Online Journalism News

Home Office under fire over Indymedia raid

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is lobbying MPs to find out why the FBI ordered the UK government to confiscate web servers belonging to independent news network Indymedia. The seizure, which happened last week, brought down 21 of the group's regional sites including the UK, Brasil and Poland.

The IFJ, which represents more than 100 global journalism bodies, is working with the UK's National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and civil liberties group Statewatch to demand a full explanation for the incident.

"A number of people in Italy, Switzerland and the UK are lobbying MPs to get answers. We want to know who authorised this and why this went through," said Robert Shaw, human rights and information officer for the IFJ.

He added that this is likely to be discussed by the IFJ's executive committee on 22 October and will also be on the agenda for this weekend's European Social Forum.

"In two weeks we'll see what affect this pressure is having and if we have any answers. If not, we'll take this to the European level," said Mr Shaw.

The UK site was brought back online within a few hours, but other sites have had to set up temporary solutions and some, including Prague, Andorra and Western Massachusetts, were offline for more than one week.

Some groups were able to restore the site using back-up data, but many have lost months of information. The German site now has no photographic archive and the Uruguayan branch lost all data back to April this year, much of it relating to the country's forthcoming election.

The servers were taken from hosting company Rackspace on 7 October by Home Office ministers acting on a request from the FBI. In a statement, Rackspace said that it was 'acting as a good corporate citizen' in co-operating with international law enforcement.

The FBI had issued a court order under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), an agreement that allows countries to co-ordinate investigations into international terrorism, money laundering and kidnapping.

The servers were returned on 13 October, and Indymedia is reportedly exploring legal action.

The Home Office and FBI will not comment on the case, although the FBI did confirm that it was acting on behalf of Switzerland.

Indymedia staff in the US recently reported FBI enquiries about photos on the Indymedia Nantes site which showed Swiss undercover police.

The IFJ has stated that the seizure may also be related to information published by Indymedia San Francisco that claimed to reveal problems with electronic voting systems scheduled to be used in next month's Presidential election. The manufacturers, Diebold Election Systems, applied to the Californian courts to have the documents removed but Indymedia successfully opposed the application.

Indymedia's news is produced by volunteer political activists and campaigners around the world and the network's strong anti-corporate agenda has been highly critical of the invasion of Iraq.

In August 2004, IndyMedia claimed that the FBI and US Secret Service had been trying to disrupt the relationship with its hosting provider Calyx Internet Access.

The FBI had issued a subpoena for log information and contact details that would identify anyone who had posted a list of delegates attending the Republican National Convention.

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See also:
Indymedia: http://www.indymedia.org/en/static/fbi.shtml#why
IFJ: http://www.ifj.org

Tags (click tag to find related articles; click icon for feed):
iraq | italy | united kingdom | united states | switzerland | poland | san francisco | prague | brazil | international monetary fund | national union | international federation of journalists | federal bureau of investigation | uk government | home office | law enforcement | news network | robert shaw | rackspace | calyx internet access | diebold election systems | andorra | electronic voting systems | web servers | temporary solutions | us secret service |

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