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FBI Defend Raids On Texas Datacenter
Aryden writes "Wired Reports: 'The FBI on Tuesday defended its raids on at least two data centers in Texas, in which agents carted out equipment and disrupted service to hundreds of businesses. The raids were part of an investigation prompted by complaints from AT&T and Verizon about unpaid bills allegedly owed by some data center customers, according to court records. One data center owner charges that the telecoms are using the FBI to collect debts that should be resolved in civil court. But on Tuesday, an FBI spokesman disputed that charge.'"
I know Slashdot is sometimes slow to report on news, but come on...
What slowness can I offer you? I'm copyright owner Madow!
This article is from April 7, 2009 and is old news. It's already been covered on Slashdot and other tech news sites a long time ago.
Breaking news: Oracle has made an offer to purchase Sun Microsystems. Will it be approved by regulators? Stay tuned!
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
This case is important because we're involved, if it wasn't important we wouldn't have gotten involved.
-Why was it important?
Because we were involved.
-Why were you involved?
Because it was important.
rinse
repeat
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Colonel Sandurz: Try here. Stop.
Dark Helmet: What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?
Colonel Sandurz: Now. You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now, is happening now.
Dark Helmet: What happened to then?
Colonel Sandurz: We passed then.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now. We're at now now.
Dark Helmet: Go back to then.
Colonel Sandurz: When?
Dark Helmet: Now.
Colonel Sandurz: Now?
Dark Helmet: Now.
Colonel Sandurz: I can't.
Dark Helmet: Why?
Colonel Sandurz: We missed it.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now.
Dark Helmet: When will then be now?
Colonel Sandurz: Soon.
Dark Helmet: How soon?
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Liquid motors loses appeal after raid
A condensed summary of what happened
There isn't much if anything about what happens after all of this, whether the case went to trial etc. just that Croydon technology's website hasn't been updated since.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Course not, they'll never catch on...
SSC
Though this is still almost a year old: Under the 'legal' heading.
Found this article here: Looks like the datacenter owner mysteriously disappeared or something?
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/332205/isp_operators_among_19_arrested_cyber-fraud_case/
What, it's 2010 already?!
They have data centres in Texas?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I guess that's what they call it when somebody brings the state library's book back.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Deja vu.
in droves. im in the industry, and that is what i see. with hosting customers, i dont mean just people who are hosting a few websites. people who are running small hosting businesses with dedicated servers/clusters, or offering vpses, cloud services are running away to europe too. thanks to the draconian (and curiously numerous) internet control crap put out recently (acta, coica, this that) and the wikileaks incident. this, will only strengthen the trend.
Read radical news here
Claim it will revolutionize the field of electronics. Slashdotters overwhelmingly skeptical.
This was not recent. This was not a debt collection, either.
The guy's stuff wasn't grabbed by the FBI because he didn't pay his bills.
The guy's stuff was grabbed because he never intended to pay his bills himself, and he committed fraud in order to get the colocation space and bandwidth in the first place.
The guy got credit references from people who didn't exist. He forged receipts from other telecom companies. He altered documents to show he'd paid bills that other people had paid. He used a maze of twisty little business names, all different.
He did all of that to secure credit from these folks to allow him to start service with them without a hefty deposit. Then he ditched the bills like they would have expected he might had he not forged the credit-worthiness paperwork.
Fraud is not simple insolvency. It is a felony.
There was every reason for this to be investigated and prosecuted as a criminal offense.
There was also every reason for it to be newsworthy last year when it was news.
A very interesting read for those who are interested in finding out what came of this:
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2010/Mar/142
Ha. All the slashdot "editors" should be fired, and you should be the first new hire. All in favor?
Michael Blaine Faulkner, his wife, and others allegedly fled to Mexico shortly after the 2009 raid. A federal grand jury handed down several felony indictments in January, 2010 (or possibly late 2009). Mexican authorities captured Faulkner and his associates in January, 2010, in Cancun where allegedly they were living under assumed names. They were extradited back to Texas. Faulkner petitioned for release pending trial, but that request was denied in March. The trial date was set for October, 2010, but I've seen no information on any trial yet.
Had backup files somewhere in Texas after all...
So, the fact that it happened last year justifies the FBI ignorance of shutting down and entire colocation facility and seizing the equipment of 300 some business just because it was "interconnected" (everything there had internet access ... duh)?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Wow the FBI gets pissed if someone cons money. Maybe they should focus their attention on banks.
I don't think your wrong about what started it. However, you are missing something very important here. They impacted hundreds of other unrelated businesses and thousands of customers due to the complete and utter stupidity of the FBI agent in charge.
Lets me give you an analogy here.........
I operate a meth lab out of my house. DEA comes into the entire neighborhood and arrests hundreds of people and confiscates all of their personal property and throws every child into social services.
That does not make a lot of sense does it? Kinda of reminds you of movies where the evil Nazi's occupying a village round up every villager and shoot a couple because the resistance threw a pie at the Colonel.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/04/04/2013200/Data-Center-Raid-About-Unpaid-Telco-Fees
Come on slashdot, you're much better than this.
The problem was they seized computers and networking equipment at his address that he was being paid to hold for others. If you are under investigation and a warrant is issued for all computer equipment and networking gear at your address to be seized as evidence, that is likely what will happen no matter what agent of what agency is in charge of the investigation.
What would you have the FBI do? You want them to raid the guy's colo facility, take his stuff, and leave his customers' equipment running on unpaid circuits inside an unpaid leased room? You want them to tip off his customers to the raid before it is executed? There is no good solution here.
The best one could hope for is that the customers did a little more due diligence for mission-critical applications like 911 service and credit card processing about the kind of colocation service they were getting and the integrity of the business.
The guy had possession of the equipment. He was the colocation provider. The customers put the equipment in his hands for safekeeping. He was an alleged fraudster. The facility's lease was allegedly unpaid. The circuits the customers were connected to were allegedly unpaid.
Why should the customers get service? Because they paid him? Right. And he should have been paying his bills. Then his customers could have maybe had service. As it was, his customers were getting scammed and so were his vendors (allegedly). If you're doing 911 service and credit card processing, you should know something about the place you put that server.
I understand not a lot of Slashdot readers have actually been in the ISP, web hosting, colocation, ASP, and similar businesses. I have. I was for years. You don't put mission-critical systems in a fly-by-night colocation facility and then bitch and moan because your cheap ass got burned. You do your due diligence about who has your servers, what their leasing and circuit agreements are like, what their insurance policies cover, how many and which of their employees will have access to your stuff, and how they limit other customers' access to the facility.
'The telecoms claim that these VoIP providers used up more than 120 million "physical connectivity minutes" without paying for them, and that attempts by AT&T and Verizon to collect on the debts proved fruitless.'
120 million connectivity minutes is quite a normal figure when it comes to interconnect services, in this case wholesale business. My rough, very very rough, guess is that in all of USA there are multiple times minutes called in a single day. What is not declared is that how much of that is actually billable revenue. This could be, depending on the tariffs, anything between few tens of thousands up to few millions of dollars.
If this is the only claimed fraud damage involved, the FBI raid already produced a higher damage on its first day only. This is really insane especially with the collateral damage for the completely uninvolved parties.
An analogue: raid of this scale is similar to sacking a whole apartment block building when one single apartment has a search warranty. Absolute madness.
He used a maze of twisty little business names, all different.
And he did get eaten by a Grue.
That does not make a lot of sense does it? Kinda of reminds you of movies where the evil Nazi's occupying a village round up every villager and shoot a couple because the resistance threw a pie at the Colonel.
Grammar "Nazi's"?
Free Martian Whores!
Since when is it the FBI responsibility to do debt collection!!!!!!!!
Cisco does the same thing.
They farm out production to China to save some money. The reason they save money is because of the cheap labor, lack of oversight, and weak regulation. Cisco and everyone else in the world that farms out production to China knows that. They also know that the Chinese may steal some of the technology as well. So.. those companies in China have some overruns, those overruns hit the "black market" and make their way into the US. Cisco cries fowl and gets the FBI/CIA involved because their profits are going down. They also use the FUD of the security of those overruns to justify the raids.
In the end... The tax paying US population that are not even Cisco customers are paying for Cisco's profit protection. The Cisco customers are paying for the Cisco protection through taxes, paying for potentially bugged devices made in a completely unmonitored society, and they still paying the high price of the Cisco products.
Eventually Cisco will have more competition from a number of Chinese companies that used the Cisco technology and engineering that was sent over there so the plan was short sighted but the US taxpayers that are not Cisco customers will never get their money back for the protection and raids that are happening now.
that's all find and good.
But ATT has the money, they have the time, and they have the manpower to detect this type of fraud, and cut off the offenders before the fraud reaches the level in the story.
They just don't want to.
And why should they? Our tax dollars support their cozy relationship with the intelligence agencies.
You know, I was really right along with you, until you started spouting this bullshit
The best one could hope for is that the customers did a little more due diligence for mission-critical applications like 911 service and credit card processing about the kind of colocation service they were getting and the integrity of the business.
of blaming the victims. How the fuck do you know how much due diligence they did? This dude apparently lied well enough that guys whose livelihood is made by checking out backgrounds were fooled.
Have a little empathy, for christ's sake.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
Aye.
If I had mod points I'd mod Mr. Mischief up.
iow, the guy should have received bailout money for his trouble.
Seriously, are you a bloody moron? I'm all for law and order, but this is like carpet bombing a neighborhood because some shit carried on insurance fraud. So take everyone out.
While "the guy" may be in the wrong (was there a trial?), a lot of other people were affected and their equipment hosed at a co-lo. I guess you're one of those people that when the DEA or FBI rips through a neighborhood going after a drug dealer or car theft ring, those who got run over and shot that were not part of the criminal acts were in the wrong, because they lived next to creeps.
It is old news, yes. But tell that to the 300 OTHER businesses who had their equipment siezed, 100 of which subsequently went out of business, likely at least partially as a result of this FBI action.
Seizing the power strips and cabinets and even the books full of system documentation from OTHER COMPANIES not involved in the fraud, other than to be physically located near the suspected fraud.
That's the news, if you ask me.
Well, this is understood, but how do you do that?
This guys was forging documents from his circuit agreements and things. You can't call Verizon to ask about someone else's account. You have to rely on the documentation the colo gives you.
I would bet that at least one of those 300 customers had asked for proof of current accounts and things like that and was provided such (fradulently) by the colo owner.
It's too bad they had to be pulled in. It seems to me that the FBI could have made an effort to clone the systems and at least return some of it.
The CPU/RAM/Motherboard of the systems in question is NOT of value to the investigation, other than for leverage and fear and financial detriment.
The companies who had their systems taken would probably have not balked at all if the servers had been returned in a week, without drives. I'd wager they may even pay the costs of having the drives forensically duplicated so they could get their stuff back online. That is much cheaper than the business loss that was a result.
Of course, everyone should do backups, etc. It just seems rather strong-arm to take that much equipment, including power strips, cabinets, rack mounting gear, third party documentation and the like.
And how are any of those things a felony?
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
They impacted hundreds of other unrelated businesses and thousands of customers due to the complete and utter stupidity of the FBI agent in charge.
In the article, some of those companies were complaining that they lost all their data and they couldn't get back online.
So my question is: why no off-site backups, and why no off-site failover?
What if it had been a tornado or earthquake that took the server, instead of the FBI? Did these companies have no contengency plan to get up and running again?
Don't outsource your data center. It may be wise to store backup copies in such places, but if you want to protect your data, keep it IN HOUSE.
What would you have the FBI do? You want them to raid the guy's colo facility, take his stuff, and leave his customers' equipment running on unpaid circuits inside an unpaid leased room? You want them to tip off his customers to the raid before it is executed? There is no good solution here.
Uhhhh, no. I would want the FBI agent to be smart enough to differentiate between all the servers, switches, etc. that are being used to service the customers and the customers equipment.
If that was truly the situation. My understanding is that the company being raided did not own the colo facility. In any case, the FBI could have come in and seized all the company's equipment and then offered all the customers the chance to pick up their property.
There is a difference between the FBI giving reasonable notice and a reasonable time period to pick up equipment and outright seizing the equipment while threatening the owners with jail time if the protest or attempt to get their equipment back.
Additionally, what is to happen if this is a company that offers virtual server space like Amazon? The physical hardware might belong to the company, but the data file and virtual server belong to the customer. Once again, I would hope that the agent in charge of these types of cases is smart enough to make the virtual servers available to the customers so they can transfer it to a competitor and be back up and running.
Which, by the way, is what bothers me here. If a colo facility that offers simple colocation of customer equipment, like say a full cabinet, can be raided and all the customers severely impacted (sometimes terminally), then no business could reasonably operate in that environment. You could not get a business insurance policy, for one. It would squeeze out all the smaller competitors till all you had left was huge providers like Amazon EC2, The Planet, or Switch.
That is not a good proposition. Switch in Las Vegas changed for one. Customer service was not exactly what it used to be and they started to shut down some of the older facilities. Their new facilities are top notch of course. Considering who is colocated in that new facility and how heavily armed the security is.... I sincerely doubt the FBI would successfully raid that location.
Basically, the barrier to entry is raised very significantly here because a colocation facility would have to be so large and have the requisite influence (read corruption) to fend off severely retarded FBI agents.
Some companies are just not that big yet you know. I started out with a small server colocated in Houston back in 96.
Operating out of multiple facilities at the same time is not trivial either. Sure... if you have all the money in the world to spend on MS and a lot of clusters you could get the job done. However, a lot of people cannot justify the expenditure of tens of thousands of dollars for that. They could not be competitive in their spaces.
Basically, we are talking about a steep barrier to entry for quite a number of companies and technologies to spread themselves across multiple facilities like that.
As I understood the story, this guy was the colo. The customers that got stuff seized were paying the fraudster to colocate their stuff. It wasn't just a bunch of people with equipment in the same room as his equipment. It was a bunch of people with equipment in a room he was leasing. Please clear up my misunderstanding if there is one.
Fraud and forgery are both felonies.