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FBI seizes riseup.net server

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Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#101

Post by bruo »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #99

There are a lot of comments here, but I don't see anybody asking one particularly important question (and please forgive my ignorance of Riseup.net). Why did removing one server cause so much disruption? Do they not have back-ups? Redundant servers? If this stuff is so gosh-darn important, I feel these users have put their faith in the wrong hosting organization...

it is an important question, but it's far away from the issue. that's why nobody is asking that, because it's not important in this specific issue.

riseup is a collective driven isp that is focused in social change activists, so they do have values and principles different than making money. the issue here is not the disrupt, it's the attack on those values.

i hope you now understand why nobody ask about that, it is important, but not the issue about this. also it's because this values people put faith in them and not in google, amazon or another money focused company, me included :)

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#102

Post by [deleted] »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #45
electromagnetic wrote: post #4

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…

> I do not understand the sledgehammer approach the FBI 'cybercrimes' division deals with things with. ... 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 wonder if they'll auction off the server? Fun fact. The federal government makes ~$3 billion a year off asset seizures. They don't have t…

[deleted]

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#103

Post by ChuckMcM »

durin42 wrote: post #100
ChuckMcM wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you cite any examples of this ever happening? I am curious now.

http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1883984

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#104

Post by shingen »

dstorrs wrote: post #92
andrewpi wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The FBI are not police, are not detectives, and are not competent in these matters. Actually the FBI is a law-enforcement agency with the statutory power to investigate and arrest people for the violation of certain federal laws. I'd consider that police.

Yep. It would also astound me if they didn't have at least some cyber-competent people in their organization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_%28software%29

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#105

Post by mayoff »

gee_totes wrote: post #73
mayoff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FBI should absolutely execute a seizure warrant against those companies, if doing so is effective, but: - Those companies probably have too many servers and too much data to make seizing all of it productive. - Those companies would be less likely to be effected, as they have backups and redundant servers for handling outages. - Those companies keep records that they provide to law enforcement when presented with…

It's retarded to act surprised and indignant when the server gets seized because it was probably used to commit a crime. Did you read the press release? Riseup was not running the anonymizing remailer, it just happened to be on the same physical machine as some of Riseup's infrastructure/e-mail accounts/listservs/etc. From the press release: The seized server was operated by the European Counter Network (“ECN”), the…

Good point. Then it's ok to be surprised. This is a non-obvious risk of shared hosting.

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#106

Post by jfoutz »

stickfigure wrote: post #96
lwat wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Readers from Argentina and Zimbabwe might disagree.

2 things.

1. Police are taking at least 20% hit right off the top. so, sure $1000 turns into $750 at 5%, the police are going to be looking at $600 profit, at the very best. a $1000 computer would be more like $100 dollars after five years, in which the police keep $80 bucks.

2. You can pirate all the copyrighted material you want in Argentina and Zimbabwe. Furthermore, neither of those countries really care about property rights. if the government wants your stuff, they just take it anyway.

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#107

Post by smutticus »

electromagnetic wrote: post #4

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…

It was already well known that the FBI was talking with and investigating May First/People Link. Whoever is sending in the bomb threats to U Pittsburgh already knows it as well. So there was no point in 'staking out' this server.

They probably just seized it for evidence collection. May First/People Link said they don't keep any logs. Maybe the FBI didn't believe them or think they can do some 'advanced forensics' on the HDD.

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#108

Post by dendory »

Learn from the pirate bay. It's no longer a matter of protecting your business from hackers, but also from corrupt governments. When you start a business you better have contingencies in place to switch domain, server, country, etc seamlessly.

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#109

Post by psyconn »

skore wrote: post #51
rorrr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And expensive And with lots of innocent casualties And corrupt And supported by morons

And boosting economies outside of the US?

Don't worry about economies in EU, we've done a really good job in hamstringing with "social" policies. Compared with other countries law enforcement in US is pretty decent.

Re: FBI seizes riseup.net server

#110

Post by dsl »

hoprocker wrote: post #64
dsl wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a "sledgehammer" approach. The operators made an explicit choice to stick a bunch of mailing lists and websites on the same machine as a remailer. A reasonable person would expect the remailer to eventually be used to commit a crime. It's like keeping your kids school books and a kilo of cocaine both in your cars trunk, then complaining when the FBI takes the whole car into evidence.

Whoah whoah whoah! Is a remailer really === a kilo of cocaine? Seems like it's more like a car sans license plates, operating in a state where license plates are optional. (But hey, if you use that car to transport a cool k...)

Sure. Because you have no idea if that remailer is going to be used to leak information on civil rights abuses or to plan the assassination of an official.

I run a number of Tor nodes. I follow the Tor mailing list. I understand that what I am doing is not illegal, but is still very risky. What have I done in response to that risk? All my important shit is hosted elsewhere.

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