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."
Too late FBI (Score:5, Insightful)
Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)
All servers!!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Getting old, I guess... (Score:5, Insightful)
... and the memory fades with age. But I seem to remember a time when this was a free country, with due process of law and such.
The Wolverine is out of the bag. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Wolverine is out of the bag. (Score:3, Insightful)
They're just after the original leaker. SOP... "Shoot first", ask questions later
Wrong **AA (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Umm (Score:3, Insightful)
Is Copyright still a fair deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not the question to ask.
The question to ask is what good are the public getting in return for giving up such freedoms, AND paying for the giving up of such freedoms (dont forget who pay for the FBI, Police, etc), and paying for the protection of the revinue to copyright owning entities.
Now, this is supposed to be the entering in to the public domain (as in becoming free..) of creative content at the end of the copyright period - a fair and equitable arrangement one could say - we protect their profits for a period, and at the end of that, we gain the advantage of their creativity openly.
However, that was in the days of limited copyright periods, these days thanks both to DRM (an unbroken DRM means an item cannot become free after its legal protection stops) and changes to copyright periods (a lot of things we have already paid to protect should be public now, and are not..) we, the people, have lost our end of the 'bargain'.
Perhaps it is time for the copyright owners to be carrying the full costs of enforcing their copyrights, since they don't feel the public should be allowed future advantage of their content?
I wonder what the yearly government costs of copyright enforcement is, it seems more and more public resource is bring piled in to protecting it..
Or perhaps the people (that is, government) should simply cease on their end of the bargain in return, and in light of technological DRM, revoke copyright laws, as they were enacted to protect otherwise unprotectable items (such as books) - does DRM mean we shouldn't have to suffer copyright laws?
Once upon a time there was balance, an equitable deal between the state and copyright holders - the copyright holders have long since stopped holding up their end of the bargain....
Re:Getting old, I guess... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cloud computing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:All servers!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
A resounding YES!! The FBI, headed by unindicted co-conspirator to the coverup of the BCCI investigation (and probably the Iran-Contra affair as well, when he was head of the Justice Department's criminal division - appointed by George H.W. Bush), Director Robert Mueller, is the last person in America I would trust with any investigation. The fact that they have time for such matters, when they should be pursuing the war criminals of the Bush Adminstration and the financial fraudster super-crooks on Wall Street, is truly mind-boggling......
Re:All servers!!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
With the speed that law enforcement works at, it'll be months, if not years before those innocent companies get their equipment back... if they get it back at all.
You see, in many places, laws were passed that allowed law enforcement agencies to keep property that is *suspected* to have been used in a crime. For example, the police think you've been dealing drugs out of your car. You go to court and are proven innocent (you don't even necessarily have to be charged witha crime!) Cops get to keep your car anyway because they *suspect* it was used in a criminal activity. Great system don't you think?
See this article for one example... there are many others... Property seizures seen as piracy [mysanantonio.com]
Re:Privacy???? (Score:3, Insightful)
I share the sentiment of your first paragraph. I've never been one to be too upset about government surveillance, because I realize it helps keep me safe, and such.
I wouldn't jump so far as to say "This is a dictator-esque move", though. This is a move that shows what happens when you take a phone call from someone hysterically complaining about something and don't wait for them to calm down before you do whatever they told you to.
Re:Umm Well, maybe there IS something there, and (Score:2, Insightful)
the act of taking every single server is to:
-- be punitive
-- scare other colos
-- dissuade this current target from going back into operation without screening clients
It's probably the greatest fear of every rental property manager/at-home landlord, that renters/tenants would conduct illegal activities on the premises, then subject every occupant to subpoena and total confiscation of every electronic and paper file, loss of hardware, and invasion of privacy, and stultefying disruption of business, schooling and other activities.
But, really, FBI, why not just run a deep scan using your own cracking tools? You could be on and off the property. We pay MORE than enough tax dollars that you guys & girls could arrive and spend 3 or 4 hours collecting what you need via data and paper scanners. Once you get stuff into a property room and all tagged, what is the likelihood of expedient recovery by the original owner? What if you guys REALLY find NOTHING, and there is some internal intertia to not look stupid, which might induce a decision to delay for as long as possible the return of confiscated stuff.
Hell, if i'm under suspicion, i'd GLADLY let you scan in exchange for not hauling my shit off. And, since you guys have the technical means to record virtually every electronic transaction or all traffic long before you descend upon your targets, they may never even be aware of being a person of interest. Even if they are guilt of SOMEthing, do you need to shut down every single aspect of their lives to prosecute a subpoena-limited scope of crime? You may as well seize their account balances AND take their debit cards and garnish their wages to prevent repurchase of new hardware onto which recovery tapes NOT at the target address will go. Then what, cat and mouse? Get the target to self-incriminate by demanding to know every last data archive location?
We need a more civilized form of crime prosecution that does not add insult to injury before the "suspect" even goes to jail. Oh, and for those who wish to slam me, yes, i am aware that by the time the new footage shows boxes being carried to the evidence van while the cuffed suspect is led to the warm mobile chariot seat is *likely* long under surveillance *AND* is guilty as hell even without a trial date come and gone, there STILL are times when law enforcement just goes in and scoops up EVERYthing as if to shut down someone. Many times, judges allow the suspect who is not a flight risk to post bail or be out on OR if tagged/collared. In the meantime, it is a MEAN time to be at an upsidedown-turned home, lacking all gear, and feeling watched. Yep, the pirates of nation-crumbling data and apps, kiddie-porn peddlers, stock options inside traders, illegal gambling and secrets thieves SHOULD be watched, but some crimes that are prosecuted (pursued before prosecution as well as punished by jury/judge) are done so at the behest of some foul-play-crying corporation having a hosed up business model.
sounds like you need a lawyer (Score:3, Insightful)
The Wolverine leak is an unconfirmed (Score:5, Insightful)
reason.
There is also speculation on illegal drug communication.
Also not confirmed.
Things to remember.
A) They had a warrant
B) We are only here one side
C) There is a lot of speculation as to why.
Lets watch closely, but avoid jumping to any conclusion.
No I'm not new hear, just overly optimistic.
Re:Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nuts, every server in a data center?
I agree...
But numerous other websites [google.com] (all the same "IDG News" article) mention this:
FBI spokesman Mark White confirmed that agents had executed a search warrant at the 2323 Bryan Street address on Thursday, but declined to comment further on the matter.
which then brings us to this bit of hyperbole FTFA
Simpson closed his online letter with the statement, "If you run a datacenter, please be aware that in our great country, the FBI can come into your place of business at any time and take whatever they want, with no reason."
The FBI had a warrant, which means they didn't go in for "no reason".
Unfortunately, the fact that they seized everything leaves us with few possibilities
1. The FBI lied about what they needed to seize on the warrant affidavit & a Judge signed it
2. The warrant was narrow & specific and the FBI exceeded the warrant's scope
3. The FBI actually needed to seize everything (incredibly unlikely)
Re:Privacy???? (Score:5, Insightful)
I normally don't care about privacy issues. The government can tap my phone if they feel like it, they can look into my purchasing records, they can stake out my house. They can look into my past work history. I really don't care.
They don't care about you. It isn't about you. They care about rising politicians and others who challenge the status quo.
I care deeply about personal privacy for the same reason I care deeply about gun rights - chances are that I will never carry a weapon in my life, but our society as a whole is made safer and more resilient by the fact that law-abiding citizens can own and use them in self defense. Similarly our society is made stronger and more egalitarian when everybody has privacy, the people who can make a difference and the common peons like the rest of us.
Re:Too late FBI (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm, you missed the significance here, which is the last sentence they said: "If you've ever had to deal with law enforcement when it comes to recovering what they took from you, you know what a nightmare this could turn into."
If I recall correctly, laws let them hold this shit for up to a month before they're obligated to move their asses and even start giving it back. That doesn't even mean they will. It's beyond ridiculous, people sue all the time for this abuse.
Re:According to my (cop) Digital Forensics Prof... (Score:1, Insightful)
Three points...
1. We hope that at some point the FBI will have to pay the full restitution for restoring service and loss of business etc.
2. Good excuse to have redundant servers in multiple jurisdictions (i.e. at least one outside of the US..)
3. Good excuse for people running colo's to get onto their congress critters to setup specific laws preventing this type of action (i.e. limit search and seizure to exactly the servers specified and no specifying ALL servers for a location that has multiple commercial services) ..
The exact and precise analogy would be to have them show up at a reasonably sized office building with multiple lease holders and demand to search and seize every computer in the entire building. It is a ridiculous idea and they would be laughed out of court. Colocation sites need to be recognized as having the same legal setup and protections.
Re:Umm Well, maybe there IS something there, and (Score:3, Insightful)
You write much, but get little. Sorry.
Who profited from this the most? Even if it has nothing to do with a leaked movie.
There, all base for your reasoning is gone.
This is all just a giant theater. Psychology. Simple, but effective.
I think it is another step to a 1984 type "society".
Do not think they are stupid. They know exactly what they doing.
Maybe not the grunt who was raiding. But the guy behind the big desk for sure.
Re:Getting old, I guess... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are trying to make an example of this company, IMHO. Pure speculation on my part but the overboard manner in which this was executed makes me think they wanted to send a message to this company and other data center operators. I'm guessing that perhaps Core IP may not have been as cooperative as the FBI would have liked them to be in past inquiries. So they used whatever excuse they have currently to get an over broad warrant and shut the whole operation down. That's just my straight out of my ass feeling though.
I hope this backfires horribly on the FBI. I hope that the affected completely innocent companies get some lawyers and go to town on the FBI for this.
ONLY patronize non US CoLo(s) (Score:5, Insightful)
Romania or Belarus, where nobody gives a shit!
Re:Too late FBI (Score:5, Insightful)
A) we don't knwo this has to do with WOlverine
B) He just used that as a launching point for a cyber security rant.
That is what I was addressing. Adding the the act that the FBI wouldn't confiscate millions of servers.
Typically, they get a court order go to the company and then gather more information.
OTOH, this data center occupied two floors of a high rise. So we aren't talking about millions of computers.
I understand that it can be difficult to get stuff back from law enforcement, and I agree that is an issue that should be addressed.
Re:Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no conspiracy, all is in the open and the message is clear: no matter what your reasons may be,dear isp, if we like to, we pull the plug on you... punish 1 to educate 100.
I`d call this soft terrorism.
It would be a conspiracy if tomorrow some national security guy went knocking at other isps saying: you wanna avoid such incidents? let us snoop into your traffic without warrant, and we promise we won`t give you trouble.
Re:Too late FBI (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course if it was a guy taking it home to work on or show his family and it got leaked (or they don't have any evidence to the contrary)...
Either way, how many 3-year max sentence criminal offenses warrant full scale FBI raids that costs numerous other businesses REAL money.
Re:All servers!!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Or perhaps the company ... you know ... actually did commit a crime. The leaking of wolverine was not an accident. Some guy actually walked in, comitted massive fraud and abused many people's trust, and you'll have to admit the chance is pretty damn huge this was done with malice. And now proof is needed that this guy not only abused many people's trust, but also actually did what the FBI alleged.
What if it was done to prevent destruction of evidence, and was actually the right thing to do ?
If anyone from Coreserver actually gets convicted in this case, I'm sure you'll change your opinion. Right ?
(I'm not really so stupid as to actually consider the thought that you might realise the FBI actually does stop criminals, and saves lives and property ... You're just trying to attack someone you suspect, obviously without a shred of proof or even thought, in narcissistic grandiosity, of being "out to get you". That thought is so much more comfortable than the truth, that noone cares at all).
Re:Too late FBI (Score:5, Insightful)
I think perhaps the fact it's largely other people's UNRELATED stuff is where the issue really begins to rub people up the wrong way.
There were a bunch of raids like this in the UK. The police keep taking entire sets of Indymedia servers and not giving them back for ages.
Re:All servers!!!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Privacy???? (Score:5, Insightful)
The second paragraph is one reason why your feelings stated in the first paragraph are harmful to you and everyone else.
Privacy is its own reason.
Re:The Wolverine leak is an unconfirmed (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me, presuming the government has a good reason for anything it does is the conclusion to which we should avoid jumping.
Re:Why does this kind of thing surprise anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your comment is misguided, I also hold Clinton responsible for the DMCA and our Senators for passing laws etc. I certainly agree with holding congress critters accountable, unfortunately you did not carefully read my post, and have posted a reply that does not address my point. The point is that heavy handed action by the justice department has now publicly begun under the Obama administration.
The justice department has long taken direction for it's priorities from the president at the time. Since senior justice department lawyers are ex **AA they have directed the justice department to take a heavy handed approach on this type of matter. It was no different under Bush or Reagan with their priorities (war on drugs etc).
You are a naive fool if you think Obama does not have influence on such matters. He has already used his influence with those he appointed. Much as many people held Bush accountable for the actions of Justice under him (Patriot act actions and so) they must also hold Obama equally culpable.
Re:The Wolverine leak is an unconfirmed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Too late FBI (Score:3, Insightful)
The best is that when a 'victim' sues the government for their lost/damaged property, and win, its the taxpayers that foot the bill.
They told if George W. Bush got elected... (Score:2, Insightful)
They told if George W. Bush got elected...
we would be seeing over-the-top raids like this and an attack on our civil liberties.
I can hardly wait until we elect a Democrat and all of this will stop.
Good point! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I had no interest at all in this movie to begin with. But you got me thinking, if it's so important to "them" to suppress it, it's in everyone's interest to make "them" fail. So I joined the revolution, I'm downloading it now, from the 100000+ seeds.
As someone once said, if you're not part of the solution then you are part of the problem. Right now the problem is getting rid of those copyright nazis. If downloading Wolverine eats into their profits, let's all download Wolverine!
Re:Incredible (Score:1, Insightful)
Or option
4. Your average FBI agent doesn't know an Ethernet Switch from a SAN Cluster, so they kind-of had to take everything.
Re:Incredible (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm fairly certain that they don't, and I'm also fairly certain that even if they did, that fact would be wholly irrelevant to them.
This company is basically done (Score:5, Insightful)
Unbelievable.
I've worked in three different datacenters in my professional life, and I think I can safely say that this company is done for. Five+ days of all servers being offline... not just offline, but seized and inspected thoroughly... clients are going to cancel in droves once things come back online, if they haven't already called the company and made their intentions clear.
Whether or not this had anything to do with the whole Wolverine leak is unknown to me, but if it is, how is it OK to seize the assets of an entire datacenter? I sincerely doubt that the majority of those customers were engaging in the distribution of pirated material. What justification could you possibly have for affecting not only the longevity of the service provider, but the customers *at* the service provider, just so you can find some sleezy pirate with your movie on his servers. Is it worth hundreds of thousands (perhaps even millions) of dollars in *others' money*? Yeah, I don't think so.
The only time this would be even remotely OK is if the datacenter housed some gigantic criminal operation where the vast majority of its customers were committing crimes, and the DC was in on it.
I really wonder what this says for other datacenters that unknowingly house customers who engage in criminal behavior. Because, statistically, every datacenter that serves the public at large is bound to have at least one. As a provider, how am I to know what's going on in every corner of my DC? Am I to surveil all the traffic, all the servers, everything? And if that's my duty now, isn't that a bit disturbing?
Re:Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)
4: The judge didn't understand what he/she was signing off on.
However, the thing about this is that it seems likely that this will result in anyone they charge challenging the search warrant and excluding ALL evidence related to it, or fruits from it.
Someone at the FBI needs to develop more of a brain than the average housefly has.....
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Re:Incredible (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I'm fairly certain that they meant exactly what they wrote: thermate. It's basically souped-up thermite that burns hotter.
I really dislike it when ignorant people try to one-up someone else who actually knows what they're talking about. At least Google the word or something before you try and show everyone how smart you are.
Re:Alas, you're going to need a new constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
That assumes that Eldred vs. Ashcroft wasn't itself an incorrect judgment. Even USSC judges aren't fallible, after all, and they're hardly impartial when it comes to the scope of the government's legislative, executive, and judicial powers.
Personally, I've always thought the legitimacy of a court which derives its powers from the Constitution defining the meaning of that Constitution to be highly suspect. The Constitution is supposed to be an agreement between the government and the people, after all; in what other circumstance would it be deemed acceptable for one party to an agreement to have exclusive control over that agreement's interpretation? Particularly when that party is the agent, not the principal?
Re:The Wolverine leak is an unconfirmed (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets watch closely, but avoid jumping to any conclusion.
No I'm not new hear, just overly optimistic.
Optimistic to the point of idiocy, perhaps. What happened here is analogous to getting a search warrant for downtown Chicago because there's reason to believe a crime has been committed.
In case you haven't been in a bona-fide data center, they are usually !@# HUGE. Even the smallish one that I host at [heraklesdata.com] is large - servers well into the thousands. All high-capacity equipment. Even a rather popular site like Slashdot could be easily served out of a single rack, maybe even just a half-rack! A data center is usually divided into locking cages, locking racks each the size of a large refrigerator, and often into half-racks which can hold up to about a dozen 1U rackmount servers.
Logically, it's more like a huge apartment complex - each separately locking cage, rack, or half-rack belongs to a different party.
In the IT world, a datacenter is not analogous to "a house" or even "a building", unless by "a building" you're talking about the feds getting a warrant for the ENTIRE EMPIRE STATE building.
This is farking nuts, and makes me nervous, even with our D/R plans and fully redundant, off-site hosting, off-network hosting.
Re:Too late FBI (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, thousands of actual criminals commit much more heinous crimes and go unpunished while the FBI wastes their time on this.
Re:Privacy???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Paying attention != spying
Governments have throughout history been a terrible danger to the people subjected to the governments. That is why a set British Colonists decided to rebel against their government and form the US some time ago. That is why they created a constitution designed to limit government power.
So yes, you conflating "paying attention" with violating privacy and violating constitutional principals to which our government is supposed to be subservient, is dangerous, self-destructive, and the height of unpatriotic behavior.
Re:Too late FBI (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because it's the law doesn't make it right, either.
Re:Too late FBI (Score:5, Insightful)
I think perhaps the fact it's largely other people's UNRELATED stuff is where the issue really begins to rub people up the wrong way.
There were a bunch of raids like this in the UK. The police keep taking entire sets of Indymedia servers and not giving them back for ages.
Seriously. How about if the FBI confiscated the luggage from every room in a hotel, just because 1 of them had 50 kilos of cocaine in their room? I have no idea how they've been getting away with these tactics.
Re:Wow! (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the GP did actually say that as a result of Obama picking Biden (who has strong *AA ties) for VP, that there are a number of ex-*AA lawyers appointed to the Justice Department. So he did try to establish a line of responsibility
In fact, the transition committee, which was composed of a number of Democratic party old guard, probably said "who can we get for these Justice positions?" and Biden could have thrown the names of some people he knew in the hat. Obama is said to have personally approved at least the cabinet level candidates once vetted by the search committee. In practice, the vetting process sucked and the *AA background of those people may not have been on the fact sheet that would have shown up in front of Obama. The ones that weren't picked by that committee would have been picked by Holder. At some point though, the President has to delegate or nothing gets done, and that means that things get out of his direct control. He can't stay on top of what's happening in the US government like he did with his campaign
Now if some more SNAFUs like this happen and Obama doesn't call people on the carpet for it, then I think there will be some reason to blame him, but I think it's a little early to do that. Let's face it, with the crap he's got on his plate right now, this is small potatoes that he just doesn't have time for. Now if something like this happens again in a year, I'd be more interested in seeing if he puts a few Justice heads on the chopping block.
Too late cloud seizures. (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm thinking stuff like this could be the proverbial thorn in the side of cloud computing.
Did a Judge sign this warrant(s)? (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL, and I'm not familiar with what it takes to get a warrant such as this. This being /., that shouldn't slow me down a wit here. :) Didn't a Judge have to sign this?
If yes, then it is the Judge who really needs to have a hard long look cast in their direction. Law enforcement agencies are *always* going to apply a warrant as broadly as possible. They want to turn the case from red to black - it's the same thing as account managers making their number, whereby a lot of them will sell *any* service, regardless of whether you can actually support what they're proposing, as long as they can argue they hit their number.
The Judge should be the check/balance in the process, and force for a narrowing of the warrant's scope to a reasonable point, which allows the FBI to gather the evidence required (I mean, most of us want the bad guys to get caught, right?), while ensuring that other companies are not unreasonably hosed by the warrant. Being hosed means losing all your gear and service delivery facilities when the evidence used to get the warrant in the first place in *no* way implicates your company.
It doesn't take much grey matter or thought for a Judge to figure out that a finer granularity of shutdown than the main power supply switch for the building or data centre floors does indeed exist.
The Judge is a jerk-off, based on current facts and my wildly speculative opinions and lack of experience.
Re:Getting old, I guess... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Too late FBI (Score:3, Insightful)
No. If it is against the law, that means only that it is illegal. That doesn't mean the law is "right". The semantics are important, since many people will not understand that there is something wrong with the law if they confuse what is illegal with what is morally wrong.
Re:Getting old, I guess... (Score:5, Insightful)
You must be 150 years old because the last time this was a free country was BEFORE the 16th and 17th amendments to the U.S. Constitution which were pushed through the country by PROGRESSIVES (Note I don't say democrats or Republicans) at the end of the 19th and early 20th century.
The writers of the constitution KNEW that concentrated power leads to less freedom which is why they purposely tried to distribute power to the states as a check against the federal government. Once the federal government got the ability to directly tax people and take away the state's ability to decide for THEMSELVES how senators were appointed they (states) became nothing more than crack whores on federal $$$. Senators care more about their federal gigs than the states they represent (except during elections).
So now we have
1. States that can no longer check the federal gov like designed.
2. An interpretation of the constitution which means whatever the politicians and laywers want it to mean based on the idea of "implied powers of the constituion"
Notice that everybody in Washington is talking about the bailouts and expansion of federal gov in terms of MONEY and not a reduction of freedom and liberty which is more important than the gargantuan debt.
Welcome to the Alexander Hamilton's US of A. May he rot in hell for what he did to Jefferson and Madison's dream.
Re:Did a Judge sign this warrant(s)? (Score:2, Insightful)
The Judge may have been misled:
Dear Judge,
We, the FBI, uncovered several solid clues that company X is involved in a certain computer crime. Several listings of our intercepts are provided for your review, all printed in octal code for your convenience. We ask you to allow us to perform search of premises of company X and to seize the computer equipment present, for our crime labs to work upon and determine if further proceedings are required.
Signed, [...]
Re:Too late FBI (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Too late FBI (Score:4, Insightful)
Steve Jackson Games Precedent (Score:5, Insightful)
Btw, what was the outcome of that? Oh yeah:
The judge gave the Secret Service a tongue-lashing and ruled for SJ Games on two out of the three counts, and awarded over $50,000 in damages, plus over $250,000 in attorney's fees.
and
the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. [sjgames.com]
And that all occurred after a raid on a pretty small company. Imagine what will happen this time. Provided that the colo provider can survive the loss of it's tenants.
Re:Incredible (Score:1, Insightful)
You're a fucktard if you believe that you're in the right.
You're basically claiming that a government agency *STEALING* innocent people's equipment so that they can't use it anymore is the same as *INDIVIDUALS* using a public list to protect their networks from known asswipes.
You deserve everything you get.
Re:Incredible (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Someone at the FBI needs to develop better moral judgment. It's the judge that needs to develop a brain.
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Re:Incredible (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Incredible (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sue FBI, Federal government (Score:3, Insightful)
blanket confiscating servers is an incompetency fbi has to account for. if they do not know that a datacenter houses countless corporations' gear, they have to pay for it.
Re:They told if George W. Bush got elected... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama's only been in office since Jan. 20th ... in this time his primary focus has had to be the economic crisis and the wars in the Mid-East.
Bush had a full 8 years to put all of his policies into effect. Do you think it's reasonable that Obama could reverse all of that in such a short time in office? Our new President has been very efficient since taking office and has put many wheels in motion trying to reverse much of the damage that Bush Co. has done to our country. But he can't do it all with a simple stroke of the pen, and he doesn't have the Constitutional authority to just "make it so" with a stroke of his pen for many of the things he'd like to do. His policies must follow the process of law, or he's no better than Bush.
Any objective observer would give Obama very high marks for his first 74 days (as of this writing). Granted he's got many people on the right who will cry foul at many of his moves, and people from the left who are whining that he hasn't given attention to their pet issues, but you have to admit the man has been very busy and very efficient even if you can't agree with what he's done.
It will take time for the 'cultural change' within the government to take hold. Many Bush appointees still hold office, many gov't agencies still have the mindset of the last 8 years and it takes time to enact cultural change within an organization as complex as the US Government.
It's not the time to judge Obama yet, give him time to get his agenda in place. Stay vigilant, yes. Complain that everything hasn't changed yet? C'mon ... be realistic.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)