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FBI seizes riseup.net server

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Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#81
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but they have to hold on to that stuff for a while. a 5 year old cash is still cash. a 5 year old computer is a doorstop.

I would point out the fallacy in your statement - but I will let you figure it out in the next 5-10 years.

Servers lose 90% of their value in 5 years. Cash will not.

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#82
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but they have to hold on to that stuff for a while. a 5 year old cash is still cash. a 5 year old computer is a doorstop.

I would point out the fallacy in your statement - but I will let you figure it out in the next 5-10 years.

I believe he is hinting at inflation damaging the value of cash in the next 5 to 10.

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really actually, I just mean having a discrete server that can be "seized" is not a particularly robust solution.

... and what do you think an Amazon slice is? It sits on a physical machine that can be identified, located, and handed over by Amazon given a lawful request, all without the site operators knowing. You think they give a fuck about the other 4 slices on your server? No. They don't. In fact it says so right in their SLA.

I used the word ROBUST

If you are trying to defy the FBI, and 100% of your site architecture resides within Amazon's infrastructure you are not robust.

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#84
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last time a bomb threat was followed up with an actual bomb in the US? Maybe it's time to stop blindly evacuating buildings in response to anonymous messages.

1996: Pipe bomb at the olympics in Atlanta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Olympic_Park_bombing But really, what you're complaining about is CYA (cover your ass) security. It's a lot easier for the person in charge to decide to clear out the building, and answer to a bit of grumbling with "just doing my job to keep you people safe" than it is to deal with the (extremely unlikely) fallout that would come from…

Not sure if it's CYA security or just the immensely aggravating ease with which a group of people can be terrorized by an anonymous message that the poster you are responding to is complaining about.

I mean, that is the Essenes of a bomb scare as opposed to a bomb threat or an actual bomb, no?

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#86

America's online law enforcement shaping up to be pretty much like the war on drugs.

No, war on drugs is causing thousands of fatalities a year throughout N and S America. The people pushing that have a shitton more blood on their hands.

I say this not to be disagreeable, but to highlight how bad the WOD really is.

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#87

With this rash of seize-servers-first-ask-questions-later, sounds like we're heading for a reprise of the glorious Steve Jackson Games era of blunt-weapon policing tactics when it comes to technology.

I don't have a written source, but according to my Russian friend, the position of the Russian govt on Bitcoin goes something like "We will have non-technical solutions for your technical mumbo-jumbo." Interestingly, Russia and Ukraine rank #1 and #2 on http://www.google.com/trends/?q=bitcoin

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#88
post #13

This seems like a no-brainer to me. The FBI has the duty to find the Pitt bomb threatener. Perhaps Mixmaster truly does make the email untraceable, but it's the FBI's duty to try tracing it - not to take the Mixmaster claims as fact. If the FBI has evidence that criminal emails passed through that server, I absolutely want the FBI to be able to obtain and execute a warrant to seize it and search it for evidence. Anal…

Law enforcement can of course do seizures when it's warranted. But in this case they, as I understand, did not try to get logs in regular ways (i.e. just asking for them) and there actually is no logs useful for them. So it sounds like an intimidation move - "keep logs so we could have them or we'd just take everything". Using you analogy, it's like when FBI wanted records from gun store and the owner said he doesn't have them, they would just demolish the whole store and move it to FBI facility in case they could find something hidden in the walls. Clearly looks like scenario of "you better give us what we want and quickly, or it would be a world of pain for you, regardless of your innocence and absence of connection to any crimes". Case in point: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3865942

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#89
post #14

So if riseup.net had been hosted on, say, EC2, what would the FBI have seized? The server hosting the VM and many other completely unrelated VMs? Scary thought. Also, if you haven't done so already I encourage you to read the FAQ at the end of the page. It has one of the best answers to "Doesn’t Mixmaster/anonymous remailers enable criminals to do bad things?" I've ever seen.

If previous seizures are any indication yes. They identify machines by IP and even if its a virtual machine they seize the server running it. Can't comment on whether or not its effective, and of course if you have a disaster recovery plan and your site pops back up I don't know what they do, I guess they play whack-a-mole with search warrants.

Wait, seizing server running VM makes zero sense - VM can be run on different physical servers at different moments and freely migrated. What would they be seizing actually - silicon and metal in hope it somehow would given them a clue about something that happened eons (in CPU time) ago on the same hardware? That's like arresting a person because he was breathing the same air as a criminal did. Even if Amazon does not actually migrate VMs I'm sure some other cloud providers do. OTOH they could seize storage media where the images are stored. That would be a major catastrophe for any cloud provider.

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#90

I do not understand the sledgehammer approach the FBI 'cybercrimes' division deals with things with. The FBI are not police, are not detectives, and are not competent in these matters. I'm sorry but covert monitoring of a server is going to be vastly more beneficial for an operation than taking the server and is going to net more targets and more evidence. I remember stories of the FBI sitting on a known front for or…

They may well be doing that in many cases, but we only hear about the occasional dramatic seizures. And the dramatic seizures may be prompted by internal politics -- some manager needs to show that his team is doing something in order to justify his budget, so he makes a visible move and gets some publicity.

It would be interesting to correlation frequency of these stories with FBI budget cycles.

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