[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: FBI Seizes Indymedia Servers in the UK / "extended sovereignty"

[Bertrand de LA CHAPELLE]

Just one comment on this very troubling story :

It has often been argued that the Internet reduces the 
sovereignty of states on their own citizens and territory 
(up to John Perry Barlow's vision on the independence of 
cyberspace).

What the story below demonstrates is a simultaneous 
potential trend in the exact opposite direction towards what 
we could call "extended sovereignty" : the power a 
government (and in particular the US government) can apply 
to a foreign national/entity in its own country. The Patriot 
Act being only one among the tools trying to establish this 
extension of sovereignty.

An article by John Hines details this challenge in a clear 
way : http://www.isoc.org/pubpolpillar/juris.shtml

This is a MAJOR political issue, only emerging but likely to 
take a growing importance.

Bertrand de La Chapelle



---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2004 17:35:49 +0200
>From: "Stephane Koch" <president at isoc.ch>  
>Subject: [WSIS CS-Plenary] FYI : FBI Seizes Indymedia 
Servers in the UK  
>To: <plenary at wsis-cs.org>
>
> 
>FBI Seizes Indymedia Servers in the UK
>http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/WwwFeaturesWorkpad
>Indymedia 7th October
>
>Thursday morning, US authorities issued a federal order to 
Rackspace
>ordering them to hand over information hosted on Indymedia 
web servers to
>the FBI. Rackspace, which provides hosting services for 
more that 20
>Indymedia sites at its London facility, complied by turning 
over two
>Indymedia servers to federal authorities, effectively 
removing those sites
>from the internet.
>
>Indymedia, a global network of independent non-corporate 
media
>organizations, had been asked last month by the FBI to 
remove a story about
>Swiss undercover police from one of the websites hosted at 
Rackspace. It is
>not known, however, whether Thursday's order is related to 
that incident
>since the order was issued to Rackspace and not to 
Indymedia. According to
>Rackspace, they "cannot provide Indymedia with any 
information regarding the
>order." ISPs have received gag orders in similar situations 
which prevent
>them from informing concerned parties about what is 
happening.
>
>It is unclear to Indymedia how and why a server that is 
outside US
>jurisdiction can be seized by US authorities.
>
>The last few months have seen numerous attacks on 
independent media by the
>US Federal Government. In August, the Secret Service used a 
subpoena in an
>attempt to disrupt the New York City Independent Media 
Center before the
>Republican National Convention by trying to obtain their IP 
logs from ISPs
>in the US and the Netherlands. Also, in the past month, the 
FCC shut down
>community radio stations throughout the US. Despite these 
setbacks,
>Indymedia and other independent media organizations have 
enjoyed recent
>victories against Diebold and the Patriot Act.
>
>The list of local media collectives affected by the FBI 
seizure includes
>Ambazonia, Uruguay, Andorra, Poland, Western Massachusetts, 
Nice, Nantes,
>Lilles, Marseille, Euskal Herria (Basque Country), Liege, 
East and West
>Vlaanderen, Antwerpen (all Belgium), Belgrade, Portugal, 
Prague, Galiza,
>Italy, Brazil, UK, and Germany. Additionally, several 
streaming radio
>stations, a Linux distribution site, and other services 
hosted on those
>servers were also affected. 
>
>-----------------------
>Regards
>stephane koch
>internet society geneva
>
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