Independent Media Centers in legal bid to find out who seized servers

By Steve Malone

Posted on 26 Oct 2004 at 15:44

Starts legal proceedings in the US to find out who was responsible for the seizure of its servers hosted in the UK earlier this month.

The alternative news service Independent Media Centers (Indymedia), together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has started legal proceedings in the US to find out who was responsible for the seizure of its servers hosted in the UK earlier this month.

The EFF's has filed a motion to 'unseal' the ruling in the Federal court in the Western District of Texas, where EFF believes the secret court order originated.

The Indymedia servers were removed from their rackspace in London following a court order issued in Texas against the ISP Rackspace. However, due to a gagging order imposed by the court, Rackspace is unable to declare why the servers were seized at whose request or even which law enforcement agency in the US was involved.

The removal of the servers - thought to be at the instigation of a foreign government with the finger pointing at the Swiss - took down 20 IMC websites and a number of streaming radio feeds. So far, no one in US law enforcement, including the FBI, the Departments of State and Justice, and the US Attorney's Office in San Antonio, has admitted being involved in the case. Earlier this week, in an answer in Parliament, government minister Caroline Flint has stated 'that no UK law enforcement agencies were involved' in the seizure.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation says that 'the public and the press have a clear and compelling interest in discovering under what authority the government was able unilaterally to prevent Internet publishers from exercising their First Amendment rights.'

'Silencing Indymedia with a secret order is no different than censoring any other news website, whether it's USA Today or your local paper,' said Kevin Bankston, an EFF Attorney. The EFF says that the US government has to prove that it had a 'compelling state interest to order such an extreme intrusion to the rights of the publisher and the public'.