fact that they have time for such matters, when they should be pursuing the war criminals of the Bush Adminstration and the financial fraudster super-crooks on Wall Street, is truly mind-boggling......

The Wolverine leak is an unconfirmed

[geekoid]

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.

Re:Incredible

[ShieldW0lf]

Note to self: Install claymores in data center.

Why does this kind of thing surprise anyone?

[onyxruby]

Too many people are tied up in the idea that Obama is some kind of mesiah, that they forget to look into the facts. Look Bush was arguably the worst president in US history, but that is no reason to give his successor a free and unquestioned ride. This is the guy who chose Biden, long the media's lapdog and has subsequently posted top **AA lawyers to the justice department....

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.

Re:Incredible

[TubeSteak]

This is nuts, every server in a data center?

I agree...
But numerous other websites (all the same "IDG News" article) mention this:
FBI spokesman Mark White confirmed that agents had executed a search warrant at the 2323 Bryan Street address on Thursday, but declined to comment further on the matter.

which then brings us to this bit of hyperbole FTFA

Simpson closed his online letter with the statement, "If you run a datacenter, please be aware that in our great country, the FBI can come into your place of business at any time and take whatever they want, with no reason."

The FBI had a warrant, which means they didn't go in for "no reason".
Unfortunately, the fact that they seized everything leaves us with few possibilities
1. The FBI lied about what they needed to seize on the warrant affidavit & a Judge signed it
2. The warrant was narrow & specific and the FBI exceeded the warrant's scope
3. The FBI actually needed to seize everything (incredibly unlikely)

Re:Incredibly ironic

[j-stroy]

A police agency disconnects 911 service and the media tries to email a guy whose email servers are all fubar from the raid.

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. ... CBS 11 News emailed Simpson about the raid, but as of Thursday evening he had yet to respond."

Re:Unconfirmed speculation

[einhverfr]

So, this justifies pulling the 911 service servers in what way?

You see, search warrants are supposed to be narrowly tailored to those areas where it is more likely than not that they will find the evidence they are looking for. Pulling 50+ servers without even checking to see who is using those servers (we don't know how many servers, we know that 50 companies were affected) seems to be blatantly in violation of the 4th Amendment.

It is worth noting that the 4th Amendment was included partly in response to the common law larger-area search warrants which would allow police to search a string of houses because they were pretty sure that the evidence they were looking for was SOMEWHERE in that range. We require a tighter level of control than that.

This company is basically done

[rennerik]

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?

Re:They told if George W. Bush got elected...

[Onymous Coward]

Before we let run wild our confirmation biases...

We might wait on news of what the raid is actually about? Man, trotting out the partisanship at this point is pretty ugly.

Speaking of jerky behavior, the agent in charge of the raid was reported by the CEO to have said:

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.

Geez, the CEO must be a real criminal to merit that treatment. Better pre-emptively pull out his toenails.

Can you say "fourth amendment violation"?

[jcr]

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