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Several posters around the country have been arrested by the local police and FBI after they posted comments on IMC newswire and message boards. Apparently the FBI has been using the Carnivore system to trace posters back to their original locations and then using local pigs to trump up charges in order to gain "legal" warrants.
Three would-be protesters of the G8 summit were apprehended before they could take action and are currently being held without bond. Several others have stated that their homes have been invaded, their belongings destroyed, and their personal computers seized as "evidence".
Apparently the FBI is using a system that is capable of invisibly monitoring websites and gaining the ISP addresses of posters. Beware what you post if you are using a home computer!
Italian Government Tries to Suppress this pic on Italy.Indymedia
The Pope?
We are republishing this photo
as an act of solidarity
with Italy.Indymedia
against the Italian Government.
No to the Censorship!
 US Government tries to keep Indymedia seizure order secret11/12/2004 pittsburgh indymedia
On November 9, the U.S. government responded to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Motion to Unseal
the court order that led to October's seizure of two hard drives that
hosted more than 20 Indymedia websites. The government claims that the
order to Rackspace should remain secret because: (1) EFF and their
Indymedia clients lacked "standing" (the legal right to initiate a
claim) to contest the seizure, (2) the request came from a unnamed
foreign government pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty
(MLAT), and therefore was not subject to the protections of the Bill of
Rights; and (3) disclosure would imperil "an ongoing criminal terrorism
investigation." EFF intends to oppose these arguments and will file a
legal brief responding to the government's letter.
The government response also contains details suggesting that the order
may have originated in Italy. While the government refuses to identify
which government prompted the court order, the letter cites language
from "Article 8" that corresponds to Italy's MLAT and not to
Switzerland's. (As reported earlier, Italy and Switzerland were the two prime suspects.)
Meanwhile, more than 10,000 individuals have signed the Indymedia solidarity statement and at least 17 of the downed websites are back up and running.
[ previous feature | EFF motion | EFF blog | US government response | solidarity statement ]
Indymedia at the World Social Forum 2005
To help organize support for many IMCistas who are expected to attend and report from the World Social Forum 2005 in Porto Alegre, Brasil in January, a new Indy mailing list has been established: imc-wsf-2005. Two years ago another list, imc-wsf, helped greatly get everyone involved in setting things up and also helped communication during and after the Third World Social Forum. Let's get to work and do it one more time. To subscribe, go to http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-wsf-2005 and enter your information there. The list is a closed list, only members will be able to send messages to the list – archives are open to everyone to read.
 Indymedia Server Seizuremost recent: 5th press release 22 Oct 2004
On 7 October, 2004, hard drives from two Indymedia servers were seized from the London office of a US-owned web hosting company, Rackspace, at the request of the US Justice Department, apparently in collaboration with Italian and Swiss authorities.
Although the hard drives were returned on October 13, the particular legal framework under which the seizures took place is unknown. One week after the seizures there is still an almost total information blackout from the authorities in the UK, US, Switzerland and Italy. Indymedia still has no confirmation of who ordered the seizures, who took the hard drives, why the seizures took place, or whether it will happen again.
Read the Declaration in Support of the Indymedia Network and Against the Seizure of its Servers and Sign the Indymedia Solidarity Statement: solidarity.indymedia.org.uk
More updates: IMC: FBI and other legal breaking news
this page is updated whenever we get new information
FBI SEIZES HARD DRIVES OF INDYMEDIA NETWORK SERVERS
FBI took the hard drives of Global IMC servers in the USA and the UK. The FBI issued an order to Rackspace (Indymedia's provider with office in the US and London) to remove physically Global Indymedia servers (backup servers are now in place). The order was so short term that Rackspace had to give away our hard drives, both in the US and the UK.
The servers hosted over a dozen local IMCs, including Ambazonia, Uruguay, Andorra, Poland, Western Massachusetts, Nice, Nantes, Lilles, Marseille (all France), Euskal Herria (Basque Country), Liege, East and West Vlaanderen, Antwerpen (all Belgium), Belgrade, Portugal, Prague, Galiza, Italy, Brazil, UK, part of the Germany site, and the global Indymedia Radio site.
[ Read More|
Press Release]
10/13 - Servers Returned, Still No Explanation
 Indymedia supporters to dump defunct disks on feds
17 Oct 2004
Activists angered by the multilateral seizure of Indymedia hard drives last October 7th will be turning over piles of old drives to intelligence agencies across the world this week, in symbolic protests against what many are denouncing as a serious violation of communication rights. The Global Action is called Operation Hard Drive-By. The first of wave of solidarity actions took place last week in the Netherlands, where activists delivered symbolic old hardware to the Italian consulate in Amsterdam. The next day, activists in San Francisco, USA handed over hardware to the FBI. In Houston, members of the IMC delivered a letter to the Swiss consulate. [ Netherlands Hard Drive-By | San Francisco Hard Drive-By: Photos | Video | Action in Houston: Audio ] The protests will happen all week, beginning Monday October 18th, to coincide with Media Democracy Day. Operation Hard Drive-by are already planned to happen in San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Perth, Australia. Indymedia supporters promised that Operation Hard Drive-by would escalate and spread until their demands are met. A Statement of Solidarity signed by more than 2000 people calls for the full disclosure of the names of organizations and individuals involved in the seizure, a copy of the court order, and an independent investigation into any violations of due process.
Update: Diebold Loses Copyright Case
Diebold vs. Indymedia
Indymedia fights Diebold's legal attempt to silence discussions about e-votingDocuments are publicly available that detail vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines manufactured by the Diebold Corporation. Diebold has been sending cease and desist letters to internet service providers (ISPs) that host the documents or links to them. Numerous Indymedia servers have been targeted by Diebold in its campaign to suppress this critical information.
Indymedia will defend its right to post internal memos and documents detailing vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines manufactured by the Diebold Corporation. The documents were made publicly available, and subsequently reported by writer Bev Harris on her websites
blackboxvoting.com and
blackboxvoting.org.
The vast information contained in these documents is still being investigated by top computer scientists and researchers, but a set of widely circulated internal memos detail Diebold's flippant disregard of test runs, accuracy audits, and security for its voting machines. System tests (much like a dress rehearsal) are often required by local election laws--Diebold
memos
mention how they simply changed the name "memory test" to "***System Test Passed***" as if the machine performed a self audit. The memos also say how Diebold installed new versions of the voting software that were left untested.
Their election results are not secure, as evidenced by this comment in one
email
regarding the "contents" (i.e. the votes) of the e-voting machines: "Now, where the perception comes in is that its right now very *easy* to change the contents. Double click the .mdb file." Diebold's Republican executives have touted e-voting as a solution to the punchcard voting systems that scandalized Florida in 2000. In fact, this evidence and recent breaking news of security and reliability flaws raises serious questions about this "solution" to election woes in the US. More links:
Read Entire Feature
[ earlier feature, August 2003
| Madison IMC
Students Sue Electronic Voting Company
Two
Swarthmore College students and a nonprofit ISP are seeking a court order on Election
Day to stop electronic voting machine manufacturer Diebold Systems,
Inc., from issuing specious legal threats. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the
Center for Internet and Society
Cyberlaw Clinic at Stanford Law School are providing legal
representation to Nelson Pavlosky and Luke Smith in this important case to prevent abusive
copyright claims from silencing public debate about voting.
Diebold has delivered dozens of cease-and-desist notices to
website publishers and ISPs, including Indymedia, demanding that they take
down corporate documents revealing flaws in the company's
electronic voting systems as well as difficulties with
certifying the systems for actual elections. Pavlovsky and Smith have published an email
archive of the Diebold documents which contain descriptions of these flaws written by the company's own
employees. Swarthmore student groups Why War? and the Swarthmore
Coalition for the Digital Commons have launched an electronic
civil disobedience campaign, using file-sharing to ensure constant
public access to the documents.
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