Reply #7: No, it was the Indymedia sites that were the target [View All]

[muriel_volestrangler]

The Guardian was just the newspaper that reported on this on Monday.

The story has been building since Thursday:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/08/fbi_indymedia_raids/
Feds seize Indymedia servers

While Indymedia is not exactly sure what prompted the action, the group does have one strong idea. A French Indymedia site last month posted photos of what it believed to be undercover Swiss police officers photographing protesters at a French event. Indymedia received a request from the FBI to pull those photos down, as they "revealed personal information" about the undercover police, said Indymedia press officer Hep Sano.

"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," wrote a Rackspace official to Indymedia earlier this week, according to Sano. "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."
...
"They never clarified what they meant by personal information," she said. "The photos were taken on a public street."

Indymedia believes the photos were eventually pulled, but ironically cannot check on this as it no longer has access to the servers or hard disks. The group has not been notified if the FBI is even involved in this seizure or whether or not the servers or just hard disks were confiscated.

As people say, this may be a general fishing expedition, using the photos as an excuse. Indymedia is a site that seems to allow just about anyone to put up 'news stories' without checking by anyone (so really should be regarded as a bulletin board, rather than a news organisation). The FBI, or whoever, may have been hoping to get the details of who originated some stories on there.

It worries me that this seizure happened so easily in the UK, and it didn't even need the police, it seems - just David Blunkett and his Home Office apparatchiks.