US Government Seizes Indymedia & BLAG Servers

Hello,

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,

Jeff, I also wanted to let you know that we did attempt to call you. However, your voicemail said that your mailbox was full.

Regards,

Subject: Please review immediately
Category: AUP Violations – Other
Severity: Standard
Status: Confirm Solved

Message Transcript:

Rackspace said:
Wed Sep 22 10:59:56 2004

Hello,

We have received a complain from the FBI regarding some images and material hosted on your server on the page below.

http://nantes.indymedia.org/article.php3?id%20article=3910

Please remove this material immediately and we understand that it contains personal information regarding two Swiss police officers as well as threats against them.

Regards,

Jennifer O’Connell
Rackspace AUP

You said:
Wed Sep 22 15:55:45 2004

Ok. I just received this message from you. I don’t speak french so I don’t know what it says (trying babelfish).

/me looking for the nantes webmaster…

You said:
Wed Sep 22 16:26:53 2004

Ok. I just spoke to someone who speaks french. I’m not sure what personal info the FBI is talking about. It doesn’t even list their names, let alone addresses, phone numbers, or whatever. Also, where’s the threat?

Perhaps they can list the sentences they want removed (?). Are they saying the photos need to be removed? On what grounds?

I haven’t gotten ahold of a Nantes webmaster yet (it’s late there).

Rackspace said:
Thu Sep 23 10:07:27 2004

Hello,

The FBI has requested that the text and images be removed. The police in Geneva, Switzerland have deemd this information to be threatening to two of its officers. As per the complaint we received, “Photographs of the officers, along with the personal residence information, appears on the site. The Swiss also reported that the web site included an article suggestive of threats against the officers and that other messages of a threatening nature were placed on the Swiss platform of the web site.”

Therefore, we are requesting immediate removal of the previously mentioned pages, text and images.

Regards,

Jennifer O’Connell
Rackspace AUP

You said:
Thu Sep 23 16:20:25 2004

Ok, per our discussion

1) here’s a link to a translation:

http://translations.indymedia.org/Translations/1095935479

(manif is a demonstration, I believe)

2) I will let you know what Nantes says after they email me

You said:
Thu Sep 23 16:31:28 2004

I also got one email saying that originally there was personal info posted, but it was removed. It’s generally against the Indymedia guidelines to post personal stuff, so they probably removed it even before we heard about it.

You said:
Fri Sep 24 21:48:31 2004

Ok. I was offline for a day and my mailserver crashed (doh!). Its at another ISP… Anyway, I don’t have a message from them because of this. But it appears everything is OK now (?).

You said:
Sun Sep 26 12:49:20 2004

Ok. I got a message back from IMC-Nantes, which I will forward to you. There was never personal info in the post. They have put a redacted version back up.

Also, Kevin Bankston from the EFF (www.eff.org) is now working on this issue and will most likely contact you on Monday.

Thanks,

-Jeff

You said:
Sun Sep 26 12:52:46 2004

Dear Jennifer O’Connell

We have received your request about https://nantes.indymedia.org/article.php3?id_article=3910. Contrarily to your beliefs, this material does not contain any personal information such as names and addresses, except for the pictures (if you would like an english translation of the text included with the pictures, please contact us). We are aware of the problems it may have caused you, so we collectively decided to mask the police officers faces. We are very surprised that neither the swiss police nor the men on the pictures contacted us. Furthermore, if the complaint originated from the FBI, should they not contacted us first?
We would like to receive more information about all of this, and would like to know if any legal procedures have been taken. If so, could we please be notified.
We would also be very grateful if you could send us, the e-mails that were sent to you by the FBI concerning the article.

Best regards,

The imc-nantes team

You said:
Sat Oct 2 23:22:33 2004

I haven’t heard from you in over a week. What’s up? It appears that there never was any personal info, or if there was it was removed even before this ticket was opened.

The FBI visited/intimidated in person an Indymedia guy in San Francisco over this issue for some reason.

Indymedia Nantes asked me to ask you for a reply to their message (above).

Thanks,

-Jeff

Rackspace said:
Tue Oct 5 07:19:47 2004

Hello,

I apologize for the delay in responding. I have been trying to get a hold of the FBI agent I spoke with before, but haven’t been able to at this time. As the request originated with the Swiss police, I can only speculate on what they saw or what they were concerned about. However, at this time, I have received no further communications from either the FBI or the Swiss authorities, so I feel like we can close this this issue.

Regards,

Jennifer O’Connell
Rackspace AUP

You said:
Tue Oct 5 22:33:24 2004

Ok, thanks for the follow up. I’ll close the ticket. It appears they are just trolling/intimidating as they also stopped by in person to a SanFran Indymedia guy but have no real interest in actually addressing the issue or their claims.

Thanks,

Message Transcript:

You said:
Sat Oct 2 23:37:52 2004

IMMEDIATE SUSPENSION OF YOUR SERVER

On Wed Oct 15 10:25:33 2003 you (rackspace) opened the following trouble-ticket for me (to my amazement):

“We have received the following DMCA notification. Please review this and remove all cited content by 8:00am CST, tomorrow, October 16, 2003. Failure to remove this content will result in the immediate suspension of your server.”

[url to old ticket]

IMMEDIATE SUSPENSION OF YOUR SERVER

Thats not what I’d call Fanatical Customer Support, or whatever it is that you claim.

IMMEDIATE SUSPENSION OF YOUR SERVER

You may find this interesting (via EFF):
“In a landmark case, a California district court has determined that Diebold, Inc., a manufacturer of electronic voting machines, knowingly misrepresented that online commentators, including IndyMedia and two Swarthmore college students, had infringed the company’s copyrights. This makes the company the first to be held liable for violating section 512(f) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which makes it unlawful to use DMCA takedown threats when the copyright holder knows that infringement has not actually occured.”

IMMEDIATE SUSPENSION OF YOUR SERVER

You can read the Judge Jeremy Fogel’s full decision here:

Diebold_SJ_Order.pdf

IMMEDIATE SUSPENSION OF YOUR SERVER

Please reflect.

-Jeff

Rackspace said:
Sat Oct 2 23:43:25 2004

Hello Jeff,

I will need to forward this ticket over to our Accounts receivable department, so that they can further assist you. They will update this ticket as soon as possible.
Thank you for choosing Rackspace Managed Hosting!

Warm Regards,
Sarah Mathews
Support Specialist
(210)892-4000 x 1269
(800)961-4454

Rackspace said:
Mon Oct 4 07:30:53 2004

Hello,

I am sorry for the tone of the ticket you referenced. However, we are at the mercy of the DMCA as it is written. As a hosting provider, once we have received a DMCA notification, we are responsible for removing the offending material regardless of the merit of the complaint. In fact, we are not even to look into the merits of the complaint. We are only to act to remove the offending material as quickly as possible. If we fail to remove the material, we can be held liable for damages.

Unfortunately, this means that we are some times required to take customer’s servers off line if they do not act quickly to remove the offending material. While we certainly don’t like doing it, we are bound by the law as it currently reads and as our legal department interprets it.

Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to assist you!

Regards,