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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=562&u=/ap/20041026/ap_on_hi_te/web_server_seizure_3&printer=1
Web Server Takedown Called Speech Threat
Tue Oct 26, 3:05 PM ET
By ELLEN SIMON, AP Technology Writer
Devin Theriot-Orr, a member a feisty group of reporter-activists
called Indymedia, was surprised when two FBI (news - web sites) agents
showed up at his Seattle law office, saying the visit was a "courtesy
call" on behalf of Swiss authorities.
Theriot-Orr was even more surprised a week later when more than 20
Indymedia Web sites were knocked offline as the computer servers that
hosted them were seized in Britain.
The Independent Media Center, more commonly known as Indymedia, says
the seizure is tantamount to censorship, and civil libertarians agree.
The Internet is a publishing medium just like a printing press, they
argue, and governments have no right to remove Web sites.
The case, which involves an Internet company based in Texas, photos of
undercover Swiss police officers and a request from an Italian
prosecutor investigating anarchists, raises questions about the
circumstances under which Internet companies can be compelled to turn
over data.
"The implications are profound," said Barry Steinhardt of the American
Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites), calling the Indymedia
activists "classic dissenters" and likening the case to "seizing a
printing press or shutting down a radio transmitter."
"It smells to high heaven," he said.
Internet providers in the United States routinely remain silent when
ordered by authorities to turn over data, though actual seizures of
their servers is rare.
The Oct. 7 seizure involves a particularly vocal group Indymedia
activists work in 140 collectives around the world from the Czech
Republic to Uruguay to western Massachusetts and their sites get about
18 million page views a month _and generated intense interest in
Europe, including questioning in Britain's House of Commons.
The two computers were seized from the London office of Texas-based
Rackspace Managed Hosting, and while they were returned Oct. 12 and
all the sites are now back up, some that didn't have back up are
missing posts and photos.
The governments involved did not provide The Associated Press with a
clear picture of what was sought or which country initiated the
action.
Richard Allan, a Liberal Democrat, asked in Britain's Parliament last
week whether the Home Office, which is responsible for domestic
security, had ordered the seizure.
Home Office spokeswoman Caroline Flint said, "I can confirm that no UK
law enforcement agendas were involved in the matter referred to."
On Friday, a motion was filed in San Antonio federal court to unseal
the original order in the case.
"The significance of this is that apparently, a foreign government,
based on a secret process, can have the U.S. government silence
independent news sources without ever having to answer to the American
people about how that kind of restraint could happen," said Keith
Bankston, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which
drafted the motion. "Every press organization should be asking, 'Am I
next?'"
The FBI issued a statement saying that, "at the request of a foreign
law enforcement agency," it assisted in serving Rackspace with a U.S.
subpoena for Indymedia records. "Rackspace located the Indymedia
records on servers in the United Kingdom. A brief interruption of
Indymedia's Internet service resulted when Rackspace copied the
subpoenaed records from their servers. There is no FBI or U.S.
investigation into Indymedia."
Said one FBI source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, "There were
two different requests from two different countries that are in no way
connected, except that both pertain to Indymedia." The requests to
handle the cases came through the countries' embassies, to the
Department of Justice (news - web sites), then to the FBI, he said.
"The FBI does not have a dog in this fight," the official added.
Bologna prosecutor Marina Plazzi told the AP that she had requested
information about Indymedia-posted material from the United States.
She stressed that her request did not seek "the seizure of servers or
hard disks." Plazzi is investigating an anarchist group that has made
bomb threats against European Commission (news - web sites) President
Romano Prodi.
Bologna prosecutors said in a statement that they made a request to
U.S. authorities for "specific and targeted information about (the)
Indymedia provider. This request concerns neither the management nor
the content of the Web Site."
"There was no reply to this request," the statement said. "Any other
information is bound to secrecy."
Swiss federal justice authorities referred questions to officials at
the state level in Geneva but those authorities did not respond.
At the crux of the Swiss case are photos posted on a French Indymedia
site of two undercover police officers posing as protesters at an
anti-globalization rally. Comments posted under the photos said they
were taken because police had photographed protesters at past rallies.
Swiss police have also posted images of protesters on police Web
sites, labeling them "troublemakers" and asking the public for
information about them.
In late September, Rackspace sent Indymedia an FBI notice about the
photos, which were on an Indymedia site operated out of Nantes,
France.
Rackspace sent the note to an Indymedia volunteer, who passed on the
request to the Indymedia collective in Nantes. The Nantes collective
then obscured the faces of the two Swiss officers, covering them with
photos of the characters Mulder and Scully from the show "The X
Files," he said.
Theriot-Orr said the F.B.I agents who later visited him asked about
the Nantes Indymedia operation that had posted the photos of the Swiss
police officers.
A statement on Indymedia sites attributed to Rackspace said the
company had complied with a "court order pursuant to a Mutual Legal
Assistance Treaty" that lets countries assist each other "in
investigations such as international terrorism, kidnapping and money
laundering."
"Rackspace is acting as a good corporate citizen," the statement
added. "The court prohibits Rackspace from commenting further on this
matter." Rackspace spokeswoman Annalie Drusch refused further comment.
"If it was all about those photographs, whatever they tried to do
backfired," Indymedia volunteer David Meieran in Pittsburgh said of
authorities. "Now they're mirrored on 300 Web sites around the world."
"It's like trying to grab water," said Meieran. "The Internet is all
over the place. You can't reach in and try to grab a photograph and
expect it's not going to be put up anymore."
___
AP reporters Jonathan Fowler in Geneva, Marta Falconi in Rome and Ed
Johnson in London contributed to this report.
(substitutes 24th paragraph to correct that an Indymedia volunteer,
and not Theriot-Orr, passed the request along to Nantes.)
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