FBI subpoenas Indymedia hard drives

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Justin Rood <jrood () cq com>
Date: October 8, 2004 1:29:44 AM GMT+01:00
To: "'dave () farber net'" <dave () farber net>
Subject: FBI subpoenas Indymedia hard drives

Dave,

Was wondering if anyone on the list knew more about this than what's on 
the
Indymedia web site:

Thursday morning, US authorities issued a federal order to Rackspace
ordering them to hand over Indymedia web servers to the requesting 
agency.
Rackspace, which provides hosting services for more that 20 Indymedia 
sites
at its London facility, complied and turned over the requested servers,
effectively removing those sites from the internet.

Since the subpoena was issued to Rackspace and not to Indymedia, the 
reasons
for this action are still unknown to Indymedia. Talking to Indymedia
volunteers, Rackspace stated that "they cannot provide Indymedia with 
any
information regarding the order." ISPs have received gag orders in 
similar
situations which prevent them from updating the concerned parties on 
what is
happening.

It is unclear to Indymedia how and why a server that is outside the US
jurisdiction can be seized by US authorities.

At the same time an additional server was taken down at Rackspace which
provided streaming radio to several radio stations, BLAG (linux 
distro), and
a handful of miscellanous things.

The last few months have seen numerous attacks on independent media by 
the
US Federal Government. In August the Secret Service used a subpoena in 
an
attempt to disrupt the NYC IMC before the RNC by trying to get IP logs 
from
an ISP in the US and the Netherlands. Last month the FCC shut down 
community
radio stations around the US. Two weeks ago the FBI requested that 
Indymedia
takes down a post on the Nantes IMC that had a photo of some undercover
Swiss police and IMC volunteers in Seattle were visited by the FBI on 
the
same issue. On the other hand, Indymedia and other independent media
organisations were successfull with their victories for example against
Diebold and the Patroit Act. Today however, the US authorities shut down
IMCs around the world.

The list of affected local media collectives includes Ambazonia, 
Uruguay,
Andorra, Poland, Western Massachusetts, Nice, Nantes, Lilles, Marseille 
(all
France), Euskal Herria (Basque Country), Liege, East and West 
Vlaanderen,
Antwerpen (all Belgium), Belgrade, Portugal, Prague, Galiza, Italy, 
Brazil,
UK, part of the Germany site, and the global Indymedia Radio site.

http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml

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