Slashdot Mirror
Justice Dept. Asked For Broad Swath of IndyMedia's Visitor Records
DesScorp writes "In a case that tests whether online and independent journalism has the same protections as mainstream journalism, the Justice Department sent Indymedia a grand jury subpoena. It requires a list of all visitors on a day, and further, a gag order to Indymedia 'not to disclose the existence of this request.' CBS reports that 'Kristina Clair, a 34-year-old Linux administrator living in Philadelphia who provides free server space for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked to receive the Justice Department's subpoena,' and that 'The subpoena from US Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded "all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to "include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information," including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers' Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.' Clair is being defended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation."
Say hello to the new boss.
The biggest worry to me is the line "...not to disclose the request". They can issue a bogus request and get shot down via proper channels. But asking everyone to keep it a secret smells fishy.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
I want to know why admins keep this information if they are running a website that could be the subject of a subpoena? Delete the fucking shit already and be done with it. Then, when the feds come knocking, you simply reply, "I'm sorry my http.conf is setup to direct logs to /dev/null. Have a nice day."
Why would anyone be shocked by something like this? It's not like it hasn't happened before. One thing about LIberals and Conservatives, they both like control. Their idealogies may not be the same but their methods aren't that different.
Ha, ha, you are a funny man.
Given that, at present, all but one of the states has at least one "fusion center"(and that last one may have gotten one in the meantime) where state and local police forces voluntarily get together with their Fed, military, and private sector buddies for general surveillance state fun, I'd say that the odds of secession over excessive state surveillance are ~0. With the exception of libertarians that the republicans don't listen to, and civil libertarians that the democrats don't listen to, there is broad support, in government and among the public, for pretty much anything that promises "security".There are occasional disagreements over who is sub-human enough to be the public face of the terrifying enemy; but that is largely cosmetic.
With few (and politically irrelevant) exceptions, there are basically no actual "states' rights" enthusiasts. There are plenty of people who reliably take up the "states' rights" banner when they aren't getting what they want at the federal level and then drop it as soon as they are; but that isn't exactly the same thing
My guess, it was probably a rookie lawyer who sent a badly worded request to SysAdmin during the confusion of a new president taking office.
Actually, my guess would be it was sent by a seasoned lawyer who hoped to slip it through during the transition knowing that neither the departing Administration nor the incoming Administration would back such a politically hot potato move.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Even if it were illegal, calling it "wholesale" is a flamebait...
Oh, jeez, I'm sorry. They monitored every mode of electronic communication running through the US. Phones, email, web, everything. And there's evidence the monitoring occurred regardless of the origin of the calls.
Would that be "retail" spying then? I'm not sure what label to attach to such a massive invasion of privacy. You're right that "wholesale" just doesn't do the scope justice. Perhaps "universal" or "galactic" might fit better?
It may be flaimbait but at least I'm not apologizing for scumbags who cooperated to spy on their fellow citizens or trying to minimize the scope of the problem...like you are.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
A battery backed RAM disk (DRAM not SRAM) with a large red button to interrupt power to the PC and the RAM disk!
Ooops! I musta kicked out that pesky wire again, damn!
You could call it a patriot act HDD.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
If the government is tracking who I call, how many times I call them, when I call them, and for how long, it's still "spying" on me, even if they don't record the actual content of the phone calls.
So, yeah, "wholesale" spying is still the appropriate term here.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
the american left and right wing is far to the left
what makes his perspective any less valid than yours?
or rather, with what arrogance do you suppose your ideological perspective is a valid perspective?
the truth is, ideology is a bell curve in any country, and within the usa, which is a democracy, the right and the left compete over the middle of this bell curve for support. this keeps the left and right wing in the usa from becoming too radical, because if they do drift too far right or left, they would lose support, and therefore power. we saw this with the election of barack obama because the republicans had become too beholden of ideological purists form the far right. and we see the continuing soul searching of the republican party now between ideological purists (who represent republican defeat, but they don't know it, because their appeal is on the fringe of the bell curve) and pragmatists who wish to moderate the republican party to regain power
in other words: dmeocracy works. it moderates and stabilizes left and right wing forces
of course, someone from outside the country (or on the fringe of the bell curve within that country) would see everyone to be vastly left wing or vastly right wing... but who cares? what validity does that person have to criticize? the validity of right and left wing is objectively and coherently defined as what lies to the left and right of the middle of the ideological bell curve of the country in question. all other perspectives are simply invalid and pointless, because they do not represent the actual middle ground of the will of the people
the ONLY valid ideological point of view is that of the middle of the bell curve of a population. what makes this point of view of paramount validity is that this is the point of view that determines maximum political stability for that population. since in a democracy, parties are constantly scrambling to maximize their influence, their platforms are constantly being tweaked to seek out this moderate ideology as best as possible
in other words, democracy works, despite invalid snark from the fringes of the bell curve and from outside the country, and you should be happy that this process is healthy in the usa as demonstrated by the last presidential election
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it