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Censorship United States The Internet

Rackspace, Indymedia, and the FBI 344

Posted by CowboyNeal from the egg-on-face dept.
chill writes "Remember when Indymedia hard drives were seized as part of an international 'criminal terrorism investigation'? Rackspace pulled the whole hard drive and shut down a dozen websites, and the Slashdot community cried 'Say it ain't so!' It ain't so. The documents have been unsealed and CNet is reporting that Rackspace made a mistake. The government wanted only copies of logs, not entire hard drives. It seems the week of downtime wasn't really necessary. Oops!"
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Rackspace, Indymedia, and the FBI More

Rackspace, Indymedia, and the FBI

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  • fanatical support (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05, 2005 @04:46AM (#13248071)
    that's fanatical support alright!

    for a police state!

    • Unless you can see the part of the subpoena that they won't let you see, it is best to assume that you have been given no information at all.

      From Secret Documents About Indymedia Server Disappearance Unsealed [eff.org]: "It cannot be determined from the unsealed documents whether or not the government informally pressured Rackspace to turn over the servers."

      Certainly it seems that is what happened, that there was illegal activity on the part of the government. Otherwise you have to believe something like this:

      • Re:Guess about what really happened. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by vector0319 ( 530769 ) on Friday August 05, 2005 @06:24AM (#13248301) Homepage Journal
        I feel our government is as corrupt as you say and I feel you are right-on about the intimidation, but I think you are wrong about this being a Christian country. It's stopped being a Chrisitan country long before they took prayer out of schools.

        See an Anabaptist (Christian) perspective here: http://www.brfwitness.org/Articles/2003v38n3.htm [brfwitness.org] Here is small part that explains it all:

        "America is not a Christian nation. It never was and it never will be. This is not to say that America was not founded on some biblical principles. It was established on some Bible truths. ... But America is a nation in the world and it behaves like a nation in the world. The United States Constitution does not contain the words "Christian" or "Jesus" or "Bible." Many of the founding fathers were deists. The power of the United States government rests in the 11 consent of the governed," not in the Word of God."

      • We'd take you more seriously if you didn't contradict yourself so quickly:

        "Unless you can see the part of the subpoena that they won't let you see, it is best to assume that you have been given no information at all."

        and, based on that no information at all

        "Certainly it seems... that there was illegal activity on the part of the government."

        As for the US government killing people, I might dispute your number, but 50,000 a year isn't really that many people to kill, considering that some secular [wikipedia.org]
    • No one ex[ects the Spanish Inquisition. Our main weapoms are are surprise, fear and almost fanatical devotion to support.

  • Mistake (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Knome_fan ( 898727 ) on Friday August 05, 2005 @04:49AM (#13248080)
    Ah, if it's only a mistake than it's no problem.

    After all, everybody makes mistakes from time to time...

    • Re:Mistake (Score:2, Informative)

      by The Tyro ( 247333 ) *
      Agreed.

      It appears that Rackspace, in a desire to meet the FBI's turnover deadline went ahead and sent the entire drive rather than the specific logfiles. This appears to be a simple effort to meet a deadline, rather than 3v1l kowtowing to teh m4n.

      Once the appropriate files had been extracted, Rackspace sent them, and the FBI sent back the drives.

      There's no story here. Much as it might disappoint some of our Slashtrolls, for once the FBI wasn't just being the bootheel of the evil imperialist police state,

      • Re:Mistake (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        How is it faster to tear down installed rackservers rather than burn *.log to a cd?

        Once the appropriate files had been extracted, Rackspace sent them, and the FBI sent back the drives.

        If Rackspace sent the FBI the drives, how could they then extract the files and send them to the FBI?
        • From TFA:

          "In order to comply with the mandated deadline, Rackspace delivered copied drives to the FBI."

          So I guess they either sent other drives with copies to the FBI, or copied them before sending.
      • It might make sense for someone who's not computer literate. "Dunno what these folks want, let's send em the drives so they can sort it out". But Rackspace? Sure they are not going to take things offline if they can avoid it. And if the deadline was near i'd rather have offered FBI a remote shell access, better if with read only privileges. Also if Rackspace was so in awe of the FBI why RISKING by sending the drives around? what if they get damaged, exposed to magnetic fields, lost? then they could be sus
      • when i read the grandparent, i saw sarcasm.

        what did you think the FBI was after? indymedia's apache config file? it's a webserver -- everything else of interest is available upon request at port 80. at the very least rackspace acted unprofessionally, unnecessarily taking down a client's server for a week and handing over it's most essential hardware (you can substitute ram, cpu, etc., you can't replace data) to law enforcement.

        i wouldn't host with someone so careless.

    • After all, everybody makes mistakes from time to time...

      Quite true. I'm sure we can now expect all those /. reactionaries who decried this as an act of totali-Big-Brother-tari-fascism to show up to retract their erroneous statements...

      *crickets*
      • The problem, I think is that although for you the lynchpin of the argument is whether or not the government seized Indymedia's hard drives, that's not really the issue at stake. We're not outraged that the government borrowed Indymedia's hardware for a week, we're outraged that they, in cooperation with an independent server company, blatantly violated the reasonable expectation of privacy of a whole bunch of totally innocent people.

        It's not really the hard drives that are the issue - the only thing on tho

        • The problem, I think is that although for you the lynchpin of the argument is whether or not the government seized Indymedia's hard drives, that's not really the issue at stake.

          Yes, that is the issue at stake: though they ended up with the drives in their possession, the FBI did not seize the drives.

          We're not outraged that the government borrowed Indymedia's hardware for a week,

          Think back to the original discussion (when the first story was posted to /.): that was the source of the outrage in a

          • Re:So all those /. reactionaries... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Yeb ( 7194 ) <[moc.stcejbohpela] [ta] [eom]> on Friday August 05, 2005 @09:23AM (#13249460) Homepage
            Yes, that is the issue at stake: though they ended up with the drives in their possession, the FBI did not seize the drives.

            No, they just happened to wind up with them. Do they still have copies? Where are they? What have they looked at?

            Except they didn't. They asked for the logs; Indymedia violated the reasonable expectation of privacy by handing over much more than was requested. The targeted request for specific logs was not the issue IMO.

            Indymedia violated privacy? Surely you mean rackspace here.

            [content]

            There were a few other things besides publicly available content on there. Some of my email, for one.

            What if the FBI had hacked into Indymedia to secretly monitor their logs, so that Indymedia never had a second of downtime and got to keep all their hardware. Would that undermine our argument about privacy and freedom of speech?

            BZZZT! Absurd slippery slope argument: -5 points. :-)

            So you disqualify that based on "slippery slope"? But it's what the Italian government has done, and something tells me the US govt is probably more tech saavy. So were already at the bottom of the slippery slope you think will never happen. We know that the Italian government took the private key used by https of an activist server to monitor webmail using a man-in-the-middle attack. See:
            Alternative Servers Attacked: "Not a Private Question: A Question of Privacy" [indymedia.org.uk]

            My point was that the foil-hat crowd soiled themselves when they saw the original story and were positive the FBI was a bunch of jackbooted thugs, etc; now that Indymedia has been identified as the reason for the excessive disclosure we shall hear nary a peep from /. [re: the behavior of the ISP]. That's all, really. Cheers!

            The FBI isn't a bunch of jackbooted thugs? I guess you're right. In Guantanamo they were complaining that the military was being excessive. They're nice folks. Read their history and you'll see the great things they've done.

            Again, you say "now that Indymedia has been identified as the reason for the excessive disclosure"--what the hell are you talking about? Do you mean rackspace again, or do you not know what's going on, or what? Indymedia didn't turn over anything. Indymedia wasn't asked either, FWIW.

            -Jeff

    • Re:Mistake (Score:4, Informative)

      by demachina ( 71715 ) on Friday August 05, 2005 @10:01AM (#13249902)
      There are some substantially more serious problems in the UK as of today's speech by Tony Blair anyway. Among other things he is planning to:

      - Outlaw bookstores the government decides are promoting Islamic extremism
      - Outlaw web sites promoting extremism presumably including any outside of the UK viewed in the UK.
      - Outlaw anyone promoting, condoning or rationalizing extremism, which could for example include people speaking on behalf of Palestine or maybe news outlets showing the latest video of Al Qaeda leaders. Needless to say no one really even knows what qualifies as extremism, the UK government and courts will decide when they see it.

      Anyone in Britain who is not a citizen who frequents or maybe even has frequented said bookstores, web sites or made statements justifying extremism will be swiftly deported often to countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia where they may be dealt with swiftly and harshly if they are suspected Islamists which they will be when Britain deports them.

      British citizens doing the same may be charged with crimes.

      You better hope you don't Google something and go to one of these web sites inadvertently because Scotland yard will now come knocking.

      If you've listened to the prosecution underway for the London bombings, two women and man have been charged under the new "withholding information" statute. In Britain now if you are falsely accused and can't tell them about a terror plot you go to jail. It creates an interesting situation where people falsely arrested are given incentive to make up a plot and falsely accuse other people to avoid being charged with withholding information, resulting in a pyramid scheme of false accusation.

      If you do have information you are apparently pretty much compelled to divulge it even if it entails self incrimination. Either you confess and are sent up the river or you don't confess and you are sent up the river for withholding information. Nothing resembling a fifth amendment in the UK now. Innocent people are totally screwed if someone has falsely implicated them. Based on terror cell investigations in the U.S. there is a high frequency of false accusations.

      Two Muslim men in Detroit, in a showcase DOJ terror trial, were convicted based on a tourist tape to Disneyland which the government said was a terrorist planning tape, disguised to look like a tourist video, and on the word of a conman charged with fraud who got his charges reduced for implicating the two men. He later admitted in jail he was lying to get his sentence reduced and the convictions were overturned. The government insisted the Disneyland tape was evidence of terrorism and even more so because they had made it "look" like a tourist tape to conceal it was a planning tape. It really looked like a home made movie of a trip to Disneyland. Apparently everyone needs to stop using video cameras on vacation because THAT is terrorism now, especially if you are Muslim.

  • Knee Jerk Reactions... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Friday August 05, 2005 @04:50AM (#13248085)
    I guess when the government asks someone to jump, no one bothers to ask how high. Some people just assume that jumping out the window is a correct response.

    • Re:Knee Jerk Reactions... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ubergrendle ( 531719 ) on Friday August 05, 2005 @06:31AM (#13248320) Journal
      Ever dealt with Law Enforcement? There's always what they ASK you do to and what the IMPLY you should do... unlike normal people doing normal jobs, Law Enforcement officers are trained never to rationalise, never to second guess, and to always assume that they're right. There's good reasons for this, but sometimes it has bad results.

      ISP:"We won't give you our records without a court order."
      Police officer:"Well, if I get a court order I'm going to ask for your whole ISP to be shut down. Don't make me waste my time."
      ISP:"Oh crap! Here's not just the logs but the harddrives! Please don't shut us down..."
      (10 minutes later) ISP Lawyer:"Call me first next time, this cop was yanking your chain."

      A very likely set of events IMHO.
      • Providing more information than requested is also a pretty standard way of stalling an investigation without being technically guilty of obstruction. The tactic goes something like this:
        • Government requests some small piece of crucial information, probably a single document.
        • Target of the subpoena turns over 30-40 unlabelled boxes full of hard copies of documents.
        • Government asks where the thing they requested is
        • Target says "it's in there somewhere. Enjoy finding it."

        (This tactic also works with IRS audi

        • Interesting, but the thing about hard drives vs. dead trees is that you can't grep dead trees. OTOH, with the appropriate search tools and a decent knowledge of how to use them, one can search for logs buried on a hard drive in a matter of minutes. I'm sure that the FBI is short of neither of these things, either.
          • I attended an IT conference a couple of years ago which was organized by my old boss, which meant I was able to get into the CEO roundtable dinner. The speaker at the dinner was an FBI agent who specialized in issues of computer crime. He was mostly there flogging Infragard [infragard.net], and trying to persuade the attendees that should they be the victim of a hack, they should call their local FBI field office.

            During his presentation, he repeatedly pronounced the word "warez" as "Juarez."

            The FBI has some really talent

      • Re:Knee Jerk Reactions... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Rasta Prefect ( 250915 ) on Friday August 05, 2005 @07:13AM (#13248422)
        A very likely set of events IMHO.

        Unless, you say, RTFA, and found they _had_ a court order. Thats what a subpeona _is_. The Feds appear to have actually acted quite reasonably. Rackspace were the ones who pulled the drives instead of making an image of them. I'm failing to see how this is in anyway the feds fault.

        Seriously, I realize that most Slashdotters don't like the Bush administration (frankly, neither do I. I voted Libertarian where possible, democratic elsewhere). But having read the first couple dozen posts here most of you come across as being just about as objective as the people pushing Intelligent Design - You've got your world view and you're willing to ignore any number of inconvenient facts to advance it.

        unlike normal people doing normal jobs, Law Enforcement officers are trained never to rationalise, never to second guess, and to always assume that they're right. There's good reasons for this, but sometimes it has bad results.

        And totally unlike a bunch of people on Slashdot who haven't bothered to read the article and find that it was in fact, Rackspace and their employees who chose to pull the harddrives and not the feds.

        • The Feds acted reasonably? What the hell was so top secret in the documents released that they had to stay sealed for 9 months? The Feds even fought to keep these paltry crumbs sealed too.
      • no that honestly sounds like you watch too much law and order.

        removing the hard drives does, in some sort, shut them down.

      • Re:Knee Jerk Reactions... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Tom ( 822 )
        (10 minutes later) ISP Lawyer:"Call me first next time, this cop was yanking your chain."

        That's the point. When you're a business, and the police comes calling, the first frigging thing you do is get your legal eagles involved.

        Obviously, Rackspace is an incompetent company you shouldn't do business with.
        • I like my ISP.
          I ost a gripe site, which is obviously not popular with the company. They sent a C&D e-mail to my ISP and to me.
          My ISP said blow me, talk to the admin, the site is not against our TOS we won't shut it down.

          While they are not the feds, I hear about many ISPs terminating a site because a large company sicks their lawyers on the host rather than the admin.

          the site (if you're interested) is http://farmersreallysucks.com/ [farmersreallysucks.com]

          The takedown notice is a good read:
          http://farmersreallysucks.com/E1_First [farmersreallysucks.com]
      • This is BS. I work in a data center. The only ones who don't follow a procedure are citizens holding a grudge against a webmaster, i.e. "Little tommy's website is against your TOS!!! Shut it down now!!!! I'm at a stakeout in his front yard! We are awaiting the site to be shut down before we move in!" A.k.a the anti-social engineers. Those are always a laugh. The rest usually send formal abuse complaints, and in the case of the FBI or large companies citing copyright violations, they usually send paper docu

  • Zealotry is bad, no matter who does it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ReformedExCon ( 897248 ) <reformed.excon@gmail.com> on Friday August 05, 2005 @04:50AM (#13248086)
    Rackspace, in their desire to stay on the good side of the law went far overboard in their zeal to help the police. This is a common theme in many cases.

    The law specifically protects people from incriminating themselves and also from unreasonable search and seizure. It does not protect them from turning themselves into the authorities, nor does it protect them from others doing it for them.

    You would like to think that companies would consult with their lawyers that could advise them on their legal rights and responsibilities before they took drastic, unnecessary steps like turning a lot of personal/private documentation over to the police.

    • Re:Zealotry is bad, no matter who does it (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SlashEdsDoYourJobs ( 905360 ) on Friday August 05, 2005 @05:31AM (#13248173) Homepage

      You would like to think that companies would consult with their lawyers that could advise them on their legal rights and responsibilities before they took drastic, unnecessary steps like turning a lot of personal/private documentation over to the police.

      Indeed. If I were a Rackspace customer, I'd be looking for a new host right about now. Who wants a host that gives you a week of downtime for absolutely no good reason? What business can afford a week of downtime? That's essentially what you are risking when you go with Rackspace, because they have just demonstrated that they don't have a proper process in place for handling subpoenas and that their employees aren't smart enough to handle them without adult supervision.

      • Indeed. If I were a Rackspace customer, I'd be looking for a new host right about now.

        Since these investigations are now secret, how do you know the new company just doesn't allow the FBI or Homeland Security continual remote access? It's not too big of a conspiracy theory to suggest that the Government has already requested and received access to Slashdot's member list--because a lot of reactionaries discuss things on this website.

        Now, under the Patriot Act, if Slashdot was told to give up its member list,

    • I don't know Rankspaces management setup, but if the warrent was served on more senior management in the US who subsequently ordered less senior UK staff to turn over the data, those staff would be in an unenviable position. Their Managment is telling them to do something which may be against the law either way. Handing over the data may(#1) be illegal under the UK's Data Protection Act, not fulfilling the warrent may be illegal in the US, where you can extradited very easily, many people would probably t
  • I wonder how believers of that tired incorrect cliché will tie that in with this.

    Surely the FBI were liberating imprisoned information from it's overbearing masters?
    • Most people who don't agree with that cliché don't understand it - and they are usually the ones who bring it up in the first place.

  • Just copy the disks before turning them over (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jurt1235 ( 834677 ) on Friday August 05, 2005 @04:57AM (#13248102) Homepage
    If they just decided to copy the disks so they would have had limitted downtime. Downtime=How long it takes for dd take to make a bit by bit copy of the drive depends on the size, use multiple machines to do one drive per machine, so it goes as fast as possible.

    That would have made them make the jump of the previous posts and still have limitted impact.
    • Downtime? What downtime?

      The gov wanted a copy for forensics purposes, not to have the newest copy of all databases. Doing a dd of a live system would result in simply having to replay a piece of the fs journal, possibly losing a bit of data from the last few minutes.

    • Re:Just copy the disks before turning them over (Score:5, Informative)

      by arivanov ( 12034 ) on Friday August 05, 2005 @07:08AM (#13248408) Homepage
      OK, here went my moderation.

      Complete and utter bollocks. Rackspace can do real-time backup snapshots to their SAN of any of their standard config machines. They do not offer this is you have a custom config, but this does not mean that they cannot do it. So there was no need for ANY DOWNTIME WHATSOEVER.

      They offer this under the name of managed backup service. So, if the order was exactly as unsealed by EFF and they wanted to comply to it literally it would have taken them a few seconds with no downtime. Few minutes at most.

      If Indimedia was not a managed backup service customer Rackspace would have had to install the agent first. They are a fully managed service provider and they have root on the box under normal circumstances and can install the agent in a couple of minutes.

      If Indimedia was a managed backup service customer Rackspace could have handed all old snapshots outright and initiated a new on the spot with a click of a button on the "fanatical support" console.

      In fact, it may be worth it to ask was or was not Indimedia a rackspace managed backup service customer.
      • FWIW, ahimsa* (the boxes these indymedia sites were on), did not have managed backup service. They could get root on the box easily enough as they had full physical access. There weren't any encrypted partitions or anything like that.

        -Jeff, ahimsa* admin

      • What is complete and utter bollocks: The idea for a backup, the backup method, what??? You did not have to give up your moderation for being unclear. Does it matter what method is suggested? Just the fact that they could have limitted the damage in an easy way counts.
  • Keep in mind that the PATRIOT ACT plays a part in the laws these days. For all we know, this was one of several warrents that went to rackspace. If any other was tied to PATRIOT ACT, it will prevents you from discussing or even mentioning them to anybody else. To do so, means hard prison time.

  • A good mistake IMHO (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Adult film producer ( 866485 ) <van@i2pmail.org> on Friday August 05, 2005 @05:03AM (#13248111)
    Otherwise nobody would have known the FBI was harvesting log files, or am I wrong about that? Hopefully all ISP's when faced with sneaky orders like this will do the same. Regardless, the damage has been done, the FBI has their log files.. it's really too bad about the victims of this witchhunt.
  • Just think about it ....

    You have 1,000s of customers with root on their own boxes. The FBI now wants the log files of customer 41231. Its going to take a tech at least 15 minutes (best possible case) to fetch the log files from this box - assuming that the log files that the FBI want are in their usual place. This is giving the tech enough time to log into the box, find them, and FTP them somewhere else.

    Just imagine how long this could take if the customer has gone to some effort to make the log files dif

  • Hanlon's Razor (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GozzoMan ( 808286 ) on Friday August 05, 2005 @05:06AM (#13248122)

    Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

    (From TFA: "A Rackspace employee mistakenly used the word 'hardware' to describe the contents of a federal order,")
    • Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

      That kind of stupidity doesn't adequately explain it. Either someone doesn't know how to read or they have incompetents handling their administration. That is, why the mistaken terminology?

  • "mistake" (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When it's a pattern of behavior, it's not a mistake, but an MO. Judging by the majority of responses, it works, as most are excusing what happened.

  • Looks like... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Phil John ( 576633 ) <phil@NOSpAM.webstarsltd.com> on Friday August 05, 2005 @05:19AM (#13248148)
    ...Rackspace could be sued (successfully) for violations of the Data Protection Act as there was no lawful warrant for the data on the server (as it resides in the UK and the subpoena was server to rackspace in Texas).

    Personally I hope rackspace get raked over the coals for this one to serve as an example to other ISP's that this kind of flagrant disregard for privacy and the laws of the land cannot go unpunished.
    • You might get your wish, as according to the EFF investigations are already underway to see whether Rackspace violated the UK Data Protection Act or the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
    • Who did the physical server belong to? If it was Indymedia then Rackspace might be guilty of theft, or at least conversion. Rackspace are certainly greatly in the wrong and morally guilty of theft, regardless of the legal position.
    • Personally I hope rackspace get raked over the coals for this one to serve as an example to other ISP's that this kind of flagrant disregard for privacy and the laws of the land cannot go unpunished.

      Ha! What most people don't understand is that it's the flagrant [google.com.au] disregard [google.com.au] that spam^H^H^H^Hrackspace does best!
  • In Certification of the log files [eff.org] some US govt Attorney writes:
    "[I] certify that packaged herewith is a true and correct copy of log files in relation to the creation and updating of the web spaces corresponding to the following URLs during the period from THIS PORTION OF THE DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REDACTED"

    As the sysadmin of ahimsa (the seized servers), I'm wondering what he's certifying here. Our httpd.confs substituted "noip" for IP addresses in the logfiles. Like this:

    LogFormat "noip - - %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\" %T %V" noip
    CustomLog /imc/logs/italy-access_log noip

    Also, finding the location of the logfiles on the servers would have been as simple as a `locate access_log`...

    -Jeff

    • In Slashdot-level terms: [Jedi wave] "these are not the logs you are looking for"

      And as the EFF release [eff.org]puts it:

      However, the unsealed documents reveal that the government never officially demanded the computer servers -- the subpoena to Rackspace only requested server log files. This contradicts previous statements by the web host that it took the servers offline because the government had demanded the hardware. The documents also contradict Rackspace's claim that it had been ordered by the court not to dis

  • bending (Score:4, Insightful)

    by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Friday August 05, 2005 @05:33AM (#13248180) Homepage
    Nice to see that some ISPs don't bend over at the first sight of a possible legal issue about one of their customers.

    Oh wait, they did.

  • "compelled to produce a copy of the server" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Yeb ( 7194 ) <[moc.stcejbohpela] [ta] [eom]> on Friday August 05, 2005 @05:41AM (#13248197) Homepage
    Another interesting line, perhaps meaningful, perhaps not, is from Certification of the log files [eff.org].

    [Rackspace] was compelled to produce a copy of the server owned and operated by Rackspace containing the data as outlined above. The compact disc provided herein is the true disc as provided by said entity.

    "Produce a copy of the server"? Does that mean the whole system? Rackspace has said they turned over complete hard drives. The data certainly wouldn't have fit all on one CD (we're talking gigs of data on the servers). If the FBI just wanted log files, why did they take complete hard drives (which would have been around 6 drives or so)? The FBI certainly had the opportunity to look at all data on the hard drives. Do you think they did that or restricted themselves to a couple logfile lines? ;)

    -Jeff

  • I had a boss who was a Jew with a problem with authority figures -- he couldn't stand to do what the authorities wanted, without opening his mouth or somehow arguing or otherwise resisting. Really "in your face". A bit like the Woody Allen character who shreds his license when the cop asks for his driver's license, simply because the cop is behaving too authoritarian for him. He even tells the cop that he's got a real problem with authorities.

    One time the cops wanted some cooperation with him (a former em
    • Just out of curiosity (and this *is* a question, not an implied criticism), did the fact he was Jewish have any bearing, directly or indirectly on his anti-authoritarian nature?
      • Good question. I thought the very same, but i'd like to add that it seems to me that:
        1) When it matters, there is info lacking why it mattered.
        2) When it doesn't matter, why was it mentioned?

        You see, every once in a while there's information in a newspaper or something and it includes details which do not seem to make any sense.

        I'm wondering if i should end my post stating what my religion is. Not that i have any... ;-)
      • Well, the fact that he was anti-authoritarian Jew that fit a certain type celebrated by some Jews [forward.com] was germane. The guy even had a pet parrot named after a Yiddish vulgarism, which he carried around the office. So yeah, he was very aware of his ethnicity, and quite in-your-face about it.

        The comparison to Woody Allen, who had made fun of obstreperous Jews in the past was meant to evoke the type (Al Goldstein, Abbie Hoffman, Irv Rubin, etc.). When my boss rebelled against the authority figures, it was entir

  • Article in the Register (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Yeb ( 7194 ) <[moc.stcejbohpela] [ta] [eom]> on Friday August 05, 2005 @06:14AM (#13248273) Homepage
    Documents relating to the seizure of Indymedia's servers at Rackspace's Heathrow premises have finally been unsealed by a Texas district court. Some information remains under seal, and the documents released by no means provide the full picture, but it is now clear that yes, it was the Italians, and no, there was no obvious legal basis for the seizure of the servers themselves. And as regards the British Government's apparent insouciance regarding the (faulty) operation of US court orders within British jurisdiction but without any British authorisation, well, that remains a puzzle.

    More: US court files reveal Italian link to Indymedia server grab [theregister.co.uk]

    -Jeff

    P.S. insouciance [wiktionary.org]...


  • I'm not sure which is worse... that IndyMedia scrambled the techs and pulled everything when all they were supposedly* required to delivery was logs, or that CNet is now delivering news in blog format [com.com] just to try to be cool ;)

    *Good point from the poster below, there may have been PATRIOTACT subpoenas too, we'll never know since it's a federal crime even to mention it !

  • Not a mistake (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pavera ( 320634 ) on Friday August 05, 2005 @06:32AM (#13248321) Homepage Journal
    It states in the article that Rackspace tried to turn over just the log files but then had to send the entire hard drive to comply with FBI rules.

    Do any of you work for an ISP? I used to. If the FBI asks for logs like that you seriously have 12 hours generally to comply or the ISP is fined heavily. If they ask for something specific, and you're slogging through 6TBs of data, you can't possibly find exactly what the FBI wants in less than 12 hours.

    The EFF lawyer says it would be like turning over a whole warehouse of documents instead of just one document... Well, good luck finding that needle in a haystack in 12 hours or face a fine that will bankrupt your company.
  • Indymedia Seizures Initiated In Europe [slashdot.org]!!

    Second Indymedia Server Seized in UK Within a Year [slashdot.org]!!

    Turns out that nothing was seized. Good old tinfoil-hat journalism!

  • Conspiracy Here, Conspiracy There (Score:4, Insightful)

    by N8F8 ( 4562 ) on Friday August 05, 2005 @06:57AM (#13248377)
    For you paranoid freaks outthere, sooner or later you need to come to the realizationthat the folks enforcign the law are just like you. They don't like their rights trampled either but they are just as prone to making mistakes.

  • A bit of context... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Yeb ( 7194 ) <[moc.stcejbohpela] [ta] [eom]> on Friday August 05, 2005 @07:12AM (#13248421) Homepage
    Indymedia is an open-posting site that allows anyone to submit articles, photos, audio, and video to their site. In many ways it's similar to slashdot (both in good and bad ways).

    Indymedia has political content, typically from an anarchist/feminist/leftist/libertarian/green/anti- war whatever viewpoint. This tends to piss off many governments (Italy, U.S., France, etc.) and corporations (e.g. Diebold, the manufacturers of the U.S.'s electronic voting machines using the DMCA against Indymedia; in the end Diebold was found guilty...).

    The Italian government seems to particularily hate Indymedia. One parliamentarian, who happens to be the granddaughter of Mussolini (yes, that Mussolini), has called for Indymedia to be shut down.

    In 2001, the Italian government raided an Indymedia center (legally) set up during the G8 meetings/protests there. They sent scores of people to the hospital, including putting people in comas. It was not nice. They beat the hell out of people, smashed cameras and computers. The Italian govt claimed they found molotov cockails and other weapons--the cops later admitted they planted the evidence. Just like fascists of "old".

    Last year, around the time of the server seizure, the Italian government had an ISP shut down a server so they could steal the private key used for https encryption. They could then mount a man-in-the-middle attack reading all "encrypted" content, including webmail. The Italian govt got away with this attack for a year before it was discovered. The server was used by many indymedia and activist folks (the server was run by autistici--"the autistics" in italian).

    So when some Indymedia sites disappear off the 'net and it's tracked back to the Italian government with FBI cooperation it's not too big of a surprise. I'm sure they are thrilled that rackspace is getting nailed for the whole thing.

    -Jeff, ahimsa* admin (which hosts italy.indymedia.org, the targetted site)

  • Rackspace, Indymedia, and the FBI (Score:4, Funny)

    by Steev ( 5372 ) <steve AT stevedinn DOT com> on Friday August 05, 2005 @07:29AM (#13248477) Homepage
    "Rackspace, Indymedia, and the FBI" kind of sounds like a hip-hop group. I can't wait for their next album.
  • I dig the fact that this article loaded up for me with a big ol' flash banner ad for Rackspace Managed Hosting plastered across the top of the page. Somehow I think this is the last place Rackspace wants their impression just now...

  • It's wrong, but I'm not suprised they did it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by defile ( 1059 ) on Friday August 05, 2005 @08:16AM (#13248714) Homepage Journal

    Service providers deal with a lot of shit from authorities. Even when I worked at a small mom & pop ISP with 5000 customers we'd have to respond to a search warrant on a monthly basis, and they just don't won't accept "the log files were deleted 5 months ago" for an answer. The owner had to show up in court many times and swear that yes, the systems do purge them periodically.

    I can only imagine what Rackspace has had to deal with in the past, so when the FBI came by and said "terrorism" they must've shivered at the thought of answering why they can't find something. So they just make it the FBI's problem by handing over the whole disk.

    Does this qualify as a chilling effect? The letter of the order said that Rackspace just had to produce specific files, but Rackspace was so afraid of the FBI (from past encounters, perhaps) that they went that far above and beyond?

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