Too slow! FBI Shuts Down Hosting Service 928
Chope writes "If FBI agents showed up at your data center bearing a warrant, would you be able to provide them prompt access to customer data?
BZZZZT! I'm sorry, but you've taken too long to answer. We'll be confiscating all the hardware you use, er, used to use, to run your business. But we'll get it back to you 'real soon now.' Thank you for playing. CarrierHotels.com is carrying the story of a FBI raid on a web hosting company. When the hosting company didn't and/or couldn't provide the information the FBI was looking from its several terabytes of data within "several hours", the FBI decided it was more "efficient" to seize all the web servers and customer data as part of the FBI's investigation of a hacking incident."
and.... (Score:3, Insightful)
In response to a hacking incident? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not fast enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, so it's faster to have to unplug all of the servers, carry them out of the building, put them on a truck, drive them several (dozens?) of miles, unload them from the truck, put them in a warehouse, re-plug them all in, and now have to datamine without the assistance of the people who operate the systems.
Was I abducted by aliens and brought to Bizarro world while I slept last night, or am I just missing something here?
I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Effects on Business Rules? (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought there actions could not significantly damage a company's business if that company wasn't the one under the kosh.
It's not the ISP's fault in this case and they are the ones getting screwed.
Assholes. (Score:2, Insightful)
So the FBI took the machines and were able to copy and peruse all data on the system, not just the data the warrant was for. Welcome to 1984!
Re:How about the sustained financial damage? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:More to the story (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just deal (Score:1, Insightful)
Only if you welcome an eventual police state, not my choice.
There's gotta be more to this (Score:5, Insightful)
There has to be more to this story. From what the article says, the FBI just walked in and shut them down. While that might have happened this story seems to be extremely one sided and a little short on the detail.
Initially, I don't like the sound of it at all given that I host several domains and don't want the FBI coming in and taking all of my servers. But, we don't know what led up to the seizure....maybe it was a legitimate action? We shouldn't judge too harshly until we have all the information. I'm trying to play devil's advocate here.
um... (Score:5, Insightful)
Will they delete the 'copied' data after they have finished, keeping only the information that they originally wanted, please this is v bad...
Thank God i dont live in the US
Re:How about the sustained financial damage? (Score:0, Insightful)
Dirty religious dicks.
Re:Just deal (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm slowly getting used to it. You should too.
Gosh, all of us guys that bowed down before the war on drugs are mighty glad you're so forgiving and stoic in the face of our failures. We will try, like you, to get used to the new tyranny, but I fear that we just haven't your courage in the face of adversity.
Anyway, thanks for the advice!
-- signed, The lowly yellow-bellies unworthy to stand in your shadow.
Re:How about the sustained financial damage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Threat? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:and....Absentee landlords. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway this incident illustrates why the citizentry needs to be active in government instead of reactionary and "woe is me" after the fact. The government isn't very good at self-disciplining. That's our job. An absentee citizentry breds the results you see. Get out and vote in 2004. Get involved in local and national politics. Stop being a wallflower.
What really sucks.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More to the story (Score:5, Insightful)
To get a search warrent you have to have something to go on already.
Re:In response to a hacking incident? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is, this story is old because the FBI has already started returning the equipment back as of yesterday. The FBI confiscated everything on the 14th. CIT's web site says:
02/23/2004 CIT re-establishes service.
We have restored service at Equinix's Chicago Data Centers. We are in the same facilities as MSN and many fortune 500 companies. The facility has multi OC192 connections to the backbone.
The FBI has begun retuning equipment to CIT which is being shipped to our new facilities in Chicago.
At this time CIT will continue to provide dedicated DDOS Protected web hosting only.
Yes, the FBI overstepped they're bounds and yes it's frightening to think of this happening...but let's not get the facts wrong. The story here on Slashdot made is seem like the equipment was seized and the FBI probably won't be returning it, which isn't the case.
When reporting the crap that the US Gov throws at us, don't embelish...just report what is known and not a lot of speculation.
Though shalt not use a US Hosting Service ;-) (Score:1, Insightful)
my 0.02 $
Re:How about the sustained financial damage? (Score:2, Insightful)
Financial damage may not be worst... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How about the sustained financial damage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In response to a hacking incident? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More to the story (Score:1, Insightful)
> article was posted on Feb 19th! What's going on here.
It's almost as if.... naaah. This is still a free country, right?
Then again, perhaps it's no coincidence that it was a frenchman and not an american who said `i detest what you say, but i'll defend with my life your right to say it`.
Land of the free, huh? Time for a new slogan.
Unlawful search and seizure? (Score:3, Insightful)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
So I say to you: is this not a blatant violation of the US Constitution? The warrent did not say to take the servers, did it? And where are the warrents of TSA people at the airports? where is their probably cause? where are OUR GODGIVEN, CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED freedoms?
Re:More to the story (Score:5, Insightful)
We keep hearing about liberal judges this and liberal judges that in the media, but there are just as many conservative judges giving law enforcement rubber stamps on warrants.
Hey Ted! What's this Magic Lantern icon for? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm surprised that there hasn't been any discussion of Magic Lantern for awhile...
Re:In response to a hacking incident? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit - it reported about another step towards the police state in the US - nobody said anything about not getting it back. But by previous accounts they never care much about getting it back.
Yes the police can seize things with a warrant (Score:5, Insightful)
Wether you find this acceptable depends I guess on wether you find it acceptable that the police can investigate crimes beyond posting a little poster asking criminals to please come to the station and answer their questions and to bring in any evidence on their own.
Normal search warrants on an office mean that the FBI and police storm the building and everyone inside is ordered to stop doing anything. No more accessing PC's no shredding of documents no phone calls no nothing. The reason is simple to prevent evidence from being destroyed.
I am frankly amazed that they even allowed the company to provide the info this shows that they probably don't suspect the company but rather that they hope to find evidence against someone else on their systems.
There was a rather nasty ddos attack on mircx and aniverse. The FBI seems to be investigating wether the IRC network hosted by this company was used in the attack. There seems to be a lot of hints as to the person who was behind the attack but sadly in america you need that silly evidence stuff (at least for use against americans).
So the FBI asked and got a search warrant. They then gave the company time to hand over the data but they couldn't. So the FBI used the law and did what we expect them to do. Secure any evidence by removing access to it. They are even giving the hardware back. They waited wich they don't have to and give the hardware back after copying data wich they don't have to do. Frankly I think they went way beyond what they needed to do to minimize damage.
Quit frankly the original poster seems to be one of those people that want the police to disappear. That line about wich coorperate master they offended is clear bullshit. mircx and aniverse are hardly the powers that be.
In any society that doesn't chose to be an anarchy you have to give some powers to the police to investigate crimes. Search warrants are pretty common in all democracys and also work pretty much the same way. If you get one it sucks but so far noone has come up with a better alternative except to just allow criminals free reign.
Re:How about the sustained financial damage? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More to the story (Score:5, Insightful)
Moderators: I know this may be redundant but I was responding to his comment. He obviously didn't read the 50 posts in front of this one.
Re:Not fast enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Poor hosting company (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the parent was probably referring to uptime guarantees, which the confiscation of equipment has caused the ISP to fail on, rather than anything to do with data privacy.
Re:Unlawful search and seizure? (Score:3, Insightful)
Interestingly your quote does not tie a warrant to a search being reasonable. And who exactly decides what is reasonable? The US Constituion was deliberately left vague in such areas to allow some room for manoevuer.
So "I say to you" no it doesn't look like it was to me. But if they think it was they have recourse to the proper guardians of the Constitution: ie the courts.
Re:Seems to blow a hole in the theory.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is all just speculation, naturally, but such a scenario would be very similar to other fourth amendment workarounds--perform broad, illegal searches (e.g. infrared through walls, which is inadmissible in the U.S. without a warrant) to target homes for additional surveillance. From the results of that illegal search, "happen to" notice something "on routine patrol," then get a warrant, and voila`--untainted evidence usable in court.
They had a warrant (Score:4, Insightful)
No you just aren't thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
You are a cop and arrive at a murder scene with a dozen doctors standing around the corpse. Would you really allow any of these medical experts to assist you with determining the cause of death?
A shutdown machine cannot erase data and the fbi got the tools to simply copy data from HD's without the computer it was in being involved. This prevents any chance of the data being destroyed.
Saying they replug them back in at the fbi shows you have no idea of what is involved in this kind of investigation. They copy the HD's directly and completly by taking them out and putting them in their own hardware.
How the fbi does this kinda stuff has been discussed often enough on /.
This is nothing else then the police sealing of a crime scene. Any inconvenience is considered though luck. It really is no different from streets being closed off to allow marathons or demonstrations or repairs. Yes they do attempt to minimize damage but the investigation comes first.
But lets turn it around. If the FBI raids a place like enron would you find it acceptable if the bosses were allowed to keep making phone calls and keep working on their pc's and play with their shredders as they could loose money if the police removed access and took everything away?
Of course not. Just because this is a small hosting company doesn't change the law.
Re:How about the sustained financial damage? (Score:2, Insightful)
Afternoon tea isn't for another hour and a half, but i'll raise my mug of Assam tea to you when I finally get around to it. And my teeth are fine, thanks!
Cheers!
Seizing an entire data center (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason I question this is the legality of seizing an entire data center like this. For example... lets say CIT had 10 web servers and one IRC server. On those 10 web servers there are 5000 web hosting customers.
Now, the feds want to track ONE user out of 5000 hosting customers, and God knows how many IRC users on the one IRC server, but instead take all 11 machines. So they have, in effect, seized the IP of 5000 innocent people to get the effects of only one.
This to me, seems akin to having the FBI sieze property from every house in a subdivision to get evidence on only one resident.
Given the state of IP law in the US, and how thanks to things like the DMCA and other legislation, IP is being treated like a tangible, wouldnt the FBI have to A: justify seizing the IP of all those customers, and B: be answerable to legal or civil suits regarding lost revenues? What about lost data?
Re:More to the story (Score:1, Insightful)
Are you talking pre-Patriot act or post-Patriot act?
I was under the impression that anything labeled "national security" gave officials the right to do a search.
Kinda (Score:5, Insightful)
the guy behind it seems to have been boosting about about a 200k botnet. 200.000 machines under his control. I think this is no longer some harmless hacking. This is stuff the fbi needs to investigate cause quit frankly nobody else seems able to stop this.
So unless you believe the net should be total anarachy ruled by those with the most bots then this kinda off stuff is sadly needed. To bad for those caught in the crossfire but that is live. Nothing really different from when all trains are disrupted because someone jumped in front of one. A marathon closing off all the streets despite the fact you hate sports. A demonstration causing massive gridlock despite the fact that only 200 people in a million people city are taking part.
Live sucks at times. Really this story shows that /. is getting more and more tabloid. A serious tech site would have asked what the fbi was investigating and wether the hosting company was hosting the person investigated or had servers wich were hacked or was simply a place where the hacker might have left evidence.
re:Too slow! FBI Shuts Down Hosting Service (Score:1, Insightful)
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that, too.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
Re:They had a warrant (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Seizing an entire data center (Score:5, Insightful)
Foonet was the blackest of the black hat networks in existance. They hosted spammers, carders (credit card theives), DDoS drones, floodnets, and various other illegal activities and blindly turned the opposite way and let it happen.
Foonet was based out of the basement of the owners' house. There was no actual 'data center'. They had a T3 and a few T1s - nowhere near the OC-X level they were claiming.
They got tossed off of GBLX about a week before they were raided, and were humping the light at Qwest right before they got pulled.
I knew about this right after it happened.
Foonet will not be coming back, so get over it kiddies. Your DDoS drones are gone. Spammers, your mail servers are gone. Go run and hide under another rock.
A little hint for all of you who can't figure it out - the FBI doesn't usually seize all equipment if its something small. If they took all of the equipment, there is a good reason why they did (not that foonet was acting 'too slow').
I have a list of stuff about foonet on the AHBL page here [ahbl.org].
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:5, Insightful)
The FBI will attempt to work with any provider in order to get the data they need to investigate a crime. If that is impossible to do in a 'reasonable amount of time' they have little choice but to confiscate the equipment in order to copy the existing data from the machines to conduct a forensic investigation. A reasonable amount of time is generally a couple of hours to a day. Believe me, the last thing some poor special agent wants to do is sift through TBs of customer crap and put a company out of business or under financial hardship.
Re:In response to a hacking incident? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's an old line saying the only way they'll be able to enforce all of these laws is to make a police state.
Regarding the seizure of equipment, though. Why on Earth would they bother taking all of that equipment off-line to conduct their investigation? Whenever I deal with Federal level investigators, they always make an image of the hard drive and work off of that. They NEVER work off of the hard drives, themselves.
If it was just a "hacking incident", then they should be able to accomplish everything they want by working off of those images.
Re:and....Absentee landlords. (Score:5, Insightful)
Redundant, maybe... (Score:3, Insightful)
One more reason to get hosting based outside the US, if your site does anything but blindly wave the flag and speak the newspeak.
Re:and....Absentee landlords. (Score:5, Insightful)
The democrats and republicans use rhetoric to convince the less intelligent that there's actually a difference between the two, assuring that almost everyone votes democrat to vote AGAINST the republican, or republican to vote AGAINST the democrat.
Unfortunately, there's no appreciable difference betwixt the two, so we're condemned to continue down the slippery slope.
Re:more important (?) how much customer data store (Score:3, Insightful)
This company appears to have had terabytes of data. Lessee:
is oh, about 40 bytes. Say there's a comment every second of evey day... a terabyte would hold over 20,000 years of such comments. Or 20,000 such IRC channels for a year.
Sure this doesn't account for file trading, dead channels, bots, etc... but it gives you some idea about the amount of data in a terabyte, and if you think there is anything anonymous about IRC, think again...
in fact, this comment will probably be stored somewhere for way too long.
Re:More to the story (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe we are only getting half the story, and maybe we are getting all of it. The difference is that I am relying on the information I do have and you are relying on information that _must_ exist, but have no proof of because you can't believe that this kind of thing would happen otherwise.
I believe it is entirely possible that the FBI acted in such a manner because they felt that CIT was either stalling or even destroying evidence. I can only assume that they presented this theory to a judge, backed it up with some evidence and got the warrant. However, all of that is speculation.
I worked in the legal system on both sides of the coin as a paralegal before I saw the light and switched to IT. I can only go on my personal experience when I say that this could indeed be the whole story. I have personally seen judges rubber stamp warrants with zero evidence and I have seen judges refuse to sign warrants with all kinds of evidence. I have seen law enforcement officials embellish and even fabricate evidence for the purpose of getting a warrant and I've seen law enforcement officials vehemently defend a defendant's rights.
My point in the previous post, may have been a little incendiary, but the point is DO NOT discount the story simply because you think there MUST be more to it, when it could simply be all there is to it.
Search warrants are a joke. (Score:2, Insightful)
Like a lie? As a former LEO I've seen search warrants that were based on 100% lies. "Anonymous" or "confidential" sources are the classics. Or just squeeze someone to lie and bam!, you're in business. Twisting the facts into probable cause like "container with a white powdery substance found on suspect's vessel. Possibly narcotics." You know that it's flour in the galley but that part is just left out. Telling half the truth is still a lie, something most cops ignore.
I suspect they were fishing, looking for one piece of data but really wanted a reason to grab everything (like all the irc logs). It's possible that the company pissed the agents off (by not bending over on command) and they're just getting a little revenge.
Please, do not trust the police. They are there to arrest as many people as they can (and these are the "good" ones). Rogue cops are a nightmare. Ever wonder why most of the time when a police action is investigated it's only done by cops or an ADA (nothing more than a cop in a suit)? Isn't that like Tony Soprano investigating a mob hit? Law enforcement in the US answers only to themselves.
Do a search on news.google.com and find news stories about cops that broke the law (beat downs, dealing drugs, OUI, etc.) and you'll find almost everytime they've received a much lighter sentence (if any) than the average joe. Welcome to the Pig States of Amerika. I guess Abby Hoffman was right.
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
Re:Other reports (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like when you see those videos of supposed poilce beatings where they only show the part where the cop is whacking the guy with his night stick. Nevermind the ass whooping that the suspect tried to give the cop 30 seconds prior. That seems to matter none. Just go for the most sensational story possible.
Re:Poor hosting company (Score:2, Insightful)
And for the other customers, the FBI raid is a non-issue.
Basically, if they guarantee MY server's uptime, and MY server is confiscated due to them not providing the data on another customer (important point) in time, THEY pay ME. Their fault.
OTOH some customer's may realize that 99% uptime mean an agreed upon downtime of about 3.5 days which CAN be taken in one block
Re:Poor hosting company (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, that is easy to remedy - DON'T KEEP ANY LOGS. Fuck 'em. If I remember correctly there is no law that says an ISP/hosting company/etc. are supposed to keep logs. Give your customers the same option - clean wipes on the logfiles. Yes, of course, the data stored in customer databases is still fair game but at least you are giving them some privacy options.
Re:How about the sustained financial damage? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How about the sustained financial damage? (Score:3, Insightful)
What if a criminal escaped onto the street where your brick-and-mortar shop was located, and they closed down a several-block radius for as long as it took to find him? You think they should compensate all the businesses that were affected?
Since a net based business lives on it's servers, we'll have to adjust your analogy a bit.
What if a criminal escaped onto the street where your brick-and-mortar shop was located, and they hauled the building and it's contents to their warehouse for a few weeks? You think they should compensate all the businesses that were affected?
Considering that most of those businesses will otherwise fail leaving their owners and employees without an income, YES!
Re:In response to a hacking incident? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, in order to establish the non-tamperedness of the hardware, they *MUST* work off the images instead of actual. Imagine if some bad/new tech accidentally did a "rm -Rf". If they worked on the originals, then they could easily claim that the company did it.
Re:Poor hosting company (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, if they guarantee MY server's uptime, and MY server is confiscated due to them not providing the data on another customer (important point) in time, THEY pay ME. Their fault.
Wrong. There is a clear common law legal principle that is considered inherent in contracts. You cannot contract anything that is a violation of the law.
In this situation, the facts are rather murky. If the hosting company was the cause of the FBI seizure then you might have a contractual violation. But the hosting company cannot be held to have violated its ToS because the FBI made a unilateral decision to seize equipment. The alternative that you suggest is that the hosting company resist compliance with the search warrant and ultimately the seizure. You, as a customer, cannot insist on that...no matter what your contract says.
Re:In response to a hacking incident? (Score:3, Insightful)
In case your memory isn't that great, I'll quote straight from Slashdot's front page story:
I'm sorry, but you've taken too long to answer. We'll be confiscating all the hardware you use, er, used to use, to run your business. But we'll get it back to you 'real soon now.' Thank you for playing.
I guess "real soon now" should have read "9 days"? But regardless, you saying that "nobody said anything about not getting it back" is wrong as "real soon now" implies either never or a very long time from now...which HAS been the case before, but not here. Not to mention the fact that this story was posted on Slashdot AFTER the equipment was already returned.
USA politics = one party system? (Score:5, Insightful)
Currently the Democrats and Republicans are essentially different flavours of the same poison. Forget the next election, forget the next five elections. Even if the Democrats gain power they will produce more of the same crap. Vote Green in the next election - they won't get much this time around, but if everyone who wanted to vote Green did, then the Greens would probably make the coveted 5% mark, which means more money. With more money they could do better the next time around, and after two or three more elections they could mount a real challenge to the status quo (if they manage to not become a part of the status quo).
Forget tomorrow; tomorrow is already a disaster. Think of your children and think of your grandchildren.
As for the Green party itself, getting Nader elected (as implausible as it may be) would not be a great triumph as I can easily imagine the dems and repubs in the houses making his life hell. The Greens need to seriously focus on getting seats in the two houses. With balances teetering at 51-49 for a long long time, the Greens getting just a few seats and being able to tip a house one way or the other could provide a breath of fresh air that American politics has needed for a very long time. Why the US generally believes it can only function with a two-party political system (with little difference between the two) is baffling and perhaps a little sad.
Re:They had a warrant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:and....Absentee landlords. (Score:3, Insightful)
Government participation is important after the election too, there are many websites that make it easy to send letters to your elected officials to tell them your opinion. That way you can make a difference every day for their elected term, instead of just once every few years. Don't say I'm full of shit if you don't try.
Re:"no such thing as personal responsibility" (Score:1, Insightful)
Solidarity is what's necessary but everyone assumes the worst about their neighbor, and so they'll blindly commit evil acts on the assumption of inevitability.
That may be practical reality but is it desirable?
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a perfect translation, no.
However, with a context free grammar (!) and some herustics with a spell checking engine, you can get conversion to something that is much more readable.
For example, I ran
through my munging engine and got
(I prefer to leave 1337 as leet, cos I don't think it's really transatable to formal english.) It's not perfect, but the time to read drops down to something approaching printed english.
More relevently, as one can learn to read 1337 and other forms of munged english to the same speed as normal text, this step drastically cuts the learning time down, to about 20 minutes (for me, anyway).
So, what you say was strictly correct, but for practical purposes, the majority of it can be fixed. Certinally, for review by people not familar with it, it's handy. Still needs to have the original check, of course, but that would always have to happen anyway.
Facts (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:and....Absentee landlords. (Score:2, Insightful)
I write my representatives. And I vote. Know what? It still doesn't make a damn bit of difference so long as at election time I'm given no real choice.
As Bill Hicks put it, "I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs. I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking. Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding both puppets."
The majority are easily led around by those in power. Most Americans beleive that Iraq as involved in 9/11 and that we have found weapons of mass destruction in our invasion there. Our "leaders" have gotten people more disturbed about destroying a flag than about destroying the land that the flag represents.
The game is rigged. Third-party candidates are doomed from the start. Any candidate talking about real change is not permitted to get past the primaries - look at how they savaged Dean for speaking truth. Betting on a Senator for re-election is about the safest bet you can make, and Representatives only risk losing their seats if their opposing party gets ahold of the state legislature and manages to redistrict them out.
So, yeah, I vote, I give to the ACLU, I write my Congresscritters, but I don't expect it to make much difference. Me, I'm looking for Yin revolution [ohio-state.edu]. And if that don't work...well, that's why there's a rifle in the closet.
Re:USA politics = one party system? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe, but the power to turn the current two-party system into a multiparty-system rests in the hands of the two parties in power. Why on earth would they give any power away, ever? There's about as much chance of a two-party system going multiparty as a one-party system going two-party, i.e. none (barring revolution).
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember exchanging emails with Timothy McVeigh who murdered 270 people in Oaklahoma. He murdered those people because of this type of crank theory. We have put up with this right wing crank politics for too long.
The fact is that the Waco loonies killed themselves, the Ruby Ridge guy was responsible for everything that happened and Elian Gonzalez should be back with his father. Castro is almost 80, not many dictators make it to 90 and are still in power. By the time Elian leaves school Castro will be dead. But I can see why a bunch of right wing cranks who talk big about the importance of family would think it would be better that he is kidnapped by a bunch of his relatives looking to exploit him for political purposes than grow up with his father.
Sure the FBI has done a lot of things that are stupid or outright corrupt. Hoover used the FBI to persue his own vendettas, he refused to prosecute the mafia. That does not mean that the federal government is at fault in every case and it certainly does not mean that the events cited by right wing cranks are proof of abuse. The persecution of Charlie Chaplin and John Lenon were abuses. If some nut gets some guns, holes himself up someplace and threatens to shoot members of law enforcement who might be looking to arrest him, well anyone who gets shot is primarily their responsibility, same way that 9/11 is primarily the responsibiliy of Al Zawahiri and his frat boy friend Bin-Laden. Sure the CIA and FBI screwed up big with 9-11, Freah's people thought the war on drugs was a higher priority than terrorism. But keep perspective here.
Believe me, the last thing some poor special agent wants to do is sift through TBs of customer crap and put a company out of business or under financial hardship.
Absolutely right, unless there is an ulterior motive. That is not very likely in this case. If the FBI were investigating planned parenthood or another group that John Ashcroft is opposed to politically there might be an issue. There has been a lot of suspicious uses of the IRS against political opponents under Bush II. Ashcroft has endorsed a lot of extra-constitutional activites but so far the FBI under Muller does not seem to be a problem.
I suspect what happened in this particular case is that the agents thought that the hosting provider were simply not interested in complying. They probably met a sysadmin that gave them some attitude.
What we need here is a better way of serving this type of intercept warrant so that the parameters of the search are predetermined and understood by the court. We have this for IM intercepts so it should be possible to define it for IRC
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:5, Insightful)
First part true. Separating the wheat from the chaff is a pain and slows the investigation. (Unless you can use the wheat for future investigations, but the Agents aren't getting paid to go on fishing expeditions yet.)
Second part untrue. What makes you think the Agents gives a flying fsck through a rolling doughnut about collateral damage to some business he's never heard of and isn't paid to protect?
I mean, what's the collateral damage gonna do? Sue an Agent? (Score +6, Funny) Sue the Agent's employer? (Score +7, Hysterical) And what if through some sick twist of fate, they win such a suit? (Score -8, Witness of Evolution In Action).
There's three kinds of people in the world. Cops, perps, and perps who haven't been caught. Power corrupts, but power without accountability is an awful lot of fun.
If you're in college, consider majoring in Criminal Justice and joining the winning side. You can be under the gun, or you can hold the gun. Better to be a killer than a victim.
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:1, Insightful)
The one serving the warrent should stand to reason.. If the provider was going out of their way to provide the information in the fastest possible fashion that has to be acceptable... But I guess something like this needs to happen from time to time to keep everyone "Incheck" with the gravity and importance of their work.. Right off the bat they should have been furnished with all complete backups and incrementals... That should minimally fullfill their needs... then work could bein to satisfy their needs in a more suitable manner to eliminate information they do not need and slim down everything in a orderly neat fashion... But if they have a poor archival backup system they could be done in for which is their own fault.
Re:USA politics = one party system? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's part of why it's important to vote for 3rd party candidates. It encourages the Dems and Reps to consider something better than the current system if they can never figure out who's gonna win because of the 'spoiler' candidates.
Best case is, the 'spoiler' gets in and forces a change.
An argument against The War on Terror (Score:5, Insightful)
How many major terror acts are perpetrated or confounded each year relative to how much we've seen "The War on Terror" used to justify anything and everything anyone can get away with. Funding for every agency under the sun derives from whether they're combatting terror. The DOE needs money "to combat terror" by developing methods to protect our utility grid. The DoD needs funds to "help combat terrorism" by developing new monitoring and data-mining technologies. The CDC needs money to "help combat terror" by producing vaccines. I'll bet that even the Department of Agriculture has funding initiatives based on "terror" somewhere -- maybe they want to monitor use of crop dusters, who knows.
It's freaking ridiculous. The "War on Terror" certainly saves lives, but the amount of resources that have been claimed in its name *vastly* outweigh the amount of damage that terrorism has done to us. A lot more people lost their lives to car crashes in 2001 than to terrorist attacks. Did we have black helicopters ready to swoop down on speeders? How about long-range alcohol sensors? What about armed guards at strategically-placed toll booths that search cars and people thoroughly for any kind of alcohol? All these sorts of things have been done in the name of "The War on Terror", instead of being used in an area where more American lives are being lost. The "War on Terror" is, frankly, a tool based in fear to help manipulate the masses. It has little practical value.
I claim that terrorism on the order of at 200:1 life amplification (roughly what the 9/11 terrorists achived -- something like 4000 lives to around 20 terrorists) cannot be eliminated without massively curtailing and altering a free society. There are just too many ways for a person willing to die to kill many people.
I would like to point out that people are only willing to throw their lives away if they are incredibly upset over something you've done. You don't see Iceland coming under terror attacks, because Iceland doesn't anger people to the point of being willing to die to kill Icelanders (or whatever a citizen of Iceland is called).
We have spent masses of money and effort on trying to figure out how to crush terror rings, on making people so afraid to resist the United States that they won't dream of it. The problem is, it can't be done. The Soviets couldn't crush resistance with years of secret police and encouraging children to inform on their parents. I don't think Bush Junior can do so in our society. Sheer force and fear just don't work when you're dealing with people who are willing to lose their lives to kill. You have no cards that they are interested in.
How much money has been spent on diplomatic and social solutions to eliminating terrorism? Supposedly the United States has a negative image in Islamic countries -- how much work have we gone through to improve that image? How much effort has gone into determining the things that are making people so angry that they are willing to *die* to hurt citizens in the US and resolve those issues?
A lot of people feel that trying to resolve things peacefully would be "giving in to the terrorists", and encourage future terrorist acts. I don't agree. The only value to a hard-core refusal to ever attempt peaceful solutions is as an attempt to establish prescedent governing future acts -- that no terrorist would ever be willing to attack the United States if it was *guaranteed* that doing so would hurt his cause, and damn the consequences to us in hurting that cause. The problem is, the prescedent has clearly not been established during the time we have taken a hard-line approach. The United States was attacked several times, despite having followed tough guidelines for dealing with terrorism in the past.
I'm curious as to what would happen if the 70 billion or whatever dollars that are being spent to keep us in Iraq (which at least originally was supposed
Re:In response to a hacking incident? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Other reports (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like when you see those videos of supposed poilce beatings where they only show the part where the cop is whacking the guy with his night stick. Nevermind the ass whooping that the suspect tried to give the cop 30 seconds prior. That seems to matter none.
Resisting arrest and assualting an officer are crimes. These crimes are to be tried by jury and if the defendant is found guilty, punished. The trial and punishment is not to be to sumarily given by police. The police are entitled to use force in their efforts to subdue a suspect or protect themselves and other from a suspect. They are not entitled to beat a suspect as retribution.
Re:More to the story (Score:5, Insightful)
Several months later, I got a letter from the DA. Now she could talk about it, as the case was over. Turns out the guy pleaded guilty. He not only had demonstrated the hole, but before he had been running all over the company network doing stuff that was clearly not legal. I felt like such a heel writing a letter of support for this sod.
This story, of course, was never posted by Slashdot to my knowledge.
So while I do not discount the story, I'll start by asking for more information, and not by calling the FBI a bunch of jerks. (I'll do that later when I have more info, and am reasonably sure I won't stick my foot in my mouth.)
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:3, Insightful)
The agent that siezed the equipment probably has a boss who expects to see progress, and that progress is probably propagated up the line to the point where the details have been filtered out and it's just a number on a spreadsheet of how many computer crimes have been procecuted in the last however many days. The ulterior motive is to look like he's being productive in order to keep his job.
As an aside, if you think it's Castro that's still in power in Cuba, you're very naive. Look at the recent events there and you'll see it's clear that those close to him are taking steps to retain power when the man himself is gone. Then again, perhaps you're just one of those left wing cranks (whatever the hell a crank is) that comes to conclusions about what US foreign policy should be based on feelings instead of the painful facts. No wonder congress has to keep bickering about wether we should maintain travel bans and trade sanctions against Cuba.
Re:More to the story (Score:5, Insightful)
Not ONCE did the FBI leave the property with our machines. The key was cooperation. The FBI agents knew what would happen if they left with our equipment, and knew that we would do everything in our power to help them get the job done without having to resort to that.
Heck, I even showed them better ways to get data off of the machine. We had a good working relationship. They'd show up with the warrant/subpoena, we'd go pull the machine that had the data they wanted. We'd assign one of our technicians (usually me) to help them copy everything over. They'd be out the door with whatever data it was they needed by the end of the day on hard disks they brought onsite with them.
The fact that the FBI left with their machines indicates to me that the provider did something stupid to piss off the agents. They probably made everything as difficult as they possibly could, and the FBI agents got sick of it, and said, "Screw this, I can get this done in the lab without all of this bullshit."... and then they did it.
In my experience, most law enforcement (especially FBI) consider themselves professionals. Usually, they're not out to get you personally, they're just out to do their job. If you don't make their day any harder than necessary, they're not going to make YOUR day any harder than necessary.
So to the extent that you feel you can, MAKE THEIR DAY EASIER. They'll tend to do the same.
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:5, Insightful)
Because clearly the 40 or so years of sanctions have worked.
Meanwhile, we give most favored nation trading status to China.
-dave
Re:Poor hosting company (Score:3, Insightful)
We're not talking about a Database being taken... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:5, Insightful)
Randy Weaver (the "Ruby Ridge guy") was not responsible for the deaths, the FBI was. An Idaho court found this to be true, but as federal agents the people responsible were not answerable to a state court and they literally got away with murder.
The rules at the time were that any Cuban who made it to USA soil was eligible for asylum.
Buy why am I even discussing this with someone who exchanges emails with mass murderers? Or did you lie about that, too?
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:3, Insightful)
It's just a job... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, there's the rub.
Behind every job is a human being. That job could be something as heroic and altruistic as a fireman, or something as shady and questionable as this FBI guy. What all the folks in the country need to realize is that all the things we bitch about are being done TO us, BY us. If people would refuse to fill jobs that had questionable consquences, things might be different. We will never know that, since we all have bills to pay, and somebody will always take those crappy jobs.
What I find fascinating is that so many of us have jobs where the harmful consequences are so far down the chain that we can't even see how we have contributed. But alas we are all a part of our own mess.
Re:Poor hosting company (Score:2, Insightful)
Now there's an idea. If you truly want fault-tolerance, then you need your computers physically spread out over multiple governments' jurisdictions.
Re:They had a warrant (Score:3, Insightful)
Any documentation to support these statements?
Most free? US is ranked 31st
Most law-abiding? US is ranked
Re:Not fast enough (Score:2, Insightful)
agreed. i do think that the rudeness with which things can be done in the US is of an altogether different quality, though.
> in America its a lot easier
uhm, not sure. wouldn't you agree that there's quite a lot of things you'd rather not speak out in public? not exactly for fear of being prosecuted by your government, but that happens, too (cf. anti war protesters and the likes).
> terminal apathy
well, that seems to be a widespread disease all over the planet - still i'd admit that some of your fellow citizens really do seem to lead the table ;)
Other systems *are* possible (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides the option of a large poster, it seems to me it would be possible to have a system where the police can search for evidence with a warrant, but have to pay for any damages they cause if the victims turn out to be innocent.
The current system invites abuse. The police don't even have to frame anyone they dislike enough to get them convicted, only enough to get a warrant. Evidence can be hidden in furniture, walls, cars etc, all of which can be smashed down in the search for evidence, easily costing any uppity person $100k+.
Abuse of police power is arguably a bigger problem in the world than regular crime, so don't think it's a small issue.
Who to blame (Score:4, Insightful)
I would like to ask this person: was it worth it? Is the evidence that this will result in, going to have value that exceeds the harm? Did you even ask yourself that question, before you signed the warrant?
I guess you can blame the FBI too, for bringing that unsigned warrant to some judge to be signed. But the responsibility ultimately fell on the judge.
Who judges the judges?
Two Words: (Score:1, Insightful)
Steve Jackson Games vs Secret Service (Score:4, Insightful)
A data center adds this risk, which needs to be considered in a disaster recovery plan. Do you have off site backups at your hosted site? If the hosting site has the tapes, they may included when the warrant is executed. Your equipment may be swept up in a search of the datacenter, your first notice may be the watchdog scripts
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, yes, it's worse. A part of the reason is things like the "Patriot" act, which mean they don't have to care, even more than they already didn't have to care. Another part is that an entrenched authority has an inbuilt tendency to get more authoritarian (there are other tendencies, leading to other forms of corruption, also). If you wanted to reform the FBI, you would need to make them accountable for their actions. You would probably also need to replace the entire upper echelon of management. (There might be honorable & flexible individuals, but you couldn't identify them.)
Still, you are correct when you say that the left is no better than the right. That's not where the problem lies. Concentration of power into people who aren't held accountable for the misuse of it is the problem.
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:5, Insightful)
The existence of right wing cranks is not proof of abuse, but it is also not proof of innocence on the part of the FBI.
And you all thought isps could play dumb (Score:3, Insightful)
Face it, all transactions must be logged and kept forever, or face the wrath of the government...
And if you get caught trying to delay, or reduce said logs infinite length of retention, expect a jail sentence for obstruction..
Re:More to the story (Score:3, Insightful)
I rarely blame law enforcement for taking extensive measures, trying to bend the rules. Its their job to do that. What I really became disgusted with were judges that routinely threw the Bill of Rights out the window OR the gutless wonders absolutely terrified of being overturned. Its their job to keep law enforcement under control; to balance the rights of the individual versus the greater good. There are a great many out there that are not doing their job.
Re:In response to a hacking incident? (Score:3, Insightful)
Five days before 9/11. A Texas-based host of Arabic websites, shut down as part of a terrorism investigation. Yep, just coincidence. Move along. Nothing to see there.
The memory hole is deep indeed. I'd even forgotten my own posting [slashdot.org], four days before 9/11, which turned out to be pretty fucking spot-on. The ISP was indeed part of the Holy Land Foundation, a front group that laundered money for terrorists, and was declared as such while New Yorkers were still cleaning the dust from their apartments.
As for me, I'm going to start keeping very close watch on the implied volatility of options contracts in the publicly traded securities of certain industries this week.
A huge increase in implied volatility in the options market was the second tipoff that civilians could have used to figure out that something was afoot during the days before the attack.
Being an armchair open source intelligence analyst is a hell of a lot of fun. If the options market starts to go screwball in the obvious target industries, the next two weeks are gonna be a hell of a lot of fun.
Meantime, cross your fingers, and even if you're an ACLU sympathizer, just once, root for the FBI. Imagine what things would be like they not fucked up so fucking badly in 2001. Now, do you really want them to fuck it up again? During an election year?
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:3, Insightful)
It was Reagan that kept telling us that sanctions would not work in South Africa. Only they did work, apartheid is gone.
Forty years later sanctions and the image of Fidel and Che are the only things keeping the Cuban communist party propped up. Castro uses sanctions the same way that Bush uses Al Qaeda, as an excuse for every failure of domestic policy.
The Cuban sanctions have failled because they have the exact wrong psychology. The only thing Cubans have that they can feel pride about is that they have taken on the greatest superpower and won. Kinda stupid thing to be proud of but that is what is keeping the bastards in power.
Open the floodgates to tourism and there is simply no way the communist party is going to last more than a few years. They will go the same way that the USSR went, their people will just get fed up.
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:2, Insightful)
Rules be damned...the truth is a little kid probably doesn't give a flying fuck about your immigration law and would rather be with his Dad than a pawn in some international pissing match to advance the agendas of people who down't even know him.
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm glad you brought that up. I for one was disgusted that Cubans who fled Castro, stealing all the wealth of the country, were not able to deprive a father of custody of his child.
How dare the U.S. use agents to rescue a child from people who do not have legal custody and return him to his father. What a police state.
Re:Other systems *are* possible (Score:4, Insightful)
It should be the other way round: Unless there is danger of life or other physical harm involved, any investigation should set its priority in such a way that no one should feel hassled by the investigation. It feels strange to see that no one seems to question the means necessary to conduct an investigation.
Was it necessary to do the raid on a Saturday? Was there an imminent threat that had to be averted now and then? Monday would have been to late?
Investigators in the US seem to have completely disconnected from the actual proportions of crimes. A suspected center of DDoS attacks does not warrant the same level of agency involvement as a murder case.
Who pays the costs? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I'm hiding coke in my sofa, and the FBI raids my house and confiscates the sofa, I have no reasonable expectation that I will ever get the sofa back. If they also take apart my easy chair looking for more coke, but don't find it, then, well, I shouldn't have been hiding drugs in my furniture. Tough luck.
However, what if the FBI screws up, and they don't find anything, even though they trash all of my furniture? It seems pretty reasonable that they owe me the cost of all the furniture, EVEN IF there was no way they could have known. In other words, even if they cross all their t's and dot all their i's, if they don't come up with anything, they still wrongfully accused me, and thus they owe me compensation.
By the same token, if they shut down a business, and they don't find evidence to accuse the business owner of a crime, the FBI should be responsible for every penny the company lost while their equipment was getting sniffed and probed by the FBI nerds, plus something for their trouble.
There's no reason why I should have to sue to get compensated...if you're not going to falsely accuse me I should be automatically compensated the instant my name is cleared.
The problem is that as it stands now is that the FBI could just hose an operation like 2600 for some minor offense and just keep their equipment indefinitely. Accountability, especially the financial kind will go a long way towards preventing the Gov's cronies from abusing their powers.
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:3, Insightful)
creating a mirror of said data, while not cheap, should not take on the order of more than a couple of hours, provided hardware is available.
For a raw backup, that is true. However, I know I would be hard pressed to just come up with a spare couple TB RAID unit for such a mirror right this instant. I could order one now, but it would take a day or two to get here.
If the FBI brought such a RAID along, it would be just a few hours. Either they were not prepared to actually recieve the data in bulk, or there's an important part of the story missing.
OTOH, there is DLT, but that's not much cheaper and IS much slower.
The alternative would be to attempt to grep for the relevant information and write it to a big IDE drive (which would be a lot more likely to be just laying around somewhere). However, actually grepping the data would slow things down even more than writing to DLT.
Apply the Second Amendment (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Zero damage done ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah. Honestly, I thought about this when I originally wrote my comment. I briefly considered doing a little Googling to get some background on CIT, mainly because I know that part of the fun of Slashdot is there's always someone here who know much more -- about some subject, however esoteric --, and that someone inevitably comes along to challenge your assertions.
But then I remembered that I'm an American, and that in America everyone no matter how despicable, is innocent until proven guilty.
And that is the sense of "innocent" I was using -- particularly apropos when one considers it was the FBI which was involved.
And whatever CIT has done, no matter how bad, it's not bad enough for us to sacrifice our liberties so as to more easily punish CIT.
Re:Poor hosting company (Score:3, Insightful)
As an ISP, you are required by law to keep all logs. If you don't, you're in (thick accent)"veddy veddy deep shit".
Re:All Your Rights Are Belong To Ashcroft (Score:1, Insightful)
It was Reagan that kept telling us that sanctions would not work in South Africa. Only they did work, apartheid is gone.
Yeap, it did work and look what type of shithole south africa became. The white rules where force out of office leaving the black savages to run the country. The jewel of africa has become the shit hole of africa. Talk about the monkeys running the zoo.