h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3732718.stm
Just one of many takes ont he subject.

Servers located in the UK and owned by the logistically seperate (as I understand it) UK subsidiary of USA company Indymedia were impounded by the FBI at the request of Swiss and Itallian authorities.
Indymedia (or whatever the company name was, forgot now!) claim to not know why this has happened.
Certain authorities feel it is highly dubious under the US-UK agreements.
One site I saw seemed to think it had something to do with the hosting of a (possibly french) webpage which contained the photo of two Swiss intelligence agents (although later claims were that they were not identifiable fromt he photo).

So, assuming my rush to get this on here (cos am supposed to be working) hasn't upset the scarce facts too much all I can say is 'What a mess eh?'.

From my reading it looks like the servers actually belonged to a US company with a UK office... but that's besides the by!

I suspect this is some kind of kneejerk reaction to try and get something taken off-line - in which case it's a ruddy stupid idea as the websites they want rid of will just shift to another server somewhere in outer mongolia (ever heard of backups you guys in the FBI?)

If they were actually after some information stored on a _web_ server then it shouldn't be _too_ hard to get to - even if the stuff was protected they've got a friendly bunch of people over in Fort Meade who are pretty good at cracking any encryption you could get publically.

Indymedia is not an American 'company' as such. It is a global network of independant and 'lay' journalists that has been very active in reporting things that you won't find on CNN etc eg it's the best place to go for up to date news whenever there are anti-globalisation actions happening. It's also a good source of local news not covered by the mainstream.

There are many indymedia sites worldwide so if the US or UK ones go down you can probably find out what is going on on another country's site.

You can go to indymedia's own coverage of what is happening (although they don't seem to know much either at this stage): http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml

I guess it is possible that indymedia is a front for terrorism, but I think it is much more likely that this is another attempt by the 'authorities' to control information. There has been alot of activity by various nations attempting to control information about globalisation and the antiglobalisation movements, especially at protest actions, so it would make sense that they would target a network that was reporting on this. It seems a pretty stupid thing to have done though.



"don't hate the media, become the media"

Here's a bit more from The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/11/home_office_fbi_mlat_request/

Wow, this is fascinating! I had no idea they could do this!

I suppose if it happened to them it could happen to us. A lot less likely I guess, particularly to the DNA servers, but the BBC ones could theoretically be affected if someone posted up the wrong picture at the wrong time.

I wonder whether the FBI will give the servers back? And if they do, will they be carefully picked clean, or just wiped?

<>
Maybe both

So does the term 'server' refer to a harddrive? And would the server of a site the size of indymedia have only indymedia information on it? Do smaller websites share servers?

I think what happened has very interesting sovereignty issues for the UK. The FBI getting permission from the British government to seize private property in England on behalf of the Swiss and Italians seems very bizarre.

I imagine the BBC is fairly immune because there would be a PR nightmare if they tried this there? I guess Indymedia is considered pretty unimportant, which is quite a mistake IMO given the youth involvement there.

I don't know if it's the servers or just the harddrives that were taken but it seems like they have been returned.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/14/indymedia_servers_back/

Ok, now this is getting decidely bizarre!

The FBI, working for the Swiss, can demand that servers in the UK be seized for inspection and stop anyone talking about it - then they just hand them back afterwards without a word!

Anyone ever heard of accountability?

Not to mention 'national borders'.

Servers are what they took. A server is, put simply, a computer. Although a darn sight more complcated, powerful and expensive than the one on your desk (unless you are very lucky!).
Servers either contain, or are linked up to, hard disks. In large installations the server will have a small harddisk on which is installed the operating system, and then a big disk farm, which is basically some clever hardware and lots of hard disks in its own seperate unit, is linked to the server. And yes, it does get a lot more complicated than that.
Given the companies and so forth involved, and the terminology used, I guess we are talking self contained servers.

Interesting that the company are treating the servers as compromised (or 'hacked') and therefore quarantining them until they have fully checked and rebuilt them.

Oh, and yes, servers can be either dedicated or shared, depends on what your use requires.

I also find it interesting that the Reg. article says that indymedia don;t know if rackspace are still under a gagging order.

And noone knows the whys and wherefores.

Maybe be we shouldn't be so quick to sneer about the land of the free - apparently the UK is now the land of readily available.

The liberties issues in this are huge, not that either government involved has a particularly good record on human rights.

Once upon a time there was an agreed protocol, which was followed - overtly, and if someone was caught breaking the rules they were pilloried. owadays if you're caught breaking the rules - you lie, spin, suppress, and subvert.

Such a shame we'll no longer be able to enjoy a site that gives us "the truth"

such as:

http://newswire.indymedia.org/en/newswire/2004/05/802998.shtml

oh

Good riddance.

That posting does not appear to represent the bulk of the contributions on the Indymedia website, and may even have been "planted" to stir up controversy. I am inclined to believe this.

In fact, the majority of articles seem to be from journalists who cannot have their voices heard in their own countries because their media does not enjoy the relative freedom that ours do. As has been recently shown, repression has no boundaries.

I may not agree (in fact, I heartily disagree) with the writer's point of view. However, therein lies Free Speech. The point is that he has just as much right to be an ignorant a##hole as another journalst has not to be dragged off and be tortured and murdered for telling the truth about the situation in his or her country.

Yes, but Indymedia doesn't just publish any-old-thing that can't be published there. It's an ideological site with a very particular worldview and the holocaust-denying article plainly (they must think) fits in with that.

If that's the quality of "political journalism" that the site usually contains then we've lost nothing really. It's a terrible, ranting, blatently anti-Jewish article written in a way to appeal to anti-American and anti-Israeli thinkers. And the writer is very very fond of scare-quotes.

"LONG LIVE PALESTINE,FREE AND ARAB, FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA!!!
DEATH TO THE ZIONIST ENTITY!!!"

Oh, and he seems to support genocide and a racist state too. What a f**king surprise.

Like I said, Good riddance.

I'll agree with you that the site has an agenda and most of the reporting appears to be sensationalist idiocy, but even so this unexplained seizure of their servers sets a dangerous precedent.

Well, we don't know *why* the seizures took place. There's an awful lot of crank sites publishing an awful lot of anti-US material out there and the FBI seem to be leaving them alone. We should probably wait until we know the full story.

But surely we shoud know why by now?

Maybe nobody really cares.