FBI
Seizes Indymedia Servers
In The UK
By Press Release
10 October, 2004
Indymedia.org
Thursday morning, US authorities issued
a federal order to Rackspace ordering them to hand over information
hosted on Indymedia web servers to the FBI. Rackspace, which provides
hosting services for more that 20 Indymedia sites at its London facility,
complied by turning over two Indymedia servers to federal authorities,
effectively removing those sites from the internet.
Request Came
From Italy And Switzerland
Indymedia has learned
that the request to seize Indymedia servers hosted by a US company in
the UK originated from government agencies in Italy and Switzerland.
More than 20 Indymedia sites, several internet radio streams and other
projects were hosted on the servers. They were taken offline on October
7th after an order was issued to Rackspace, Inc., one of Indymedia's
web hosting providers.
The reasons for
the court order or who actually holds the servers now are still unknown
to Indymedia.
According to Italian
news agency reports and an Agence France-Presse (AFP) interview with
FBI spokesman Joe Parris, the FBI acted on Italian and Swiss requests.
"It is not an FBI operation," Parris told AFP. "Through
a legal assistance treaty, the subpoena was on behalf of a third country."
(1)
Earlier today Rackspace
published a statement that they turned over the servers in response
to an order under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT). The MLAT
establishes procedures for countries to assist each other in investigations
regarding international terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering.
The court prohibits Rackspace from commenting further on this matter.
(2)
An Indymedia system
administrator stated: "We do not know if Rackspace is under a gag
order, or what legal restrictions were imposed requiring them to act
this way, or whether their legal department had enough time to study
the request."
Aidan White, the
General Secretary for the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
had this to say. "We have witnessed an intolerable and intrusive
international police operation against a network specialising in independent
journalism. The way this has been done smacks more of intimidation of
legitimate journalistic inquiry than crime-busting." (3)
Indymedia condemns
the fact that even 24 hours after two entire servers were taken down,
Indymedia is still not getting any information of the reasons for the
order.
By taking down two
servers more than 20 Indymedia sites were affected in different countries
globally as well as several unrelated projects. Indymedia considers
this extremely invasive operation a a serious threat to the Freedom
of Speech worldwide.
Indymedia insists
that the servers are returned because each day they are inoperable and
Indymedia's irreplaceable data is unaccessible means greater material
damages to the Indymedia operation worldwide.
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 New York City Independent Media Center before the Republican National
Convention by trying to obtain their IP logs from ISPs in the US and
the Netherlands. Also, in the past month, the FCC shut down community
radio stations throughout the US. Despite these setbacks, Indymedia
and other independent media organizations have enjoyed recent victories
against Diebold and the Patriot Act.
The list of local
media collectives affected by the FBI seizure includes Ambazonia, Uruguay,
Andorra, Poland, Western Massachusetts, Nice, Nantes, Lilles, Marseille,
Euskal Herria (Basque Country), Liege, East and West Vlaanderen, Antwerpen
(all Belgium), Belgrade, Portugal, Prague, Galiza, Italy, Brazil, UK,
and Germany. Additionally, several streaming radio stations, a Linux
distribution site, and other services hosted on those servers were also
affected.
For more information,
please contact Hep at 415-867-9472 or email [email protected].
Additional information about Indymedia is available at http://www.indymedia.org/.