Indymedia Server Seized By UK Police, Again 528
timbrown writes with word that "On 22 January 2009, Kent Police seized an Indymedia server hosted by Manchester-based colocation facility UK Grid and run by the alternative news platform Indymedia UK. The server was taken in relation to comments on an article regarding the convictions in the recent Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) trial. Seven activists were sentenced to a total of 50 years in prison."
The complete story is worth reading; timbrown continues: "I'm posting this as a concerned UK administrator who hosts a number of sites. The message appears to be clear: the UK establishment does not want political content, legitimate or otherwise, hosted from these shores. The message has been noted, however free speech must be supported even where it may not be agreeable."
so much for (Score:5, Interesting)
freedom of speech..
btw I run a site along the lines and I have an interesting setup, the database server is in one country and the web frontend is in another with secure tunnel between so if someone does a traceroute to the site and then goes datacenter and pulls the server out of rack all they get is a proxy, its far from perfect but at least the database is safe
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Thank. You. For. That. Information. Citizen. Closing. All. Encrypted. Tunnels. From. UK. To. Rest. Of. World. Now...
ENJOY YOUR LIBERTY.
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Which just leaves the single point of failure. The domain name.
Once the authorities yank that, the distributed server network behind it goes away...at least for a while.
Re:so much for (Score:5, Informative)
Which just leaves the single point of failure. The domain name. Once the authorities yank that, the distributed server network behind it goes away...at least for a while.
You can tunnel to an IP address. You can also get domain names from different countries for your front end.
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Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:4, Insightful)
From the details available, it appears this may relate to information that could be used to threaten the judge in the SHAC trial, the trial of some pretty unpleasant and violent people http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7837064.stm [bbc.co.uk].
Information does not equate to action.
There is "information" in local us libraries which would show you how to assemble a bomb a-la oklahoma city. I suppose we should seize and burn all books in the local libraries and send the librarians and library officials to prison for 50 years.
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:4, Insightful)
Information like that - information about our world and cultures etc. thats all fine and free. Personal info on the other hand, address, phone number, names of children and family pets etc. Thats sorta stuff is no ones business but your own.
The action the police took here was wrong - but that by no means justifies the actions of the violent individuals who would look to bypass the legal process via threats and intimidation.
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:5, Informative)
The reason the server was seized is because Indymedia refuses to surveil its contributors to the degree the cops would like. And apparently that makes any of their hardware fair game.
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:5, Insightful)
but yea, you should look up what exactly your rights are regarding addresses, etc. I think you will be pretty shocked.
It's kinda sad when people post this sort of nonsense, so I'm not surprised you posted as AC.
In the UK, there are various privacy and data protection laws that do cover the handling of personal information (principally under the Human Rights Act and under the Data Protection Acts), and they are considerably stricter than in some places. There are also laws to deal with how you act based on that information, e.g., protection from harassment or various forms of unsolicited marketing. Oh, and as a topical note, making death threats is illegal, too.
I personally completely disagree with your claim that such information is not personal or private. It is clearly both, and in a world that values freedom, in a world where identity theft is a fast-growing crime, in a world where there is a genuine risk of violence against officials undermining the justice system, it is reasonable and common sense that the information should be protected. There is no free speech argument here, and no censorship: why do you think you have some God-given right to know everything about someone else?
Now, this sort of action should obviously be handled by the book, with the proper warrants issued and the proper data obtained. If that is not the case here, then someone screwed up. But it does seem that a serious crime was committed, and indicated a genuine threat of a much more serious crime, and the police asked for reasonable cooperation from the service provider in order to deal with that. That is their job, and if the provider gave them some cute "freedom of speech" response then I'm not surprised that the police took more direct action, nor do I blame them for doing so. This sort of "defence" of freedom is exactly why the government is now pushing for mandatory logging of all such activities by all ISPs for everyone, which is a far worse thing for freedom than having the police make reasonable requests on a case-by-case basis. The fact that Indymedia seem to be proud of the fact that their service can be used for making anonymous death threats and they won't cooperate with lawful authorities to help identify the source doesn't exactly raise my opinion of them, either.
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They should be proud that their service can be used for making anonymous death threats, because that also means that it can be used to express unpopular political ideas. That you don't understand this means that you don't understand freedom of speech.
I don't believe in absolute freedom of speech, and neither does the law in any country in the western world that I know of.
As for "won't cooperate with lawful authorities" I'm not really sure where to start with the incredible wrongness of this sentence, so I guess I'll begin at the top; they don't keep logs, so there's no cooperation.
And this is where the problems start. By actively choosing (it's not the default, nor common practice) not to keep logs that can be accessed as a one-off with a good reason, they are providing more ammunition for the case that government should have unrestricted direct access to logs and keeping them should be mandatory. I'd rather have practical, proportionate access available where it
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:5, Insightful)
Information does not equate to action.
There's a bit of a difference between "this is how you make a bomb", and "This is where he lives, let's get him".
Please do try to bear in mind that the SHAC "activists" are violent criminals, who have launched physical attacks on people involved in animal testing. Whether you believe animal testing is right or wrong, that is not the way to go about protesting it.
The SHAC protesters broke the law, and are now - rightly - in jail. The person who posted the judge's personal information and a death threat against him also broke the law.
If a poster on a forum posted information on where to find Barack Obama, and a death threat, would you expect the server that hosted that forum to be seized?
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a bit of a difference between "this is how you make a bomb", and "This is where he lives, let's get him".
So... did they say "This is where he lives, let's get him" ?
Nothing in the post or article mentions a death threat... if the person made a death threat then that is a completely seperate issue, or do you think the medium that the threat was made through is somehow relevant.
If he sent a death threat in the post would you expect all the postal trucks to be impounded ?
Everyone thinks they are objective, nobody is.
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I hope the police acted within the law. But I have every sympathy for their action. The court case in question was about a group of people who harassed individuals over a period of many years in violent and intimidating ways. There was every possibility that the threats would spill over into death or injury at any time.
The perpetrators got up to 8 years in jail for these activities so I am not at all surprised that the police have taken a keen interest in the publication of the judges address on an undergro
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I would just like to point out that if you actually read the full article you will discover that Indymedia pulled the offending post themselves. They knew it was illegal and not something they wanted on their site.
This comes down to the fact that they allow people to post anonymously and do not log their IP address. The police have seized a single server to find out who posted the article.
Everyone here probably agrees that posting personal information about a judge is a pretty stupid thing to do. But should
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Which they were absolutely correct to do — if there is, indeed, a fair hope of extracting such information this way. In either case, there is nothing similar to what the grandstanding "administrator" is alleging in their /.-submission:
They sure don't want the "otherwise" content, and, if someone posts it an
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I guess the death threat would be enough. If people have access to any kind of information source (and if they don't, they couldn't get your threat either), they know pretty much where to find Obama currently.
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:5, Informative)
So if you're the police and you want to seize some organization's computers and / or logs, just post a death threat on their site. I'm not saying that's what happened in this instance, just pointing out a vulnerability. In the UK, it's been established that the police have had members go undercover in protest movements to encourage violence and act extreme in order to justify a crack down. There was a case late last year when a reputable reporter recognized a police officer she had talked to in amongst the protestors at an anti-war demonstration trying to incite people to breach police lines and physically harass officers. Taking such methods online is a natural step.
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:5, Informative)
The original article from the Daily Mail has now expired but you can find an account of the incident in numerous places if you search for it. The reporter was Yasmin Whittaker-Khan who writes for the Daily Mail, one of the UK's largest papers. The story was here [dailymail.co.uk] and the incident took place on the 15th June '08 during protests against George Bush. The reporter recognised a particularly loud and agitating protestor who was trying to get people to charge the police lines, trying to get people chanting "kill the pigs" and in one instance showed a protestor how to decouple the police barricade and got him to help throw it at an officer. She had actually talked to him at a press function where he had been representing them on some subject (I forget what). She confronted him, he admitted who he was. The officer's name was "Chris Dreyfus." If you want to know how reputable this story is, a UK MP wrote to the police about this. The MP's letter is here [wordpress.com] and contains further details.
I have more anecdotal and second-hand evidence from people, but this is the only established source I can provide in the UK (there are plenty of incidents verified in other countries also). However, it's pretty clear from the above that this takes place and it is a very serious matter.
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The judge's information was posted, then removed by the editors shortly after as per indymedia's policy. The police wanted logs so as to track down who posted it. Indymedia explicitly does not keep logs to protect whistleblowers. So the police seize the server. Yes, this was designed with the possibility of servers being seized in mind. That still doesn't make it a good thing.
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:5, Insightful)
If a poster on a forum posted information on where to find Barack Obama, and a death threat, would you expect the server that hosted that forum to be seized?
Hardly. I would expect a judicial order requiring the post to be removed, and then that the Secret Service would monitor that service to see if any further posts were made by that individual. By seizing the server (and shutting down the service), the police blocked a potential source of further leads as to the identity of the person. In short, a panic reaction, rather than a reasoned reaction.
The SHAC protesters broke the law, and are now - rightly - in jail. The person who posted the judge's personal information and a death threat against him also broke the law.
The SHAC protesters are in jail. The poster will be in jail, if they can find him/her. Fine. Now explain to me what law the server owners/operators broke, that resulting in their server (and service) being "thrown in jail".
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By seizing the server (and shutting down the service)
The service wasn't shut down. It was a mirror and its removal only caused some temporary issues (according to TFA).
the police blocked a potential source of further leads as to the identity of the person. In short, a panic reaction, rather than a reasoned reaction.
Yes, and no. It depends on your point of view.
If they felt the server might contain data relevant to the investigation, and that the hosters were sympathetic to the poster and might try to expunge that data, then quick seizure might be a valid attempt to preserve evidence.
I do agree with you, considering the police knew about their no logging policy. They would have been much better served by g
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:5, Insightful)
If a poster on a forum posted information on where to find Barack Obama, and a death threat, would you expect the server that hosted that forum to be seized?
I bet if the post had been made on timesonline.co.uk (The Times' website) it wouldn't be seized.
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:4, Informative)
Given that The Times moderates comments before displaying them, you're certainly correct.
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Ooh, Washington DC :-/
I'm standing here at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Weirton, Hancock, West Virginia 26062 with a pitchfork ready to go and some corn farmer is telling me to stop loitering and come help with the manure.
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:5, Funny)
You know, the /. servers getting seized might be the best thing ever to happen to open-source. Think of all the time we'd have on our hands!
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:5, Insightful)
Says who? If you believe in something strong enough, why rule out certain kinds of actions?
Nietzsche, "Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one." Of course the obvious result of your thinking is, it's ok to do anything to anyone as long as you believe in something strong enough.
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They all log to some degree. The logs just aren't kept for long. Most server software will log even if you tell it not to in order to keep track of the database transactions and FIFO requests. This logging might never leave the memory space while sometimes it would rotate through a text file depending on a lot of things like what software it is and specific settings and all.
There might be something in the file system that could point to this person depending on how soon they got it compared to when post was
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Interesting.
Anyways, I doubt that the police will find anything, I just wanted to note that there was the slim possibility. IF they used the mod your talking about, the slimness went from almost nothing to even less assuming that something else doesn't trap the IP first like a load balancing software/service or something.
Total anonymous should never be expected as a user regardless of what the site clams because it doesn't really matter what software your using, if the government wants to know something abo
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This is something I never get about animal rights protesters. They always want to equate some animals life with a human's life. Sure, you fight and even go to war to save unjustly taken human life but declaring a dog or cat's life to be equal to that of a human's is a but ridiculous.
Can you explain to me why you think animals deaths are just as valid as the Jews who were killed? Or are you just pointing to extremes without thinking it through? Because I don't consider any animal's life to be close to that o
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It does equate to evidence though. The seizure wasn't to censure the information, it was to study it for the process of finding who sent the death threats. That's the opposite of censorship, that's putting the information in the hands of the people who find it useful. Feel free to take a copy first.
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Information does not equate to action.
It does with the SHAC loonies. They've bombed people, harrassed people who had the most tenuous of links (like the cleaner of a manager of a company that supplied Huntingdon Life Sciences) and carried out a campaign of harassment, violence and intimidation that many terrorist organisations would've been proud of.
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Your freedom stops when you hit my nose (Score:5, Informative)
>>>it appears this may relate to information that could be used to threaten the judge in the SHAC trial, the trial of some pretty unpleasant and violent people
This organization is ALSO unpleasant and violent, but the U.S. still allows its website to exist: http://www.kkk.bz/ [www.kkk.bz] http://www.kkk.com/ [kkk.com] - "Is the election of Obama shocking to us? Not at all! ...The president elect now stands as a symbol to our people throughout this nation that change is indeed coming. What will it mean for those who are being disenfranchised from the very nation purchased by the blood of their forefathers? It could mean an awakening of our spirit and blood. Every time the television shows an image of Obama it will be a reminder that our people have lost power in this country. ...The betrayal will stare them in the face each time they watch the news and see little black children playing in the rose garden."
Disgusting.
But every person has the right to exercise their OWN mouth and offer-up their opinions, no matter how offensive. We should punish those individuals who commit violence, but the non-violent persons should remain free. "No man has a right to harm another. And that is all that the government should restrain him." - Founder of the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson
Please mod this up (Score:3, Informative)
You could always make another internet [anonet.org] to get away from the bullshit on the current one.
Freedom of the press? (Score:5, Insightful)
This bugs me. Freedom of the press is a vital tennet of our society, and it needs to be protected vigourously by everyone both inside the media and out. Without it we would have no way to stand up to the sort of tyranny that is all too common in countries where people aren't free.
Which is why I think Indymedia should shut the hell up in this case.
What does this have to do with freedom of the press? The name, address and other details of a judge were posted on an Indymedia site and mirrored to this server. That's not journalism. Trying to claim that the police investigating it is an infringement of the free press just undermines the real press and makes otherwise rational people wonder if freedom of the press is really important after all.
Other people's private personal information is not "political content".
Re:Freedom of the press? (Score:5, Insightful)
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the information have been removed by imc-uk. this would be clear if you would even read the article... so no need for telling something about private data etc.
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If personal information was obtained legally, that what law forbids them from sharing such information (in the press or otherwise) ?
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EU data protection laws. Personal information can't just be copied freely.
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The data protection act comes to mind, they are only use the information for the propose it was obtained, if instance if you obtain someones address to send them personal correspondents, you can't then go around and sell it to junk mailer, or for that matter give it to a lynch mob.
Re:Freedom of the press? (Score:5, Insightful)
Privacy and presumption of innocence are just a couple of the things that must be sacrificed for the job. They are public servants, and we need to remind them of that.
I disagree. A judge is not a political figure, his sole purpose is to objectively "weigh" the facts presented in a case in order to determine its truth value. His personal convictions don't add into it, and he did not attain the position by public means: his office is completely separated from his private life.
If anything, judges need more protection than a regular citizen because they deal with criminals of all kinds on a daily basis.
Re:Freedom of the press? (Score:5, Informative)
Judges aren't elected in England, they are appointed. Also activist judges don't really exist in the UK, if a judge makes a ruling that is incompatible with law, and gets overturned on appeal then the judge could find their job on the cutting board, and if they had a conflict of interest that they didn't declare they could be tried.
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UK judges are not elected. The selection process is designed to be non-political.
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Political process? Don't you mean judicial?
Assuming you did - we were talking about judges - for one thing, it's not just politicians involved with the appointing. Senior judges are also involved, many of whom thankfully still see the law as a matter of principle that goes far beyond party politics.
And when they appoint new judges they don't dismiss all the existing ones. So it would need the same government (or rather party) to be in power for perhaps thirty years continuously to pack it with their cron
Re:Freedom of the press? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is by far the most short sighted and stupidest (yes stupid) post I have seen in a long long long time.
How on Earth could you state they surrender their "presumption of innocence"? That sounds like public servants should be guilty before proven innocent.
Why should they surrender their privacy in their private lives anymore than a citizen? That does not make sense, and in fact puts them in danger.
What happens when judges must take cases with criminals and other mentally unstable people? We make them all live in a public housing complex with transparent walls and signs with, "Judge Wanker lives here"?
Any single person in a society, whether serving the public or not, should be entitled to conduct their personal affairs with as much privacy and anonymity as anyone else.
What public servants should not be able to do is to keep their conduct in official capacities private from the public they serve. That does not include the location where they sleep.
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You are aware I assume that California is not part of the United Kingdom?
Then you clearly wouldn't.
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Funny, I thought in a fair and just society everyone should be given the same rights. Where do you stop when removing basic human rights? Politicians? Judges? Lawyers? All Civil servants? All external contractors who work with the government? Suddenly you find yourself with a whole lot of people with no rights.
And Here is the Problem... (Score:3, Interesting)
In the UK I have been seeing how a 1984 situation is being established:
1) Speed cameras to the wahzoo....
2) Camera's to watch people to the wahzoo...
3) Rights being taken away and people sent to jail on issues that would otherwise seem "ludicrous.."
It has been proven that the cameras do squat to stop crime. Yet there they are and more are coming. Why? It is an issue of the establishment in the UK wanting to control the people. 1984!
The result of Indymedia and the posters is a direct reaction of the restrict
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Re:Freedom of the press? (Score:5, Informative)
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And they KNOW that no IPs are logged
They don't *know* that no IPs are logged. They were *told* that no IPs are logged. Would you believe what you were told? I wouldn't. I'd want to check for myself. That way I could write in my report that "Indymedia said that no IPs were logged. I checked the server, and there were no IPs logged." Keeps everyone right, doesn't it?
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I hope you're not suggesting that sometimes people may lie to the police!
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Umm... they seized the servers before, do they think Indymedia changed their policy by now?
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Re:Freedom of the press? (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the article you'd have seen that the personal details were removed by an Indymedia moderator as soon as they were aware of them.
Indymedia UK privacy policy does not condone publishing personal details
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/privacy.html#Personal_Information [indymedia.org.uk]
Indymedias policy of not logging IP addresses is well known to the Police.
Its difficult to see what reason they could have for pulling this machine, other than low level harrasssment.
Re:Freedom of the press? (Score:5, Informative)
Indymedia, in the UK or elsewhere, is not just a collection of private adresses. An open publishing platform, it is mostly used by grassroots movements, individuals and smaller NGOs, reporting about demonstrations, actions and protests from the perspective of those involved. It also contains all sorts of rants, sometimes political, sometimes not, sometimes clever, sometimes hard to understand. Most Indymedia collectives are trying to get posters to stick to reports about political practice. But having the open publishing ethos at the heart of the project, other types of posting are often left on the newswire. However, the posting of details about third parties is discouraged and, like in this case, removed.
Indymedia is not the type of journalism we know from the mass media. The content is produced by a wide range of people. Some are used to the framework of corporate journalism (which includes, in the best case, professional standards of quality journalism, but also the constraints of a commercial project). Others are DIY journalists, people who are learning by doing and creating their own standards. Because contributors to indymedia don't need to worry about whether a story will sell or not, they can cover issues that would otherwise go completely unnoticed. In this way, Indymedia fullfills an important function for a society, no?
ps sorry for posting as coward, don't usually post to slashdot.
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Assuming that indymedia were uncooperative with the investigation, I have to concur completely.
SHAC, PETA, and SPEAK are all basically different wings of the ALF. None of these groups are 'pro animal rights' and are all just anti science. I get annoyed as the next person when the WI (or some other harmless group) gets put on the list of terror organisations, but these people are sick barsteds hell bent on sending us back to the dark ages and sacrificing (literally) scientists who conduct vital research on
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I don't have all the facts, and I doubt you do either. If indymedia refused the police any access to their servers there was no way for the police to confirm what you are saying.
I agree with you that it is highly unlikely that the police would have got anything from the indymedia servers, but I also don't know to what extent indymedia co-operated with this investigation. The releases by indymedia have in no way convinced me they were fully co-operative with the police.
The bottom line is that we simply don't
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Someone commits a crime on your premises. You stop that crime. The police come by to investigate. You refuse to help them potentially concealing the identity of the criminal. They then go get a warrant to compel you to hand over evidence. Thats how it works.
Indymedia's servers were not seized because of the comment, but because they wouldn't reveal the posters identity. They claim (and incidentally I believe them, that kind of information certainly is not going to be on a mirror) that they don't have that p
Re:Freedom of the press? (Score:4, Insightful)
More like someone commits a crime on your premises. You stop the crime. Police ask you for video tape and you honestly tell them "I don't have a video camera". So they seize your cash register.
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This is a pointless discussion. You and I have no idea what transpired here with reguards to indymedia co-operating with the police. We don't know if the police said "let us send over one of our experts to check your server and make sure you are telling us the truth". We haven't a sweet clue.
When it comes to anti science terrorism I'm prepared to give the police the benefit of the doubt until I hear evidence otherwise.
It isn't like I'm being intractable here. You go find me evidence that the police didn't s
Re:Freedom of the press? (Score:5, Informative)
The ALF - Animal Liberation Front, a terrorist group that uses everything from arson to blackmail to murder nominally to end animal cruelty. Actually they are just a bunch of idiots who hate business people and scientists for their sucesses.
SHAC - Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, high ranking members of SHAC have ties to the ALF.
SPEAK - A derivative of SPEAC, Stop Primate Experimentation at Cambridge. Another front for the ALF dedicated to attacking the University of Oxford and preventing vital research.
PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. A group whose leader has ties to the ALF and which has funnelled funds to known ALF members.
BUAV - British Union for the Abolition of Visection. An actual animal rights group. Engages in non-violent protest, often aids companies that want to ensure that their products are not the result of animal cruelty. A legitimate protest group
I happen to disagree with. The first four are all basically the same group, with PETA, SPEAK and SHAC acting as funding fronts for the ALF. The latter are by and large good people I disagree with.
But the "real press" does it all the time! (Score:2)
Other people's private personal information is not "political content".
Below is a story from the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times:
ST. PETERSBURG -- A 54-year-old man was struck and killed by a truck Friday night while walking his bicycle across U.S. 19.
James Allen, of 2445 38th St. N in St. Petersburg, was crossing in the 3700 block about 6:45 p.m. when he was hit by a northbound 2000 Ford pickup driven by Brian Aldrich, 39, of 3776 28th Ave. N, St. Petersburg, according to a St. Petersburg police report.
linky: http://blogs.tampabay.com/breakingnews/2009/01/st-petersburg-2.html [tampabay.com]
Ignoring for a moment the (significant) differences between the US and UK... When the mainstream media freely publishes names and addresses of the people involved in newsworthy events, it becomes problematic to censor that information when it's published by non-mainstream media.
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Police regarded it as a threat to the trial judge. (Score:5, Informative)
I know everyone is going to jump up and down about the right to free speech, but that isn't really the topic here.
The police regarded the comment as an implicit threat to the trial judge, which would not come under "free speech" laws in many (most?) countries.
They seized a *mirror* of the main server (the main site is still up a running just fine), in order to try to trace the original poster, and requested that the comment was removed from the site, which it has been.
The main issue I see here is one of oversight, who's there to check that the police only look for forensics on the original poster, and don't start a fishing expedition on the seized server?
Threee letters solution (Score:2)
With regards to speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Something people forget is that it isn't an unlimited right. Really, no rights are unlimited in a free society. Why? Well for you to have an unlimited right, implies that your right could infringe on my rights to some degree. For example suppose you had an unlimited right to speech. That would mean you could call for me to be killed. You could tell everyone that I should die, explain how best to kill me and so on, and I've have no recourse. You could lie about me continuously to people I care about in an attempt to harm me, you could harass me at every opportunity, and so on. While you having no limits to your right might make you more free, it would make me less free. In fact you find that the only place where people have near unlimited rights are dictatorships. The dictator has the right to do basically whatever they want. However that comes at the expense of more or less everyone else.
Thus in free societies we have to have some limits to rights. We can't have a situation of "You do whatever you want." It has to be more along the lines of "You can do whatever you want, so long as that doesn't interfere with other people." Thus we get laws that restrict rights to an extent. You can say what you like, but not if you are threatening others. You can own all kinds of property, but you can't own other people. You can burn a flag but you can't burn your neighbor's flag and so on.
So people need to get over this idea that you can just say whatever you want and there are never any consequences. No, not the case. You can say a whole lot, speech is one of the most permissive rights in most free countries, but there are limits. A threat would certainly be a limit just about everywhere.
Any time you see a limitation like that, and you think it is unfair, ask yourself how you'd feel if you were on the receiving end. If your life was being threatened, would you be ok with that, or would you then want the person threatening you arrested? Because remember: You can't have it both ways. It can't be ok for you to do it to someone else, but not someone else to do it to you.
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How would I feel about about being threatened? I would say, bring it on, bitch. I'll fucking kill you.
Good for you, Internet Tough Guy.
Now how would you feel if they were threatening your 6 year old instead?
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Obviously it can't be to trace the original poster (why seize a mirror, or anything at all since Indymedia does not log ips),
Well, yes, I agree the motivations of the police could partly be to put pressure on a "critical" organization. Putting a check on how eager the police are to investigate a crime like this would be part of the oversight I mentioned.
However, the point about the logs is irrelevant:
"No officer, there's no need to come into my house, even if someone had committed a crime, I keep it so clean there'd be no evidence in there"
If the police believe a crime has been committed, they *have* to investigate it fully, and
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If someone posts something illegal, the government shouldn't be allowed to take the wall because we already pressure washed the fingerprints off.
Says you, but how would the police know that you actually did this or actually know how to make it forensically "clean"? They don't and therefore should examine that cork board. They'd be negligent if they didn't.
The grocery store should not have to keep a record of every person that may potentially post an illegal message. And a website should not be subject to search and seizure because of an anonymous post. We the people do not want to be tracked all the time. We want anonymity. Anonymity cannot be stopped.
No, they shouldn't, but they should also be prepared to have their board examined if someone does post an illegal message.
This article makes me imagine a scenario like this:
Cops: Give us your surveillance tapes.
Business: We have no security cameras, or tapes.
Cops: We will decide who has cameras or not by seizing everything in your business indefinitely.
Now imagine this one:
Cops: Can we inspect your hunting knife? We suspect it was used in a murder.
Murdering bastard: I have no knife! You're mistaken.
Cops; oh, OK, sorry to have
The Message Is Clear (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no problem with the police taken the action they have, far from using their powers to "repress" anyone they are taking appropriate action to prevent groups like SHAC from harassing people, blackmailing them and generally making their lives a misery.
In the article linked to in the header they are 'concerned' that the police have been instructed by their political masters to clamp down on anyone daring to threaten 'the corporations'. The author has obviously totally missed the point that primarily the activism isn't targetted at 'corporations' but at individuals who happen to work at them. It's usually not the 'corporation' which is branded as a paedophile in a leaflet campaign in it's neighbourhood, it's not the 'corporation' who has masked terrorists driving around his house at night shouting abuse and making threats and it's not corporations whose dead relatives are dug up and then held for ransom. Usually it's a delivery driver, admin assistant anyone who is unlucky enough to be targetted by these groups.
I personally would not want to be relentlessly attacked in this matter because some random group of nutters took exception to something the company I worked for is involved in and I welcome any attempts by the government or the police to stand up and do something about it.
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Agreed. These people are terrorists
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=42 [splcenter.org]
A Chicago insurance executive might seem like one of the last people who'd be opening a letter with this succinctly chilling message: "You have been targeted for terrorist attack."
But that's what happened last year, when a top official at Marsh USA Inc. was informed that he and his company's employees had landed in the crosshairs of an extremist animal rights group. The reason? Marsh provides insurance for one of
It was not even employees who were harrased. (Score:3, Interesting)
The toughs now in jail were not even bright enough to harass employees of the company doing the animal testing. They were not even bright enough to harass employees of companies doing business with them.
They would find names of big conglomerates doing business (in ways that often were extremely derivative, like messaging companies), choose a company from the group (that had nothing to do with animal testing) and then start harassing lets say the janitor.
Anything the police does to put those individuals in j
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The UK government has acted against SHAC in the way that governments are good at: the people who committed the harassment will be in jail for some time.
I find it very difficult ever to justify confiscating servers, because of the huge other-nonoffending-use argument; I'd be entirely at ease with a court order requiring the cooperation of the sysadmin with the police in investigating the origin of the illegal posting while keeping the machine up, but taking the machine away seems a disproportionate impact on
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My main complaint with seizures is that they can often turn into a form of punishment without a charge even being filed. Simply siezing somebody's bank account for a few years and returning it can cause financial ruin. Siezing a critical server in a start-up that can't afford to replace it can have similar results.
Perhaps siezure should require immediate compensation?
You bust a suspected robbery ring and want to sieze $500k in cash as evidence. Fine, but go ahead and hand them $500k in newly minted bills
Re:The Message Is Clear (Score:4, Insightful)
Everything you've said is totally beside the point. A judge not wanting his personal details published has nothing to do with his pride and everything to do with not wanting to open himself up to the kind of abuse these groups have routinely subjected people who they disagree with to. Secondly the police had a warrant to seize this server which is totally within the law and absolutely not theft of any kind.
3rd time unlucky for IndyMedia (Score:4, Informative)
It also happened in 2005: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/28/indymedia_server_seizure_bristol/ [theregister.co.uk] in Bristol, UK, again relating to the G8 conference.
An analogy (Score:2)
Imagine if /. servers got seized everytime someone saw fit to post comments with the addresses related to the "bad guy" in response to a story. Indymedia had already pulled said comments, does /. even have such a facility? I find some of what gets put on Indymedia to be massively disagreeable, OTOH I'm not a big fan of servers being pulled at random either.
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Most /.'ers are not rabid foaming at the mouth loonies and they don't have a history of relentlessly hounding people who disagree with them. I expect most readers of Indymedia are equally law abiding but there is obviously a small group of people who may have read those personal details and used them to engage in a criminal campaign of intimidation.
It wouldn't surprise me if a few people here would go that far. It only takes one.
The best defense... (Score:3, Informative)
Is shared-hosting... and backups, off-site naturally.
In that case, if they seize the server, they are seizing my site... and the site of more then 1000 other hosted sites...
And with the backups, you are ready to just setup another host, and update everything in no time... ;)
Is there any way police could obtain the data? (Score:2)
Since this was a mirrored server that does not log IP addresses, is there any way we can think of that the police could use information stored on the server to identify the individual poster?
Just off the top of my head, if the original post was still stored on the server, they could perhaps obtain the time punch as to when the comment was submitted.
Democracy demands tolerance. (Score:2, Insightful)
Democracy per definition demands tolerance to non politically correct views and beliefs. Democracy cant exist without totally free speech since whats forbidden today is totally ok tomorrow. Just step back twenty years and there is plenty of stuff that was forbidden to talk about then thats just plain PC nowadays.
A democracy without free speech is just a scam and not a single bit better than communism, nazism, monarchy or dictatorship. I hate it when people try to redefine free speech to be some quasi-free e
Seized? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds like the police turned up without a warrant, asked the people running the hosting company, and they just handed it over.
Not a "freedom of speech"/"police"/"big brother" issue. More of a "watch out who hosts your servers".
If I had hosting with that company, I would remove it immediately for that.
We Are The Solution (Score:2)
We are smarter than they are. Remember "Tubes"? Don't want government in your server? Serve the pages from country X, put the database in country Y. For that matter distribute the database from Y, X and Z.
There are solutions. When what's available today quits working by then very smart college students will have designed a web server similar to P2P. They had better get used to having the free flow of information. We're only one generation removed from the catch phrase "Information Wants to be Free."
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On the flip side.
I run a website explaining photography, I provide links to loads of other photographs sites but I get loads of hits on my site because of a lens I reviewed a few months back. It isn't even a professional review, just me explaining my new lens type of review but with loads of pics. Next to the lens review link is another page with details for photographers ex
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Re:Well. (Score:5, Interesting)
"You updated a website protesting animal cruelty vs drug companies. Now we're gonna smack you with a conspiracy charge for 4.5 years in prison."
Try, "you were basically CIO of a terrorist organisation."
SHAC/ALF are not a group protesting animal cruelty. They are a bunch of anti science luddites hell bent on hurting scientists and engineers.
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Yeah and Sinn Fein wasn't just the IRA with a pretty logo.
PETA, SHAC, SPEAK. These are just fund raising groups for the ALF. I believe the GP is not refering to the indymedia, but to the conviction of SHAC members for conspiracy to blackmail that set these events in motion.
The GP seems to be upset because SHAC/ALF terrorists were convicted after a violent and malicious campaigned of intimidation, the only purpose of which is to attack scientists and engineers.
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SHAC/ALF are not a group protesting animal cruelty. They are a bunch of anti science luddites hell bent on hurting scientists and engineers.
I don't understand why you keep saying this. Do you have any proof that these people target scientists and engineers outside of fields that involve animal testing?
P.S. Read up about the Luddites sometime. They weren't anti-technology for its own sake, but rather because it took away people's livelihood.
Re:Well. (Score:4, Insightful)
They sent death threats, they posted leaflets saying people were paedophiles, they phoned in bomb threats. This isn't just protesting, this is terrorism (and no that's not misusing the word, they're trying to achieve political goals by violence and spreading fear).
Pardon me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Freedom of the press does not apply to "journalists" only, because once you start applying it only to an arbitrary and subjective definition of "journalism", you now have a loophole the size of a galactic cluster.
It doesn't matter if it's CNN or little timmy's html experiments, if you kill people's websites and jail them for what they SAY, you are a tyrant!
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The idea that you must somehow be a
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Andy Robbins is a police officer, he's not (normally) entitled to privacy as regards being identified in connection with his work as a police officer. The British Police Force is not quite the STASI yet.
You think SHAC is odious, GP thinks SHAC is odious, I think SHAC is odious. Perhaps Indymedia doesn't think they're odious, the fact that you condone the police harassing them (and causing damage to their operation that costs real money to put right) because of that viewpoint is the exact problem that GP is
I'm more concerned about the EU directive... (Score:3, Interesting)
SHAC members [...] threatened people with violence and otherwise intimidate people, they'd print out leaflets saying that contractors working with Huntington animal research were paedophiles and put them through their neighbours letter boxes.
Christ, John Grubor did worse than that to me back when he was ranting his way through Usenet. It never even occurred to me to call in the cops. We're talking tens of thousands of hate messages. I should have demanded Google's servers instead of just asking them to turf
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If I was in boy george's house at the time, I would fully expect to be called in for formal police questioning which I wouldn't be able to refuse without penalty. No one has been arrested here.
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