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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."
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FBI Seizes All Servers In Dallas Data Center

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  • Too late FBI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dave562 ( 969951 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:02PM (#27453011) Journal
    On the train on the way home there was a guy walking through the car selling the latest X-men on DVD. I think this is the proverbial "horse already left the barn" situation. However, what happened serves as a good example of what the future holds once the Federal government gets enhanced "cyber security" powers. Imagine what happens when say, for example, a Chinese botnet operator decides to launch an attack against (insert agency here) using zombies exclusively on Verizon's network. Oops... millions of Verizon customers are suddenly SOL. 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.
    • Re:Too late FBI (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ottothecow ( 600101 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:30PM (#27453319) Homepage
      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? 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). Guy then breaks contract by taking a copy of the movie and then either uploads it or is careless with it and it gets uploaded.

      Sure, there is some punishment in order but the guy who leaked a work print probably isnt responsible for the "billions of dollars" that the industry will say the leak cost them...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).

      • Re:Too late FBI (Score:5, Informative)

        by johnsonav ( 1098915 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:36PM (#27453389) Journal

        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:Too late FBI (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ottothecow ( 600101 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:48PM (#27453497) Homepage
          Hmm, that it is so long as it can be proved to be intentional in which case it looks like max 3 years + a fine.

          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:Too late FBI (Score:5, Informative)

            by westlake ( 615356 ) on Saturday April 04, 2009 @03:12AM (#27455631)
            Hmm, that it is so long as it can be proved to be intentional in which case it looks like max 3 years + a fine.

            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:Too late FBI (Score:4, Informative)

        by Wrath0fb0b ( 302444 ) on Saturday April 04, 2009 @02:15AM (#27455361)

        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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by joocemann ( 1273720 )

      The best is that when a 'victim' sues the government for their lost/damaged property, and win, its the taxpayers that foot the bill.

    • by vic-traill ( 1038742 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @11:04PM (#27454359)

      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.

  • Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nicolas.kassis ( 875270 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:02PM (#27453013)
    This is nuts, every server in a data center? do they realize the cost that might incur to all these non infringing companies? The wolverine leak nothing, no one was deprived of anything so there is no monetary loss but this? This is plain incredible. Good job FBI, you just caused many people a lot of trouble for a stupid movie.
    • Re:Incredible (Score:4, Interesting)

      by geekoid ( 135745 ) <`moc.oohay' `ta' `dnaltropnidad'> on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:19PM (#27453195) Homepage Journal

      It's actually kind of add.
      Normally they get a warrant and work with the data centers. I wonder if they tried that and he refused leaving them little choice? That is , of course, speculation.

      Just the man power, cost, and effort is extraordinary doing it this way.

      Of course we need to remember what we have is one side of the story.

      Even from a wacky government conspiracy point of view this doesn't make sense.

      Of course, it doesn't look like it was a lot of servers, so that may have played into it.

      • Re:Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ShieldW0lf ( 601553 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:29PM (#27453299) Journal
        Note to self: Install claymores in data center.
        • Re:Incredible (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Cassini2 ( 956052 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:52PM (#27454309)

          Wouldn't it be simpler to create an encrypted file system with a self-destructing key?

          That way, when the FBI seized the servers, they could automatically delete all the data for you. Then when it hit court, it would be "well your honour, if the FBI told me what they were up to in advance, then I would have cooperated with them. As it is, this device prevents thieves from accessing sensitive company data. It prevents data thefts like the ones that happened at the department of defense, the CIA, the IRS, and the FBI."

          The cops might be seriously annoyed with you, but you are going to be a criminal anyway ...

          • Re:Incredible (Score:4, Informative)

            by blhack ( 921171 ) on Saturday April 04, 2009 @11:55AM (#27457951)

            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:Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)

        by marcello_dl ( 667940 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:45PM (#27453467) Homepage Journal

        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:Incredible (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:30PM (#27453799)

        So who's the judge who signed the warrant allowing them to take all servers?

    • Re:Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:30PM (#27453313) Journal

      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:Incredibly ironic (Score:5, Informative)

        by j-stroy ( 640921 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:43PM (#27453451)
        A police agency disconnects 911 service and the media tries to email a guy whose email servers are all fubar from the raid.

        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. ... CBS 11 News emailed Simpson about the raid, but as of Thursday evening he had yet to respond."
      • Re:Incredible (Score:4, Informative)

        by twiddlingbits ( 707452 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:07PM (#27454041)
        I happen to live in Dallas and the local news showed them removing van loads of servers from the building so it was more than just a few ( no idea how many were actually in the building) so the FBI didn't execute on a tightly targeted warrant. FBI LIE to get what they wanted..NEVER.. ;) But wouldn't it have been easier to just take the data center down, cut the external connections to the backbones and analyze in place? Find the offending box, yank it out of the rack, trash any backups of that server and let the rest go. Unless this was a very shady ISP, with some sort of connections to the Wolverine "theft" normally an ISP has no knowledge about content and no control over the content on the servers, they just manage the hardware. Yes I know that you must promise not to do certain thing on their boxen but how would the know what you are hosting? Of course it the traffic to IP A.B.C.D all of a sudden takes a 100X jump you would think they might to check into that or maybe not if it's a nice big over the allocated bandwidth fee.
      • Re:Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)

        by einhverfr ( 238914 ) <chris,travers&gmail,com> on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:07PM (#27454045) Homepage Journal

        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.....

        • Re:Incredible (Score:4, Insightful)

          by dbIII ( 701233 ) on Saturday April 04, 2009 @02:34AM (#27455461)
          I think it's about "sending a message" and was an intentional outcome possibly to some minor obstruction. They can use this example to threaten any other datacentre they deal with in the future. Nasty third world secret police tactics come home to roost.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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 ille

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )

      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 frust

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Also, I think they missed a server or two:

      http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4816113/X-Men.Origins.Wolverine.2009.WORKPRiNT.XviD-NoRar_

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by HiVizDiver ( 640486 )

      do they realize the cost that might incur to all these non infringing companies

      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.

  • All servers!!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by IamGarageGuy 2 ( 687655 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:03PM (#27453017) Journal
    Do the Americans now live in a police state that is controlled by the RIAA. This may sound alarmist but when innocent companies are hurt by the use of FBI force - how far away is it?
    • Wrong **AA (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NixieBunny ( 859050 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:12PM (#27453123) Homepage
      I'm assuming Wolverine is a movie not a music album, so that would be our overlords at the MPAA, not the RIAA.
    • Re:All servers!!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by davidbrucehughes ( 451901 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:13PM (#27453139) Homepage

      This is exactly why we relocated to Chile six months ago. We had already moved to the end of a dirt road in the mountains of Mexico, but that wasn't far enough away. Now we're at the end of a much, much nicer dirt road in a country that is not ruled by mad-dog copyright censors. (And where you can rent a furnished, 5-bedroom house with cedar paneling on 2 acres of land for US$400.)

      Not that we are into downloading copyrighted material; far from it, we generate our own material and publish it under a Creative Commons license. But there are such things as principles...

    • by thesupraman ( 179040 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:13PM (#27453147)

      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....

      • by Mateo_LeFou ( 859634 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:23PM (#27453243) Homepage

        Eldred v Ashcroft holding was that a copyright law (in that example the one that extended Mickey's copyright protection) is presumed constitutional if it doesn't explicitly say it's for "infinite length" and if it maintains the distinction between idea and expression.

        Although your reading -- that a copyright law is unconstitutional if it does not promote Science and the Useful Arts -- makes a lot of common sense, it just isn't the case.

        In America, I mean. As presently Constituted.

        • by JesseMcDonald ( 536341 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:17PM (#27454117) Homepage

          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?

      • by mangu ( 126918 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:27PM (#27453775)

        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

        We, The People, already revoked copyright laws. As Robert Heinlein once wisely wrote:

        "I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; If I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am responsible for everything I do."
        ("The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", 1966)

        Nothing like easily broken laws and internet anonymity to set a man free...

    • by sgt_doom ( 655561 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:14PM (#27453157)

      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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by illumnatLA ( 820383 )
      Yes, we do live in a police state in a way.

      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
    • Re:All servers!!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by olddotter ( 638430 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:59PM (#27454339) Homepage

      Do the Americans now live in a police state that is controlled by the RIAA. This may sound alarmist but when innocent companies are hurt by the use of FBI force - how far away is it?

      Apparently the answer is yes.

      Forget money, some data can cost lives. While rare, I have worked on databases of information that a few times a year save the lives of people in hospitals. What if that type of info is unavailable due to this type of fishing net equipment grab?

  • by rewt66 ( 738525 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:05PM (#27453035)

    ... 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.

    • by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @11:04PM (#27454361)
      Oh, please. Tell that to the Nisei (the Japanese-Americans locked up during World War II), the slaves of the USA's first 100 years of existence, women without the vote or property rights, the victim's of the McCarthy era witch hunt against Communists, the hippies of the 1960's, and various people whose have rights have been trammeled since the beginning of the USA. We're a nation of laws on good days: on bad days, we've been nationalistic thungs.
    • by Danathar ( 267989 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @11:14PM (#27454403) Journal

      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.

    • by Johnny Mnemonic ( 176043 ) <mdinsmore@@@gmail...com> on Saturday April 04, 2009 @12:49AM (#27454941) Homepage Journal
      Well, my memory goes back to this: SJ Games vs. the Secret Service [sjgames.com], which happened in 1990. So your memory must be longer than mine to recall a time when such things didn't happen.

      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.
  • by Beelzebud ( 1361137 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:05PM (#27453047)
    It's all over p2p networks, it's in IRC channels, it's on usenet. Good luck getting rid of all traces of it.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by iminplaya ( 723125 )

      They're just after the original leaker. SOP... "Shoot first", ask questions later

    • Good point! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mangu ( 126918 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:39PM (#27453857)

      Good luck getting rid of all traces of it.

      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!

  • Umm (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Showered ( 1443719 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:06PM (#27453053)

    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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      I'm wondering the same thing, how the hell can they get servers own by different entities. Does the warrant not require a specific person to be raided? These FBI went to far on this one and the job who approved this is a idiot.
    • Re:Umm (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Princeofcups ( 150855 ) <john@princeofcups.com> on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:27PM (#27453277) Homepage

      Any enterprise class server has no local disk, or system disk at most. All data is stored on SAN disk. It would be hilarious if they grabbed all the servers but left the storage array.

  • by JimXugle ( 921609 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:09PM (#27453073)

    When a police officer seizes computer hardware from a business in the course of an investigation, they can be held civilly liable for any loss or damage caused to the business by their actions.

    At least thats how it is for Pennsylvania State Police.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:23PM (#27453751)
      Source? Federal law explicitly says otherwise. The doctrine of "qualified immunity" protects any law enforcement officer acting in good faith in accordance with his duties from any civil liability associated with those. This matter has been extensively litigated over the past 100+ years and there is a solid body of case law dealing with it.

      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].

  • by iccaros ( 811041 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:26PM (#27453261) Homepage
    from the owners statements.. "unwarranted early morning raid" Fist they must have a warrant and it must specifies each piece of equipment that they are taking and why, This is why you have an attorney on call, and it also sounds like the agent threated this person, which is a crime.. Under the Fourth Amendment, searches must be reasonable and specific. This means that a search warrant must be specific as to the specified object to be searched for and the place to be searched. Other items, rooms, outbuildings, persons, vehicles, etc. may require additional search warrants. (from Wikipedia) Just like when the police came by (and had the wrong house) and wanted to see my car, I asked to see the warrant.. When they got done talking lots of crap about how much trouble I was in for not letting them search my car, they then figured out that they were at the wrong house.. just because they ask does not mean you have to let them in.. also if you are an effected business, I would contact your lawyer and have them contact the FBI about loss of productivity, and if your servers were not on the warrant, then start a suite on unlawful seizure..
  • 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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by anagama ( 611277 )

      Lets watch closely, but avoid jumping to any conclusion.

      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: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by chazzf ( 188092 )
        Because the government always lies, but the individuals who compose the government are saintly truth-tellers.
    • by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:32PM (#27454191) Journal

      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.

  • by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:29PM (#27453305) Homepage

    ... It's an ugly thing that people thought it necessary or even a good idea to give out pre-released movie material. To clarify my position, I like downloading movies from the pirate bay. The movies I like, I usually buy... the movies I like a little, i wait until they are in the bargain bin at WalMart. If I didn't like it, I don't buy it.

    With all that said, I once ruined my interest in buying the Stargate SG-1 movie by downloading and watching a pre-production copy of the movie from the pirate bay. I might buy it one day if I have that amount of cash in my pocket at the time I see it on the shelf, but the combination of events and circumstance have to make it seem like the thing to do at the time. I might still enjoy the production edited version of the movie with all effects and stuff installed, but I will still see this "unfinished" crap in my mind because that's what I saw first. Never again will I watch a movie before it is complete.

    I want to see the Wolverine movie... trailers look cool. But I am not going to get the pre-release from the pirate bay because I don't want to ruin it.

  • by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxruby@nOSpaM.comcast.net> on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:29PM (#27453307)
    Too many people are tied up in the idea that Obama is some kind of mesiah, that they forget to look into the facts. Look Bush was arguably the worst president in US history, but that is no reason to give his successor a free and unquestioned ride. This is the guy who chose Biden, long the media's lapdog and has subsequently posted top **AA lawyers to the justice department....

    Bottom line is people need to hold Obama accountable for these things (he sets the tone for things in the Fed gov just as Bush did before him) and stop putting him on some kind of plinth.

  • by Andrew Lindh ( 137790 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:31PM (#27453333)

    I love the end of the story "CBS 11 News emailed Simpson about the raid, but as of Thursday evening he had yet to respond"..... I wonder why? May be the FBI took their mail server too?

  • by Paracelcus ( 151056 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:40PM (#27453417) Journal

    Romania or Belarus, where nobody gives a shit!

  • by rennerik ( 1256370 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:05PM (#27454029)

    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?

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