Slashdot Mirror
FBI Caught On Camera Returning Seized Server
sunbird writes "As previously covered on Slashdot, on April 18th the FBI seized a server located in a New York colocation facility shared by May First / People Link and Riseup.net. The server, which was operated by the European Counter Network ('ECN'), the oldest independent internet service provider in Europe, was seized in relation to bomb threats sent to the University of Pittsburgh using a Mixmaster anonymous remailer hosted on the server (search warrant). The FBI's action has been criticized by the EFF. Predictably, the threats continued even after the server seizure. On April 24th, the FBI quietly returned the server, without notifying either Mayfirst / People Link or riseup, and were caught on video doing it."
"Why should they have to apologize to them"
One of the ways society identifies shit people, and their fanbois, is by the way they never apologise or show any signs of remorse.
A much better way of identifying "shit people" is watching them do things like make ad hominem attacks instead of refuting a legitimate point. It's not their server (it belongs to ECN), and they legally siezed the server with a legitimate warrant.
1) The FBI didn't just return it, they activated it. That's wrong. The FBI should need a warrant to go into any place of business and install equiptment. It doesn't matter if it was originally taken from there or not. Yes, they claim it was the original, but so what? Would you let ME come into your business and install a piece of hardware - even if I claimed it was something I mistakenly took out earlier? No. You don't know my set up, you don't know that I have a weird program that dies when you install new servers without resetting it.
NO. Even if it is the original equipment, with no changes, that doesn't mean they installed it correctly. If they forgot to connect something correctly and it shorts out, causes a fire, whose fault is that. They can and should return equipment. They are not legally allowed to hook ANYTHING up to someone's else stuff without a warrant. Not even if they took it in the first place. They can't hook up a GPS device to my car an they can't install a server into my network.
2) Failing to notify the owner that you are returning something is another separate crime. What if they bought a new one the day AFTER you returned it because they needed a server and did not know they had it back. That's not a crime, but it is incredibly vile act. You return something, you tell someone you return it. You don't leave it there hidden. Also that way THEY can install it - or have it checked by someone to see if you installed something on it. Again, if they had a warrant of some kind, that would be different. Then you could do it secretly.
Most likely we have here a moron working for the FBI that was too stupid to understand the issues involved. I don't see intentional crime, just incredible stupidity.
Frankly, that is all too common - stupidity causes more problems than intentional crimes, particularly in the government.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com