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
Whaaaaat, Your Honor??? Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome my 24-hour-data-retention-policy is!
Fuck that subpeona.
In the ear.
With a Siberian ice dildo.
Can't stop the Beta? Time to evacuate to ##altslashdot at webchat.freenode.net - Slashcott in effect.
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."
FRCP Rule 37 states:
Absent exceptional circumstances, a court may not impose sanctions under these rules on a party for failing to provide electronically stored information lost as a result of the routine, good-faith operation of an electronic information system.
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
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.
I remember a Supreme Court case several years ago that dealt with the question of who is considered to be The Press. I think it involved acquiring Press credentials. The Court decided that a member of the Press is anyone who is acting in that capacity, whether full time or part time. It didn't matter if the person was employed by a large corporation, or was part of a middle school glee club.
Ok. The news article is new, but the content is anything but.
The subpoena was withdrawn in a one sentence letter in late Feburary 2009 after the EFF sent a letter to the DOJ pointing out the problems with the subpeona.
We're only hearing about all of it now. It is troubling that the DOJ will not come out and say what the original motivation for even sending the subpoena in the first and is being mum about it all.
On top of that, the dates are all mixed up. The subpoena was sent in June 2008, according to the CBS article. However, the EFF says it wasn't received until January 30th 2009. This is important to note as Obama took office the 20th. The EFF's letter was sent Feb. 13th, with a return letter from the DOJ on the 25th.
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.
import system.cool.Sig;
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
Whoops. The dates ARE NOT mixed up.
Figures I'd realize this after the dates.
Anywho, the original subpoena was sent on the 23rd of January, 2009.
Why the heck would anyone want traffic that old?
import system.cool.Sig;
Unhh.... because they *DID* want to make him look bad?
If it had surfaced in January or February, NOBODY would have blamed Obama. Because they waited a lot of people thought he had something to do with it.
Mind you, I'm not predicting that he won't do something similar, or claiming that he isn't right now doing something similar that we haven't heard about. But this particular case should be blamed totally on Bush. Read the dates.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Did Fox Noise cover this incident? Check their search engine. The answer is no (although they did cover a similar issue with Indymedia in 2004). Why not? Maybe, just maybe, no one except /. readers and 1st Amendment lawyer types thought it was a very interesting story. You'll notice that the link in the story is to a blog that covers 1st Amendment issues on a CBS News site, an outfit that is not exactly a darling of the right. Also, RTFA! EFF tried to discuss the issue of the gag order in a letter filed at the end of May. Given it has been 5 months with no response from DOJ, maybe Indymedia and EFF are only just now considering it safe and legal to release the story.
Not everything is a left-wing media conspiracy except to reality-challenged bozos like yourself who can't be bothered to think beyond whatever sound bite you were handed this morning.
FreeSpeech.org
One question that I haven't seen asked yet is why June 25, 2008? A scan of indymedia's articles didn't turn up anything earth shattering on that day or the day before. Thoughts?
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
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
there are of course a million dimensions of ideology. there's gun toting right wingers... who grow pot on their rural farms. there's gay people... who are mostly right wing in thinking (the log cabin republicans). there's very religious people... who are utterly socialist in their thinking about taking care of the community, by the community. etc., etc., etc, ad nauseum. for every issue, there is a dimension of opinions. and there's a million issues. and you could mix up make up the most seemingly contradictory impossible ideology of various opinions on various issues, and you'll probably find at least someone out there who believes that with a serious straight face
but there's not a million dimensions THAT MATTER. there's only one that matters
there is one dimension which hangs over all ideological dimensions, and is, in effect, the master dimension. we don't talk about left and right wing because we are simpletons and reductionists, we talk about left and right wing because this is an entirely real and completely dominant ideological pivot, a genuinely valuable metric to use when debating politics:
rate of change
those on the far left want change too rapidly. faster than society can adapt to and absorb. resulting in societal overheating, friction, and eventual societal break down and anarchy. those on the far right don't want change at all, or even backwards movement. which results in stasis, stultification, and impoverishment due to feeble backwardness and ignorance
so what is the most valid rate of change? society determines that, at least in a democracy, with competing parties constantly seeking out the most support from the most people by seeking the most moderate rate of change in the center possible, while straddling and waffling to keep their radical fringes reasonably happy as well. democracy is self-correcting and self-seeking on the sweet spot of rate of change for its population. you see that in the current healthcare debate
democracy works, it really does. it doesn't work from the perspective of "this is my ideology and i want everyone to agree with me", which is the usual retarded criticism of democracy from fringe idiots
but democracy DOES work from the point of view of: "this is the bell curve of ideologies out there. find me the sweet spot and make that the value system of the government in charge"
and when a government most accurately reflects the will of the people, you have met really the only metric possible for determining validity of a government. stability, legitimacy: it enables peace, tranquility, education, progress, economic growth, and everything else you value in good governance and a happy stable rich and productive society
but of course, loud, ignorant ideologues from the fringe will never see the value in such weird concepts. social stability? pffft. to them, the government is evil, corrupt, fascist, communist, corporatocracy, idiocracy, etc... zzz
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it