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Hosting a Highly Inflammatory Document?

Posted by Soulskill on from the information-wants-to-be-free,-particularly-the-juicy-stuff dept.

IndianaKim writes "I have been asked if I can host or assist in hosting a highly inflammatory document that reflects poorly on a Police Department. I want to help, but I also do not want the headache and possible subjection to search warrants and/or illegal searches. The document is so inflammatory that it could interest the FBI and DoJ and cause them to investigate the government officials involved. I live in the same county, but not the same city, and therefore could be subject to a search (legal or not) by some of these government agencies. I have been asked to host it on a server outside of the US. At this time, I do not have the ability to do that, but I could set it up if I needed to. My question is: would you host it if you were asked? How would you go about protecting the document and yourself?"

4 of 471 comments (clear)

  1. I know where . . . by arizwebfoot · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wikileaks dude

    --
    Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
    1. Re:I know where . . . by fm6 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Good point about "the professionals". For one thing, Wikileaks is smart enough not to go to Slashdot for legal advice. They'd go to a lawyer, who'd tell you that local authorities can hold a local person accountable for web content, regardless of where it's hosted.

    2. Re:I know where . . . by JWSmythe · · Score: 5, Informative

          I really don't want to tell. ... I guess I should.

          My dad was a strong candidate for a senior county level elected position.

          The incumbent was well rooted in the "good ol' boy" system. He was close friends with the local judges, sheriff, and most of the deputies. This was very apparent during campaign season. You could spot the who's who of local politics at various fundraisers and political events.

          That rolled downhill to absorb quite a few other law enforcement people to do "a favor" for them. There was at least one state police officer involved, who later went to jail on bribery and corruption charges. One deputy involved also went away on bribery and corruption charges. Both of those happened after I moved away. I don't keep up with their news much, but a friend told me, and sent the newspaper clippings.

          Local police were very friendly with the sheriff's department, as the cities generally didn't have the required manpower at all hours, so through city and county agreements, all of their jurisdictions overlapped. A city police officer from three towns over had arresting powers in any city in the county as well as the unincorporated areas.

          When I mentioned that the deputy didn't have anything to hold me on, he didn't. He was actually being a good cop, and didn't want to put his ass on the line for something stupid that he had no knowledge of. The local PD wanted me, but were busy with something else.

          By distracting my family with the harassment, I believe they hoped my dad would drop out of politics. They couldn't harass him directly, because they knew he wouldn't screw up. I was a teenager, I'm more likely to do something stupid.

          For example, late one night I was driving out of a town towards home. It was a 4 lane divided highway, with only a few cars on the road. I saw a car going the other way, and didn't pay much attention. About a minute later, he had turned around, and was tailgating me. I wasn't sure if it was someone looking for trouble, or a cop, so I drove carefully, expecting them to hit me eventually. After 3 miles of tailgating, it turned out to be a deputy. After a patdown and search of my car, I was given a "careless driving" ticket, that was thrown out when I showed up in court. What if I had floored the gas to get away? I wasn't sure if I should run or not. If I had, that could have been reckless driving, evading law enforcement, blah, blah, blah. a whole stack of misdemeanor charges to put me in jail for a while. I got lucky.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  2. 1. Upload to Wikileaks with Xerobank 2. Link to It by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Informative
    Assuming you & your friend are aware or desire that once this hits the internet it is forever online for all to see, you have friends across the pond. Yes, this is foreign hosting.

    Assuming the document is small, you could install Xerobank (formerly TorPark) and create an account on Wikileaks and upload it to Wikileaks through the Tor onion router. Your anonymity would be assured in a hilariously sound manner.

    Your website need do nothing more than link to Wikileaks and ponder how it got there.

    That would be my plan of action. I would also be careful with all the machines/devices used to transfer that file.

    Depending on how important/inflammable this document is, I might look into buying a cheap 20GB laptop hard drive, installing ubuntu, going to a star bucks, doing the above and then "disposing" of the drive and all media so that there are no questions. Sorry to sound like Harvey Keitel on Pulp Fiction but ... when you're dealing with serious stuff ...

    My question is: would you host it if you were asked? How would you go about protecting the document and yourself?

    It depends on who is asking me. There are maybe 5 or 6 people in my life that if they approached me with this request and said it was serious and said it had to be me hosting it, I would do it no questions ask. I would not read the document, I would stop them from explaining to me what is the document, I would do it and give them the link. I would then go directly to my lawyer and have a small chat with him. Then I would grab a glass of Chivas Regal and put on a record and take the battery out of my cell phone and relax.

    --
    My work here is dung.