FBI Seizes All Servers In Dallas Data Center 629
1sockchuck writes "FBI agents have raided a Dallas data center, seizing servers at a company called Core IP Networks. The company's CEO has posted a message saying the FBI confiscated all its customer servers, including gear belonging to companies that are almost certainly not under suspicion. The FBI isn't saying what it's after, but there are reports that it's related to video piracy, sparking unconfirmed speculation that the probe is tied to the leaking of Wolverine."
Umm (Score:5, Informative)
Hasn't the FBI heard of data center control panel software to find the specific server(s) in question? My colocation facility's web panel tells me the switch #, power plug #and location and a whole ton of other shit. WTF is up with this?
Re:Unconfirmed speculation (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Getting old, I guess... (Score:2, Informative)
A search and seizure warrant for all servers in the datacenter, no matter what company owns them? Either they exceeded the scope of the warrant, or it's a horribly over-broad warrant. Either way, that's not "reasonable" search. It's still a violation of due process - what due process is supposed to mean, that they can't just take people's stuff on a whim.
Right, and I have a feeling that's what will be argued. If the judge couldn't think this far enough into the future, then he should face some consequences. Indeed, quoting others in this thread, it will be months or years until the other companies get their equipment back, if at all.
IANAL, IDNRTW (I Did Not Read The Warrant)
Re:Okay, 2 points here, both in humor (Score:3, Informative)
It's not limited to Dems, thankyouverymuch.
Check out Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. United States Secret Service. It's the case about a Secret Service Raid on SJ Games in which the Secret Service seized a number of computers, nearly crippling a business. The details can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._United_States_Secret_Service [wikipedia.org].
For the record, the seizure of the computers took place in 1990, under the Bush (I) administration.
--AC
Re:Too late FBI (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure I understand a full scale FBI raid for determining who actually leaked the copy... this is a civil contract issue right?
Nope. This is criminal [copyright.gov] (Section 506(a)(1)(C)).
Re:Incredibly ironic (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder who carries the liability here, the FBI for disconnecting customers 911 service, or the data center for harboring evil doers?
FTFA:
"According to Simpson, some residents' access to 911 is also being affected because some of Core IPs primary customers include telephone companies."
"Simpson claims nearly 50 businesses are without access to their email and data.
Re:Incredible (Score:3, Informative)
The judge who OK'd this warrant acted criminally/incorrectly or the actors on the warrant exceeded the authority of the warrant. Warrants must be very specific. They need to list the place to be searched and what is to be seized. If the FBI didn't specify what was to be seized they acted illegally. You can't simply put down "all servers" at some address when all servers encompass multiple unrelated entities which have no relation and specific servers could have been listed. Therefore this is clearly an illegal search even with a warrant.
Re:Incredible (Score:3, Informative)
Core IP Services doesn't have the whole datacenter at this space. Telx has a huge datacenter in this building, and Core IP resells rackspace there. Note that only 50 systems were affected. It sounds like the FBI pulled the plug on a set of cages or cabinets rented by Core. See this message [google.com] from Core's owner.
Not to defend the FBI's stupidity, but their approach is not that different from those Black Hole Lists that many Slashdotters defend. I used to work Help Desk for Hurricane Electric, and the most frustrating aspect of my job was helping shared hosting customers whose email was being blocked because one of our IP blocks was on a blacklist. Why was it being blocked? Because of spam that supposedly came from our IP blocks. If this was real spam at all (and not a legitimate newsletter that some heuristic filter interpreted as spam) it was from somebody who had a shared hosting account with somebody who rented rackspace from us. Or even on somebody who provided shared hosting on rackspace they rented from one of our customers! In other words, everybody in our IP space was being punished for the misdeeds of a customer of a customer of a customer! Getting the spammer offline meant going through multiple abuse desks, and was thus pretty slow.
(Of course, it didn't help that our own abuse desk and the BHL maintainers were always throwing snits at each other.)
The lesson here is to think things through before you get all self-righteous. Otherwise you accomplish nothing but hurting innocent bystanders.
Re:Too late FBI (Score:5, Informative)
Your example would never happen.
Apparently you have never heard of the RICO Act, a law passed to fight organized crime.
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=215 [independent.org]
RICO has metastasized from its original intent, which was to deal more effectively with the perceived problem of organized crime. Federal prosecutors have discovered that RICO is a powerful weapon that can be wielded against most business owners, should the feds choose to target them. Rudy Guiliani's prosecution of Michael Milken and other Wall Street luminaries in the 1980s--the springboard from which Guiliani rose to become first the mayor of New York City and ultimately a popular public speaker collecting $75,000 per speech--involved some of the early attempts to expand criminal RICO provisions to prosecute private business figures who clearly were not mafiosi. Today, federal prosecutors use RICO routinely to win easy convictions and prison terms for individuals who in the course of business run afoul of federal regulations. For every John Gotti who is brought down by RICO, many obscure business owners and managers are also successfully prosecuted under this law.
In tracing the development of RICO, we find that the law was little more than a "bait-and-switch" statute that has had little or no effect in stopping or inhibiting the crimes--murder, rape, robbery, and so forth--that most concerned the public in 1970. Instead, RICO has enabled federal prosecutors in effect to circumvent the constitutional separation of powers between the national and the state governments. Since RICO's passage, the once-clear jurisdictional boundaries between state and federal law enforcement have been erased as more and more individuals find themselves in the federal dock with almost no chance of acquittal.
The idea for the acronym RICO came from the character Rico played by Edward G. Robinson in the 1930s gangster movie Little Caesar. Nixon signed the bill into law on October 15, 1970, declaring that the new law would "launch a total war against organized crime, and we will end this war" (qtd. in "Nixon" 1970). Indeed, the new law empowered federal law enforcement authorities to engage in activities that seemingly deprived defendants of due process of law as guaranteed by the Constitution. Writes Daniel Fischel:
To achieve its objective of preventing the infiltration of legitimate businesses by organized crime, RICO gave the government sweeping new powers, including the power to freeze a defendant's assets at the time of indictment and confiscate them after conviction. Traditionally, criminal defendants are presumed to be innocent and face punishment only after conviction. RICO, by allowing the government to seize entire businesses connected even indirectly with a defendant at the time of indictment, before any proof of guilt, is a major exception to this general principle. The government is authorized, in effect, to act as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the same case. The government under RICO is also able to make it more difficult for the accused to wage a defense by, for example, seizing the funds that a defendant would have used to hire an attorney. And if a defendant is convicted, RICO provides for onerous criminal penalties. (1995, 122-23)
In answer to your statement that it "could never happen" you should know that RICO is used at least 10,000 times a year in the US, mostly against ordinary citizens like you and me. Most raids are made on the basis of information from jail house snitches who are trying to make a "deal".
Like the infamous "PATRIOT ACT", the RICO ACT is an abomination to the Constitution. With its expansive vagueness prosecutors can use it to criminalize any activity for any reason or no reason and be fairly sure of a conviction. As Justice Robert Jackson [warned], few things are as dangerous as a prosecutor who finds a target, the
Re:Too late FBI (Score:4, Informative)
Depends.
If the situation is such that in order to prevent destruction of evidence of a criminal enterprise they need to take them all down, they can do so.
If it were later determined that they obtained the warrants based on information they knew was false (misconduct) or should have known was false (incompetence) there may be a case for a suit.
But just being wrong?
Nope.
That's not cause.
Re:According to my (cop) Digital Forensics Prof... (Score:4, Informative)
A police officer serving a search warrant cannot be held liable for any civil damages resulting from that action unless he had reason to believe the warrant was not valid or he went about serving it in a grossly incompetent fashion.
The statute in question is: 42 U. S. C. s 1983. Qualified Immunity of Police Officers.
I suggest you start your research here [constitution.org].
Re:Incredible (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Incredible (Score:4, Informative)
No, he really did mean thermate [wikipedia.org].
It burns hotter than thermite.
Re:Incredible (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Alas, you're going to need a new constitution (Score:2, Informative)
Unfortunately, no Congress does not really get to determine what the Constitution or anything else the Legislative branch writes means. The Judicial and Executive branches of the government get to determine what the Legislative branch meant. If the Legislative branch disagrees than it can attempt to craft new legislation or amend the old.
Re:According to my (cop) Digital Forensics Prof... (Score:2, Informative)
How'd it work out? He won $300,000 in his suit.
Re:Too late FBI (Score:3, Informative)
You're missing the distinction between legal and legitimate, both of which are encapsulated in the word "right".
Re:They told if George W. Bush got elected... (Score:4, Informative)
Don't hold your breath on that. Obama is a puppet in the hands of big corporations as GW was and as every other politician who wants to make a career is. Come on, do you really think there is one politician in the entire world who will protect normal citizens against the will of any giant corporation?
Re:Too late FBI (Score:4, Informative)
this is a civil contract issue right? Guy working at effects shop or whatever has contractual obligation not to steal shit from work (and probably signed an NDA with the wolverine job).
No, both the original leaker and any subsequent copy-makers are violation of Federal criminal law -- 18USC506(a)(1)(C), in case you want to look it up. Now, perhaps it's a stupid law to have (and I'm sure there is plenty of lively commentary on reforming copyright law, surely a good idea) but, given that it is a Federal criminal matter, FBI involvement seems unsurprising.
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506 [copyright.gov]
he is at most responsible for one act of infringement when he uploaded it plus breaking a contractual obligation not to do so (and any punishment that shows up as too serious in a contract will just get invalidated)
Aside from doing 3 years in the slammer, the original copier is actually legally responsible for all the subsequent copies that can be proven to be contingent on his crime, that is, they would not have happened "but for" the original act. That's how tort law generally works -- we are responsible for all the consequences, direct or indirect, for our actions that would not have happened but for the tortious act.
See, e.g.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=966380 [ssrn.com]
http://www.justia.com/injury/docs/us-tort-liability-primer/expansion-of-tort-liability.html [justia.com]
Re:Too late FBI (Score:5, Informative)
17 USC 506
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain:
18 USC 2319 (b)
(1) shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both... [copies with a retail value of over $2,500]
(2) shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense is a second or subsequent offense
(3) shall be imprisoned not more than 1 year, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, in any other case.
17 USC 506
(B) [retail value more than $1000:]
18 USC 2319 (c)
(1) shall be imprisoned not more than 3 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both
(2) shall be imprisoned not more than 6 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense is a second or subsequent offense
17 USC 506
(C) distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.
18 USC 2319 (d)
(1) shall be imprisoned not more than 3 years, fined under this title, or both
(2) shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years, fined under this title, or both, if the offense was committed for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain
(3) shall be imprisoned not more than 6 years, fined under this title, or both, if the offense is a second or subsequent offense
(4) shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years, fined under this title, or both, if the offense is a second or subsequent offense under paragraph (2)
17 USC 506 [usdoj.gov]. 18 USC 2319 [cornell.edu]
It's perhaps worth a reminder:
When a federal judge says "three years," you serve three years, with no significant time off. The repeat offender gets hammered.
Petty crimes, crimes of violence, almost always come under state jurisdiction.
Interstate crime, economic crimes, high-tech crime, has a very, very, good chance of bringing the geek into the federal system.
Where he is not likely to do particularly well.
Re:Incredible (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Incredible (Score:4, Informative)
When you're computer equipment gets raided, it doesn't ever get shut down. IF it did, you could just let everything live in a ramdisk and not worry about it.
they use this: Hotplug [wiebetech.com]
That "mouse jiggler" thing that you see sold on thinkgeek and the like and laugh at? That is what it is for.
Re:All servers!!!!! (Score:3, Informative)
You are not the only person who has moved to Chile for similar reasons, myself included.
Very strong constitutional protections for private property in Chile. Real protections, not political lip service to their protections.