Re: <nettime> indymedia servers in UK seized by FBI

[andy@remotelinux.com]

unlicensed media, i.e., indymedia organizers are going to be found under
the law directly responsible for the information they provide.  whereas
corporate journalists can always be fired (as in the case of CNN's
editor/reporter during Impact on September 14, 1997, entitled "The Secret
Warriors," described general SOG activities in Southeast Asia from 1968 to
1970.  A second segment, entitled "Valley of Death," was part of the
inaugural broadcast of NewsStand: CNN & Time on June 7, 1998.  It
described a SOG mission called Operation Tailwind in which American troops
engaged in the Vietnamese conflict entered Laos from September 11 to
September 14, 1970.  A third broadcast, aired on June 14, 1998, updated
the earlier segment.  This report focuses on CNN's depiction of Operation
Tailwind and the conclusions about that mission that CNN offered during
its June 7, 1998 report.  CNN retracted the story and fired the employees
involved.  And more recently with the New York Times reporter at risk of
18 months imprisonment for refusing to divulge a confidential source to
prosecutors investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's
identify).  information security awareness for activists of any stripe is
surprisingly bad given the fact that their agenda is contra powers that
be.  my personal rules regarding system administration is 1. do not trust
anything or one, 2. backup before rule number 1. the scenario in question
could of been avoided by hosting the servers in a different (cheaper host)
country or through a combination of IP tunnels and dynamic dns, but thats
not the point i wish to address.  journalists are a prime target in the
culture of myopia in which we live.  especially sanctioned journalists.  
media itself has no other value then the effect it produces.  disruption
of service is as effective as not having a service in the first place.  
at the risk of sounding critical to indymedia centers i have so much
respect for i would point out that were clear channel or fox news to have
a hard drive or server put out of commission the sheit would keep on
coming.  decentralizing indymedia it networks (mirroring sites, etc).  a
network is only as strong as its weakest node and this is an example i
feel is a broad lesson beyond the indymedia circles it affected,
maintaining a high availability on the cultural spectrum during a low
intensity conflict.

andy

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004, matthew  fuller wrote:

>    http://www.indymedia.org/ servers seized by FBI
> 
>    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.
 <...>


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