Press Release
7 October 2004
FBI Seizes IMC Servers in the UK
US authorities issued a federal order to Rackspace's office in the US
ordering them to provide Indymedia's hardware located in London to the
requesting agency. Rackspace is one of Indymedia's web hosting providers
with offices in the US and London. Rackspace complied, without first
notifying Indymedia, and turned over Indymedia's server in the UK. This
affects some 20+ Indymedia sites worldwide.
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 a second 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 successfull with their
victories for example against Diebold and the Patroit 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.
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