San Francisco: Local lawyer fights the feds over mysterious police seizure of Indymedia servers.
IT'S NO SECRET that law enforcement types aren't big fans of Indymedia, the anarchic global network of news Web sites that in recent years has emerged as a prime source of information on the lefty protest scene.
Here in San Francisco, cops have been known to monitor the local sites (
www.indybay.org and
www.sf.indymedia.org), as have intelligence-gatherers at the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, a project of the state Department of Justice.
Lately, however, things have gotten a little more serious. On Oct. 7 authorities in England seized two servers hosting 19 Indymedia sites – temporarily shutting down do-it-yourself news-gathering operations from Brazil to western Massachusetts to Poland. From the sketchy clues that have surfaced so far, it looks like the servers were taken at the direction of an unknown U.S. law enforcement agency acting covertly. The machines were returned six days later.
While the Bay Area sites weren't directly affected – they're hosted by other companies – this opaque, multi-government operation has definitely sent a chill through hometown Indymedia heads. As Mark Burdett, a local Indymedia volunteer, put it, "The government is using gag orders and secret orders, so no one even knows what's happening."
The clandestine machinations have prompted Kurt Opsahl, a San Francisco lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a cyber-liberties group, to confront the feds. "This has grave implications for media outlets large and small," Opsahl said. "It's a terrible affront to freedom of the press."
According to Indymedia folks, the trouble started with a post on the Nantes, France, site, unmasking a pair of protesters as Swiss undercover cops and listing their home addresses.
For some reason, on Oct. 1, two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents dropped in on Devin Theriot-Orr, a member of the Seattle Indymedia Center, hunting for details about the French post – something that occurred roughly 5,000 miles away. Perhaps unbeknownst to the feds, the Indymedia network is completely decentralized, with each local site running its own show; the public is encouraged to upload their own stories, photos, and videos.
The agents, Theriot-Orr said, "claimed it was a courtesy visit on behalf of the Swiss government." Though the G-men were "polite," he still views their visit as "blatant political harassment."
Lately, however, the Swiss government has denied having anything to do with the investigation, and Opsahl has uncovered evidence suggesting the whole thing may have actually originated with an Italian prosecutor.
Whatever the case, on Oct. 7, a firm called Rackspace Managed Hosting, which hosts the French site and a bunch of other Indymedia sites, was hit with a special, secret subpoena issued by a U.S. federal court apparently demanding the servers be turned over.
Rackspace, whose U.S. headquarters are in San Antonio, Texas, is divulging very little about the probe, refusing to release the subpoena or even say who, precisely, generated it.
In a press statement, Rackspace said the investigation "did not arise in the United States" and was being conducted under an international law enforcement "mutual aid" pact. The company said it had received a "Commissioner's subpoena" issued under a particular federal statute, adding, "The court prohibits Rackspace from commenting further on this matter." Reached by phone, company spokesperson Annalie Drusch wouldn't elaborate, except to say, "I can tell you that the servers are back online."
After sifting through the few available clues, Opsahl filed a motion to unseal the subpoena in federal court in San Antonio Oct. 22, hoping "to find out who was involved and what they're after. The presumption is that what happens in court is a public process." The information provided by Rackspace, he added, suggests a U.S. law enforcement agency played a role in the seizure.
From Opsahl's perspective, yanking a gaggle of Web sites off-line for unexplained reasons is a stark violation of the First Amendment, a new twist on the lovely old doctrine of prior restraint. "All media outlets should be concerned about this," he said. "Imagine if the Bay Guardian got a notice from its service provider saying its online servers had to be taken down."
Interestingly, it seems the whole exercise may not be particularly fruitful for whoever is behind it: long concerned about just such a seizure, Indymedia has a network-wide policy of not logging Internet protocol addresses. That means authorities probably won't be able to identify who's been surfing the sites or posting to them.
At the San Francisco Indymedia headquarters on 16th Street, a small cluster of cramped offices, Burdett is frantically helping his underground allies around the world set up backup servers in case the Man comes calling again. He figures he's just reflecting the times: "In the same ways these countries have mutual aid agreements between the different governments, we're helping each other out."