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Underground > Switchboard >

FBI strike against indymedia

15:39 / 11.10.04

This just in check out the BBC version of the story as well as Indymedia's own site (for the moment).

Thoughts anyone?

*

16:13 / 11.10.04

Yeah. The Swiss? What the hell were they thinking? Any denials from either government?

09:11 / 12.10.04

Well this is rather worrying.

That BBC story suggests that this could be the result of a story they had up involving details relating to the Swiss secret service (???), so it could be possible it's more of misguided breach-of-security spy thing rather than a deliberate attempt to fuck up indymedia...?

21:47 / 12.10.04

from the macuser website...
Last week, the FBI obtained a court order involving Rackspace, demanding that the company hand over two Indymedia web servers. Rackspace, which provides hosting services for more that 20 Indymedia sites at its London facility was forced to comply and hand over the requested servers, effectively removing those sites from the Internet.

The subpoena of the servers is the latest of a series of run-ins that Indymedia has had with the Feds. . In August the US government attempted to subpoena server logs from the organisation's ISP in the US and the Netherlands before the Republican convention. In September, the FCC closed down radio stations affiliated to the IMC in the US and just two weeks ago the FBI requested that Indymedia takes down a post on the Nantes IMC that had a photo of some undercover Swiss police officers.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is giving the IMC legal assistance, the FBI has served the court order on the Texas-based ISP 'on behalf of a foreign government'. EFF staff attorney Kurt Opsahl said, 'This seizure has grave implications for free speech and privacy. The Constitution does not permit the government to unilaterally cut off the speech of an independent media outlet, especially without providing a reason or even allowing Indymedia the information necessary to contest the seizure'.

The list of affected local media collectives includes Ambazonia, Uruguay, Andorra, Poland, Western Massachusetts, the French services in Nice, Nantes, Lilles, Marseilles, the Basque Euskal Herria, the Belgian Liege, East and West Vlaanderen, Antwerpen, Belgrade, Portugal, Prague, Galiza, Italy, Brazil, the UK, part of the German site, and the global Indymedia radio site.

10:01 / 14.10.04

FBI returns server.

11:22 / 14.10.04

Is it me or would you be really really careful about using servers that had been in the possession of the FBI?

16:33 / 27.10.04

The mainstream US media is finally carrying this story:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=562&e=10&u=/ap/20041027/ap_on_hi_te/web_server_seizure

16:42 / 27.10.04

Is it me or would you be really really careful about using servers that had been in the possession of the FBI?

seriously.

22:07 / 02.11.04

Doubly amusing as I hear the logs they were looking for aren't actually kept on those servers in the first place, cause the indymedia sysadmins know their shit

So it was all a big waste of time and pointless bullying.

00:14 / 03.11.04

Well, that is the trademark of law enforcement.

12:09 / 25.03.06

I am glad this thread is here. I only read up about this recently and a reference to Indymedia reminded me about it. You guys seem to have taken it quite casually. Isn't this a serious and completely unjustifiable attack on the free press?

13:49 / 25.03.06

Isn't this a serious and completely unjustifiable attack on the free press?

If the Swiss site had pictures up of undercover police officers then I'd have to say that it may be justifiable because the lives of the officers were placed in danger. However, I'm still not clear on why the servers were taken. There is certainly a dearth of information in the stories.

14:11 / 25.03.06

Quite. Surely if that were the case, an injunction requiring the site to take the pictures down would have been sufficient? There's a copy of the actual court order on the EFF site. I'm not a US lawyer but from a cursory reading I agree with their analysis, that Rackspace weren't actually required to hand over the hardware in the first place. I worry that the climate is so bad at the moment these events pass almost without media comment and still no real explanation.

Tom Paine's Bones

19:35 / 25.03.06

If the Swiss site had pictures up of undercover police officers then I'd have to say that it may be justifiable because the lives of the officers were placed in danger.

Even that's highly debatable. Unless names, addresses and other personal information was provided, I can't see how that would be a real threat to life. It would however obviously make it much more difficult for those officers to be used in infiltration operations again, which I suspect may have a lot more to do with it. It's also worth noting that the fascist site Redwatch (which does provide names, addresses and phonenumbers as well as photographs of antifascists) is hosted in the US. And there's never been any moves to stop that.

04:24 / 26.03.06

Even that's highly debatable. Unless names, addresses and other personal information was provided, I can't see how that would be a real threat to life. It would however obviously make it much more difficult for those officers to be used in infiltration operations again, which I suspect may have a lot more to do with it. It's also worth noting that the fascist site Redwatch (which does provide names, addresses and phonenumbers as well as photographs of antifascists) is hosted in the US. And there's never been any moves to stop that.

So do jewwatch, klanwatch, several anti-abortion sites, and dozens of other whatever-watch sites out there. But the point of this was that they blew the cover of under-cover cops, not necessaraly putting their lives in danger, but certainly making them useless as undercover agents and perhaps comprimising a larger operation or group of officers. The point wasn't that they were revealing the identities ofjust any old people, it was that they were blowing the cover of under-cover cops.