We seize servers, you can't complain - US gov
>From The Register, November 11, 2004
By John Lettice
http://www.freepress.net/news/5333
The US Government is attempting to block efforts to find out who seized Indymedia's servers in London last month. The Government has filed a motion in San Antonio District Court opposing the Electronic Frontier Foundation's motion to unseal the court order which resulted in the seizures, and arguing among other things that unsealing would "seriously jeopardize" an "ongoing criminal terrorism investigation".
We have of course only the US Government's word on that, as the foreign country which actually wanted the information checked the no-publicity box, and the US Government would like to keep it that way.
The implications of the rest of the Government's arguments are however more interesting than the use of the T-word as an all-purpose cloaking device, which is no more than par for the course these days. Primarily, the Government argues that the parties asking for the court order to be unsealed have no standing to ask this. The parties are the EFF, Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center Foundation (an Indymedia grouping) and Jeff Moe. The servers were of course Indymedia servers, so UCIMC could be thought of as, or acting for, the proprietor of the sites hosted by Rackspace, while Moe is the owner and operator of the specific servers that were taken from Rackspace's premises in London.
The Government covers this as follows: "None of the movants have standing to file the Motion to Unseal." The subpoena, it says, was served on Rackspace in San Antonio, "the parties to the instant action are the requesting foreign country, hereinafter 'requesting state', the United States government and the party on whom the subpoena was served, Rackspace. The entities and one individual requesting the illegal unsealing are not parties and lack standing to complain of the alleged seizure."
The vast majority of web site 'owners' (inverted commas introduced courtesy US Gov) should have no trouble at all figuring out where they would stand in such a scenario. You operate a web site which is hosted by an external company, and an unidentified agency of an unidentified government has the power to take data which you own, but which is situated on hardware hosted by the external company, and according to the US Government, it's nothing to do with you, only the external company has the standing to complain. One could speculate why, given the need to maintain some form of ongiong relationship with the FBI, a hosting company might not think it a particularly good idea to complain.
In the specific circumstances of Indymedia, a process that was started in Texas resulted in the removal of servers in London, knocking out numerous Indymedia web sites. According to the US, Inydmedia has no standing to complain about this or to seek redress, or to find out what it was supposed to have been doing, or who said it was doing it. The UK Government insists the whole matter is nothing to do with it, while the US Government says the matter is closed, flashing the T-word to be on the safe side. [...]
The Government document confirms that the requesting state has asked under the MLAT "that the application for assistance, the contents of the request and its supporting documents, and the granting of such assistance be kept confidential." It then, non-ironically, quotes article 6 of the US Constitution. [...] http://www.freepress.net/news/5333 ==================================