Data Center Raid About Unpaid Telco Fees

craig writes "CBS11 News reports that the raid on Core IP networks is in the result of an investigation into unpaid telco access fees paid by CLECs and VoIP carriers to terminate calls on their networks. They also report that this raid is linked to the March 12th raid on Crydon Technology's datacenter, which also hosted VOIP providers. Anyone in the telco business will tell you access fees to other carriers are a total mess and lots of carriers have unpaid balances out there. It gives you the feeling that the FBI is acting as a collection agency for AT&T and Verizon."

Comments

Favors

[Frosty Piss]

It gives you the feeling that the FBI is acting as a collection agency for AT&T and Verizon

Well, AT&T and Verizon did "favors" - Patriot Act - for the FBI, perhaps this is the FBI payin' them back?

Re:Favors

[Frosty Piss]

In that case, the NSA is probably on the way as well.

Or long gone without a trace!

Re:Favors

[Achromatic1978]

What crap. The spin on this story is outrageous. What is described in the article as "alleged fraud" is taken by the Slashdot submitter as "ZOMG, FBI is raiding people because they didn't pay their AT&T bill".

TFA mentions Verizon going to the FBI months ago, believing it had discovered a plan to defraud the telcos out of fees (i.e. illegal access to and use of the telephone network, hence the FBI involvement).

Seriously, it's days like this I hate Slashdot.

Re:Favors

[The Moof]

The first article was spun into "FBI raids datacenter, believed to be because of MPAA requests on movie piracy." The entire piracy spin was added by slashdot (or the submitter, which should've been caught at the editor). There was no mention of it *anywhere* in the facts. Turns out it was false. They really seem to be trying to rile people against the FBI in this.

Re:Favors

[shadowbearer]

  Perhaps we should all quit contributing to the spin until the exact reasons for this raid are resolved.

  The causes still seems pretty speculative, at this point. What's not speculation is that the FBI disrupted a whole lot of businesses in pursuit of what was apparently something that didn't involve all of them - which is wrong.

  Seriously, it's days like this I hate Slashdot.

  It's times like this that make me despise media journalists who don't bother to wait until the facts come out to get a story out, because they have to get "the scoop".

  Why, yes, I just finished re-reading Varley's "Steel Beach". Why do you ask?

SB

Re:Favors

[arkhan_jg]

Oh COME ON. I know the feds have a bad rap on slashdot, but now you're accusing them of being back-scratching goons on behalf of AT&T?

"Court documents show it's all part of an alleged massive fraud scheme against AT&T and Verizon."

It's right there in the frikkin article. Large scale fraud is indeed the purview of the FBI, no conspiracy required.

Though now I'll get modded down for this won't I. I better come up with some ludicrous conspiracy scheme instead.

Verizon and AT&T did what they were told by our government overlords, and were protected. These companies didn't hand over their VOIP logs to the NSA like good little citizens, and now they have to pay. No doubt those records are on their way to the NSA right now! I bet they're looking for records of terrorist activies, and will just end up poring over the comm logs of honest upstanding americans, and sticking something on them when they don't find anything. And of course none of the mainstream media are covering it, they're in on it!

There, that should do it.

Looking forward to more inflammatory articles

[LordLimecat]

So yesterday this very story was on how the FBI was acting as the RIAA's paid hitmen. Today we get a story about how theyre collection agents for AT&T (but no comments about wiretapping? im disappointed). I look forward to tomorrows article, Im sure it will be filled with useful, non-speculative bullshit. Incidentally, isnt it sort of in the FBI's realm to investigate large-scale fraud?

Re:Looking forward to more inflammatory articles

[palegray.net]

Incidentally, isnt it sort of in the FBI's realm to investigate large-scale fraud?

Yes. We won't have any idea what the truth is until someone gets a copy of the federal warrants used in the raid, or until we get information that charges are being filed.

Re:Looking forward to more inflammatory articles

[im_thatoneguy]

Incidentally, isnt it sort of in the FBI's realm to investigate large-scale fraud?

Yes. But Slashdot users have a propensity for Libertarian anarchism.

If it's the FBI doing its job in enforcing copywrite law then they're henchmen for the recording industry Mafiaa.
If it's the FBI doing its job in enforcing fraud then they're henchmen for the telecommunications industry.

Remember the government should be small to non-existant. And instead of changing legislation we should just be ignoring the laws that are on the books.

Is it reasonable that a kid downloading a song is a felony? No. But that's a legislative and judicial issue. The FBI is in the executive branch and its job is to respect and uphold the law. That means if someone is believed to be breaking the law then they're obligated to enforce it.

What's the alternative? Police officers deciding to selectively enforce laws on a case by case basis (which unfortunately does happen). I would much prefer the executive branch was consistent in enforcement instead of cherry picking cases than them attempting to make decisions of guilt and innocence before there being a fair and open trial. Obviously there has to be some exceptions to this rule (otherwise everyone would get arrested and have a day in court every time a crime is commited) but by and large I support the FBI actually doing its job when fraud is reported.

Re:Looking forward to more inflammatory articles

[j0nb0y]

/. wasn't upset because the FBI was enforcing the law. Most /.ers were upset because the FBI went in on a trumped up over-broad warrant and seized an entire data center. If they legitimately need to seize voip servers, that may be acceptable. But it's not okay to take servers of everyone who happened to be unfortunate enough to be leasing servers in the same datacenter.

There's another angle to this as well. Would the FBI ever seize telco equipment that belonged to an ILEC? No. The FBI and the courts would recognize that telephone is an essential service, and you can't just cut off someone's telephone service because their provider has been naughty. So if that's true for an ILEC, why isn't it true for a voip provider? Telephone delivered via voip is still an essential service. It's the best way to request emergency services (911). So why did the FBI cut off voip service to customers because their provider had been naughty? This is seriously unacceptable behavior.

Now that we don't have a website...

[innocent_white_lamb]

During the raid, CMG's owner, Joe Condit, says his website and business went down. "It's crippled us completely. Now that we don't have a website, we have no business, and a lot of speakers are without representation."
 
Without saying that this raid should have occurred in the way that it did, what's stopping this guy from setting up a webserver elsewhere and getting his business back online?
 
In an emergency, I'm pretty sure I could have a basic but "adequate" webserver for most small businesses up and running on just about any Internet connection within about 6 hours, even if I had to buy a new computer to install it on and find another Internet connection. Point the DNS records to the new address and he's back in business.
 
He would be in exactly the same situation if the colo building burned down. Why risk your business that way? If it's important to you, back it up and have some idea of what you're going to do if it goes down.

Re:Now that we don't have a website...

[kkrajewski]

Back up data? Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Now that we don't have a website...

[ximenes]

A lot of places are not prepared for a complete site loss. They may be very redundant within the site, with multiple hosts and backups and redundant power / AC / networking, but not have a single piece of equipment not located at that colocation center.

Consider that even if they did have off-site backups (which are really the bare minimum, although a lot of small operations overlook it anyway), they probably don't physically possess any equipment to run it on or have an agreement with another colocation center to put that equipment in.

So right now they need to put an order in with Dell and Cisco and whoever to get duplicate equipment (that they probably don't have a budget for), find another colo on short notice, wait for the equipment to arrive (1-2 weeks), do the physical installation work, and then restore all of their systems types from backups that may or may not represent the complete bare metal system image.

Most disaster recovery plans only account for disasters within a finite period of time (the power goes out for a few hours) or for partial losses (you lose 2 of 4 web servers), because redundancy is the most expensive part of any computer deployment.

Re:Now that we don't have a website...

[innocent_white_lamb]

Consider that even if they did have off-site backups (which are really the bare minimum, although a lot of small operations overlook it anyway), they probably don't physically possess any equipment to run it on or have an agreement with another colocation center to put that equipment in.
 
This sounds like a very small business that probably doesn't require Cisco gear and all the trimmings. A cable modem with a static IP and a computer purchased at Staples to run Centos, Apache and sendmail would carry the load for at least a short time. The owner could run it in his living room.
 
Even if it's slow, it's better than being out-of-business.
 
Once he's online again in any fashion at all, he has bought himself the time to find a "real solution", if he even requires one.

errr

[thatskinnyguy]

I'm still not sure the force exerted was necessary. Something else has to be going on here.

First the Wolverine story from yesterday, now this? I find it hard to believe that this is really over some unpaid bills.

Government agencies as the long arm of capitalism

[BlackSabbath]

> It gives you the feeling that the FBI is acting as a collection agency for AT&T and Verizon.

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
- Maj.Gen.Smedley Butler, 1935, awarded 2xCMOH

Discuss the use of Federal agencies in protecting commercial intersts of large corporations. 2000-3000 words. Citations in Harvard style.

Re:Government agencies as the long arm of capitali

[BlackSabbath]

While poignant, I hardly think a quote from damn near a century ago is particularly relevant. You might as well be quoting Shakespeare.

Because the world is so different now?

Let's update it a little then:
"I helped make Iraq a decent place for the Haliburton boys to collect revenues in....I tried to bring light to Afghanistan for the Unocal Central Asian oil pipeline in 2002."

The first step in repeating history is failing to see the relevance of past lessons. Whenever someone says "but things are SO different now" my bullshit detector goes off. Human beings aren't any different now than they were a thousand years ago.

This is from the CEO of the company....

[RagnarIV]

index
Matthew Simpson
Core IP Networks LLC

Dear Customers,

Today at 6:00am, the FBI conducted an unwarranted early morning raid of our 2323 Bryan Street Datacenters, on the 7th and 24th floors.

I received a phone call at 6:05am from our NOC that the entire network was powered off. I called Capstar Commercial and TELX, our landlord, and was told that the FBI was in the datacenter with a search and seizure warrant. I asked that the agent in charge call me immediately.

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.

The FBI has seized all equipment belonging to our customers. Many customers went to the data center to try and retrieve their equipment, but were threatened with arrest.

Neither I, nor Core IP are involved in any illegal activities of any kind. The only data that I have received thus far is that the FBI is investigating a company that has purchased services from Core IP in the past. This company does not even colocate with us anywhere, much less 2323 Bryan Street Datacenter.

Currently nearly 50 businesses are completely without access to their email and data. Citizen access to Emergency 911 services are being affected, as Core IP's primary client base consists of telephone companies.

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.

I can be reached for further comment at: mnsclec@gmail.com
Further information will be given as it becomes available.

Yours,
Matthew Simpson
CEO, Core IP Networks, LLC

direct link: http://sites.google.com/site/mnsclec/index //Just made an account to post this.