Home > FBI took the hard drives of IMC servers in the UK

FBI took the hard drives of IMC servers in the UK

by Open-Publishing - Friday 8 October 2004
2 comments

Edito Internet G7 - G8... UK Italy

"The FBI issued an order to Rackspace in the US (Indymedia’s provider with offices
in the US and London) to remove physically one of our servers. The order was
so short term that Rackspace had to give away our hard drives in the UK. The
servers hosted numerous local IMCs. If you find a site is down: that might be
the reason"

The servers "ahimsa 2" have the following Indymedias: Nantes, Belgrade,
Liege, Oost-Vlaanderen, Andorra, Euskalherria, Lille, Nice, the U.K., Poland,
Uruguay, Italy, Ammazonia, Brasil, Portugal, WVL, Prague, Marseilles, Galiza,...

Indy Nantes had some problems after the passage of one article whith the photos
of 2 Swiss police officers catches during manif anti G8 2003. The Swiss ask for
help to the FBI:

– See the article of Indy Nantes here

Bellaciao Collective

Forum posts

  • FBI Seizes IMC Servers in the UK

    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 successful with their victories for example against Diebold and the Patriot 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.

    Meraviglia

  • Unfortunately, we have received a federal order to provide your hardware to the requesting agency. We are complying at this time. Our datacenter technicians are building you a new server which will be online as soon as possible. Your account manager will notify you once the new server is online and available.

    I apologize for abruptness of this. However, we are required to comply with all federal orders of this nature.

    Please let us know if there is anything that we can do to make this easier on you.

    Regards,

    Jennifer O’Connell
    AUP Administrator
    Rackspace Managed Hosting