Hosting Indymedia Servers is Illegal?
11 Feb 2009 12:35 GMT
This Monday, Kent Police arrested a man in Sheffield under the Serious Crime Act 2007 in relation to the recent Indymedia server seizure. His home was raided, all computer equipment and related papers taken. He was released after eight hours. The person had neither technical, administrative nor editorial access to the Indymedia UK website. He was only associated to the project by hosting its server.
The arrest took place under Section 44-46 of the Serious Crime Act, which was passed into law on 1st October 2008 to combat serious international crime like drug trafficking, prostitution, money laundering and armed robbery. Sections 44-46 refer to “encouraging or assisting offences”.
Kent police claim that they are after the IP address of the poster of two anonymous comments to a report about a recent animal liberation court case, which included personal details of the Judge. The IP address of the poster is not stored as Indymedia does not log IP addresses. This was acknowledged by British Transport Police in 2005, after the Bristol IMC server seizure.
For the police to arrest the person who happened to sign the contract for server hosting, is sheer intimidation, in light of Indymedia’s openly stated policy of no IP logging.
With the implementation of the EU Data Retention Directive in March 2009, the UK government attempts to turn every internet service provider in the country into part of the law enforcement apparatus. This legislation will provide a legal basis to track, intimidate, harass, and arrest people who are doing valuable and necessary work for social change, for example as peace activists, campaigners for economic and social justice or against police brutality.
The present intimidation of the open publishing alternative news platform Indymedia will have serious implications for anyone running a server in the UK which allows user contributions – blogs, social networking sites, wikis. This is an attempt to close down sites that respect the privacy of their contributors, pure and simple.
Move servers to the US
Anonymous 12.Feb.2009 04:04
We will not stand for any such law in the U.S. Move the Indymedia UK servers here and flaunt the police.
The US? Seriously?
Anonymous 12.Feb.2009 05:48
Considering you have no privacy and the government has routinely tapped Everything that has gone through internet they certainly wouldn't need to ask for log files. They have their own.
Or in Holland
safehost 12.Feb.2009 08:02
Craig Murray, is among a number of dissidents who host with www.safehost.nl in Holland - who carries them pro bono.
You are funny
LOG ME 12.Feb.2009 09:23
To the moron who thinks that some how the entire internet for US citizens is being logged and stored, you are a, well, moron. If you actually believe that then I got ocean front property for sale in Arizona.
Holland is in the EU...
anonymous 12.Feb.2009 14:35
So I assume the directive will hold there as well.
Sadly, it's not funny at all!
edam 12.Feb.2009 16:30
To the idiot who thinks the other guy is an moron for thinking that the US "tapped everything", you're a, well you can guess...
A quick google search for "illegal wiretapping" throws up a lot of articles to the contrary. In particular, read Wikipedia's article on room 641A. To be fair, we in the UK have the Echelon system, which operates in co-operation with the US, so I would imagine the "monitoring" is as widespread in both countries.
pro bono safehost needs support
gratefully protected activist 13.Feb.2009 04:35
just a quick comment on the above - Safehost has great tech but are also run by activists and people with consciences (read poverty struck) who have families to feed . I have been luckily provided safe hosting pro-bono for West Papua genocide and intelligence abuse issues, but whenever I have some cash (which is rare) I try to fling them a little bit here and there, in the spirit of mutual aid....
BUt they ARE protected very strongly by Dutch privacy laws, which require major court injunctions and warrants to proceed, and then they will fight it very hard. Dutch privacy law is independent from, and shielded from, EU directives. They are anti-Patriot Act too.
It was enough for me to get hooked up there, after I was threatened with a lot more than lawsuits by the Indonesian military. Being in Australia, we are also illegally subjected to an illegal Lombok Treaty, which outlaws publishing or funding on anything that could be deemed as supporting West Papuan human rights or "separtism". And I take security very seriously.
It is so safe that I don't mind saying here what my site is that is up with safehost.nl... www.manukoreri.net
a direct attack on all UK server operators
Diana 14.Feb.2009 20:28
It should not be legal to hold someone responsible for the actions of their website's users, nor should their server be taken away, especially considering the fact that it does not log any IPs. This attack makes it impossible to host anything in the UK for fear of being held responsible or having your server taken away.
Patriotic? Not so much.
M. Mor 15.Feb.2009 01:57
Yeah I'm not much for defending U.S. policies regarding online privacy. My sister went to UCI and her polisci professor actually had his students reference indymedia so they would be exposed to a liberal perspective. A few weeks into the semester, he had to warn them against it because (supposedly) frequent visitors to this site were being monitored for suspicious activity. I don't really think it was quite that simple, but still. The United States is not all about our privacy or personal liberties.
Διόρθωση
Σέργιος 16.Feb.2009 21:12
Στα ελληνικά εκεί που λέει "παράνμη" του λείπει το όμικρον βέβαια και θα πρέπε να είναι "παράνομη".
and after?
johnnybegood 18.Feb.2009 20:48
And now? what happened to the person? Has anyone moved to contest such an repressive act?
What was the crime? I want to know more about this situation.
Portuguese, this???
Alberto Campos 10.Mar.2009 21:41
The Portuguese language usage in this translation requires a deep, profound cleanup to meet less than average standards. How can one do it?
We need to calm down
John Lock 20.Mar.2009 13:23
There is a serious chance of overeaction here. AFAIK the server was taken in response to a post regarding a High Court Judges Home address. This post was moderated but the address was reposted. There are issues of speed of moderation and willingness to deal with matters that will obviously be a threat to Indymedia.
London Indymedia now requires a log in to post so that disruptive and dangerous posters can be swiftly moderated. This may be a way to go. Also London is now looking very carefully at posts that eminate from porotests that have show themselves to have poor judgement in the past. This may also be a way to ensure that Indymedia remains able to fufill it's mandate.
Anonymity
Kaze no Kae 30.Mar.2009 12:11
The thing with that idea is that it means there's information there for the pigs to demand, such as an email address which would be necessary for a log-in account to be validated and would make the lack of IP logging redundant because the pigs could get the IP from the email provider. Its a dangerous road to go down.
Sorry?
Jamie 02.Apr.2009 15:50
Why did the Kent police arrest a man in Sheffield? It's in a completely different county at the other end of the country.
Off line analogy
not impressed. 30.Apr.2009 16:11
So, it's not his website. It wasn't his comment. It was just his server.
Right. So what if I sprayed the judge's personal details on a wall, and the council came and cleaned it up, and then I resprayed it, and the council weren't so fast the second time... the cops could arrest whoever happens to own the wall? That seems to be the principle here.
servers
raisethefist.com 06.May.2009 11:20
moving the servers to the US will get you in federal prison. best thing to do is have 2 severs remote from eachother, and a script in crontab that copies all web content from one server to the other every 10 hours. Put both servers on two seperate DNS records. That way when one goes down, the other one automatically comes up. store no IP logs. Theres a ton of tricks you can do to get around this stuff and keep your content safe.
In reply to John Lock
Strypey 18.Aug.2009 02:14
Kia ora
Unlike the days when the first Indymedia.org site went up, anyone can now get a free blog and post their news and commentary online. The ability to post anonymously is one of the few unique features we can still offer activists. Often there are good reasons for an activist to post anonymously to an IMC. They may be reporting on illegal direct action which, although beneficial to people, other animals, or the environment, could land them in jail for many years if they are caught (eg ALF, ELF actions etc). They may be whistleblowers, reporting on something dodgy happening the corporation of governmental department where they work, and could risk their job or their whole career and ability to earn a living if they are identified. Finally, they might be in a country where even mild forms of activism, or having opinions contrary to the government of the day could get them jailed or killed.
If an IMC requires logins to post to the newswire, they are no longer an open-publishing site by the definition accepted in Indymedia since the early days. As such they no fulfill the membership criteria for being an IMC, and should stop using the Indymedia name and logo.
Strypey