What just happened in London?

[mmcirvin]

You know, I've never been much of a fan of Indymedia, but it doesn't really matter; the FBI better have a damn good explanation for this, and I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt any more.

Comments

I'm wondering

[purgatorius.livejournal.com]

Does the FBI have some magical USA PATRIOT act powers that give them the jurisdiction to do this outside of our country?

Re: I'm wondering

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

If they were legitimately investigating death threats, they might well have gotten cooperation from the local authorities.

Re: I'm wondering

[purgatorius.livejournal.com]

I guess the cooperation of Rackspace is all they really needed.

Re: I'm wondering

[manfire.livejournal.com]

According to this information at Cryptome, someone at Indymedia's Nantes branch published photos of Swiss undercover cops, and the Swiss government got upset about this and leaned on the U.S. to do something about it because Rackspace is a U.S. company. The Guardian reports that both Swiss and Italian authorities requested the seizure.

Re: I'm wondering

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Rackspace is a Texas-based company, evidently, though they have overseas facilities, so obviously the FBI has more pull than if they were and entirely foreign operation. Also, the FBI apparently used the provisions of the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT). "The MLAT establishes procedures for countries to assist each other in investigations regarding international terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering." That quote's from this Indymedia post (http://argentina.indymedia.org/news/2004/10/228093.php) which claims that FBI was acting as requested by the governments of Italy and Switzerland.

The FBI has previously asked some Indymedia sites to remove a photo of a pair of swiss police officers-- some indymedia article I can't find now claimed that the FBI agent admitted that the photo was okay but that identifying information wasn't, and said article claimed there was none in the text. *shrug*

As for Italy's involvement, I don't know, but I've read claims that Italy was trying to bring down the Italian Indymedia. It's also possible that either the government of Italy and are cooincidentally overestimating the threat that IMC represents to The Man. Or Il Uomo, or whatever.

[urbeatle.livejournal.com]

the (unverified) information I have been seeing is: someone on indymedia has apparently been publishing names and addresses of republican delegates during the convention with the words "these people are killers, they must be stopped!"

I don't know if this actually happened, but without seeing the actual site, it's kind of hard to determine if it was really a case similar to the anti-abortion people who were publishing lists of doctors who should be killed.

[ex-askesis860.livejournal.com]

Indymedia is pointing fingers at a subpoena files by noted crackpot and former co-worker Stephen DeVoy (http://www.stephen-devoy.com). Apparently this is just one chapter in a long saga of crazy.

[glitter-ninja.livejournal.com]

You must be the FBI! They are posting things all over the Internets in Stephen's name, you know.

This is really bizarre.