- Devin Theriot-Orr, a member a feisty group of reporter-activists
called Indymedia, was surprised when two FBI 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, 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
ó 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, 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 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.
-
- Copyright © 2004 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority
of The Associated Press.
-
- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid
=562&e=10&u=/ap/20041027/ap_on_hi_te/web_server_seizure
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