subject: (Fwd) FC: IMC ungagged: Seattle collective talks about Fed cou
posted: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 11:08:18 +0100



------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 13:26:10 -0400
From: Declan McCullagh <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: FC: IMC ungagged: Seattle collective talks about Fed court order
Send reply to: [email protected]


*******
Background: http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=imc

It strikes me that this could be a learning experience for IMCs and
similar groups about keeping Apache web logs. Logging could be
disabled (>/dev/null), Apache could be configured not to record an IP
address, logs could be kept for only a few minutes, or logs could be
encrypted and sent every few minutes to a participating offshore site
that could refuse to turn them over even if the U.S. organization
wanted them to do so.

-Declan

*******


http://seattle.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=3013

Gag Order Lifted; IMC in Free Speech Battle Following FBI/Secret
Service Visit
by JL for the Seattle IMC Spokescouncil 9:49am Fri Apr 27 '01

This is an official announcement from the Seattle IMC Spokescouncil

On the evening of Saturday, April 21, a day which saw tens of
thousands demonstrate against the FTAA in the streets of Quebec City,
the Independent Media Center in Seattle was served with a sealed court
order by two FBI agents and an agent of the US Secret Service. The
terms of the sealed order prevented IMC volunteers from publicizing
its contents; volunteers immediately began discussions with legal
counsel to amend the order. This morning, April 27, Magistrate Judge
Monica Benton issued an amended order, freeing us to discuss the
situation without the threat of being held in contempt.
The original order, also issued by Judge Benton, directed the IMC to
supply the FBI with "all user connection logs" for April 20 and 21st
from a web server occupying an IP address which the Secret Service
believed belonged to the IMC. The order stated that this was part of
an "ongoing criminal investigation" into acts that could constitute
violations of Canadian law, specifically theft and mischief. IMC legal
counsel David Sobel, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center,
comments: "As the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized, the First
Amendment protects the right to communicate anonymously with the press
and for political purposes. An order compelling the disclosure of
information identifying an indiscriminately large number of users of a
website devoted to political discourse raises very serious
constitutional issues. To provide the same protection to the press and
anonymous sources in the Internet world as with more traditional
media, the Government must be severely limited in its ability to
demand their Internet identity--their "Internet Protocol addresses." A
federal statute already requires that such efforts against the press
be approved by the Attorney General, and only where essential and
after alternatives have been exhausted. There is no suggestion that
these standards were met here.
The sealed court order also directed the IMC not to disclose "the
existence of this Application or Order, or the existence of this
investigation, unless or until ordered by this court." Such a prior
restraint on a media organization goes to the heart of the First
Amendment. Ironically, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer learned about
the existence of the order from "federal sources," suggesting that the
purpose of the gag order was simply to allow the government to spin
the issue its way.
The order did not specify what acts were being investigated, and the
Secret Service agent acknowledged that the IMC itself was not
suspected of criminal activity. No violation of US law was alleged. It
is not clear whether federal law allows the Attorney General ever to
approve such an investigation of US press entities to facilitate a
foreign investigation. According to IMC counsel Lee Tien of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, "This kind of fishing expedition is
another in a long line of overbroad and onerous attempts to chill
political speech and activism. Back in 1956, Alabama tried to force
the NAACP to give up its membership lists -- but the Supreme Court
stopped them. This order to IMC, even without the 'gag,' is a threat
to free speech, free association, and privacy."
Responding to questions from IMC volunteers, the agents claimed that
their investigation concerned the source of either one or two postings
which, they said, had been posted to an IMC newswire early Saturday
morning. These posts, according to the agents, contained documents
stolen from a Canadian government agency, including classified
information related to the travel itinerary of George W. Bush (who was
at that time in Quebec City, participating in Summit of the Americas
meetings). Agents claimed that the Secret Service was notified of the
existence of such posts by a tip from an (unnamed) major commercial
news network.
The agents were unable to provide URL addresses or titles for the
postings they described. Additionally, the court order contained a
non-working IP address, rather than an address assigned to any of the
IMC sites. IMC volunteers nevertheless were able to identify two
articles posted to the Montreal IMC which partially matched the
agents' incomplete description. These articles, posted first in French
and then in English translations ( HYPERLINK
http://montreal.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=505 , 514 and
515), contain sections of documents purportedly stolen from a Quebec
City police car during Friday night anti-FTAA demonstrations; the
documents detail police strategies for hindering protesters' mass
action. It does not appear that any materials were posted to any IMC
site containing Bush travel plans.
Although the agents were concerned with only two posts, the court
order demands "all user connections logs" for a 48-hour period, which
would include individual IP addresses for every person who posted
materials to or visited the IMC site during the FTAA protests. IMC
legal counsel Nancy Chang, of the Center for Constitutional Rights,
comments that "the overbroad sweep of the information demanded by the
FBI raises the disturbing question of whether the order is calculated
to discourage association with the IMC."
The agents arrived at the IMC around 7pm. Seattle IMC volunteers had
been busy all afternoon gathering regional IMC coverage of FTAA
protests underway in Seattle and in Blaine, Washington, and
coordinating coverage with other sites on the IMC network. Several
visitors were also in the IMC at the time, using public computers..
While agents were speaking with one staff volunteer, another began
making telephone calls in an effort to contact legal counsel. After
the agents left, volunteers discussed the court order's gag provision,
and began recontacting the handful of people who had already been
called, in order to make sure that the terms of the court order would
not be violated before legal counsel had time to appraise the
situation.
Initial attempts were made to contain news of the FBI/Secret Service
visit; however, a few details of the story were soon leaked via a
partially accurate report broadcast on the Vermont IMC internet radio
stream. Soon the Seattle IMC was flooded with phone calls requesting
information about what quickly began to be described as an "FBI raid,"
and speculations began to spread rapidly across the open-publishing
newswires of various IMCs.
For about three hours, a network of IMC technology volunteers
attempted to comply with the court order by removing such posts from
the Seattle IMC and other major IMC sites as they appeared. This had
the unfortunate effect of seemingly confirming the worst suspicions of
independent journalists who posted brief articles announcing or
speculating about mysterious and terrible things going on at the
Seattle IMC, then finding their posts removed from view minutes later.
Volunteers called off this clumsy attempt at rumor control around
midnight, when it became clear that removing of posts was only serving
to fan the flames of rumor, and that in any case the story had already
spread beyond the confines of the IMC network. In acting to remove
these posts, IMC volunteers were motivated by fear of violating the
court order's gag provision even before legal counsel had had a chance
to review the document. We regret the feelings of confusion and
disempowerment which many users of the IMC sites experienced due to
Saturday night's blackout of postings on this topic, and the general
frustration caused by the gag order.
Since the incident occurred, several persistent, yet false, rumors
have taken shape; some of these found their way into coverage
published in Monday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other commercial
media. We can now dispel some of the more common of these: No search
warrant was served to the IMC in connection with the court order, and
nobody connected to the Seattle IMC has been arrested. No equipment or
logs have been seized; the agents' visit was not a "raid."
Now, free from restrictive court orders, the Seattle IMC will be able
to cover this important story as it continues to unfold.
The Seattle Independent Media Center was launched in Fall 1999 to
provide immediate, authentic, grassroots coverage of protests against
the WTO. Just a year and a half later, the IMC network has reached
around the world, with dozens of sites scattered across six
continents. IMCs are autonomously organized and administered, but
share collective organizational principles and certain technological
resources. Each IMC's news coverage centers upon its open-publishing
newswire, an innovative and democratizing system allowing anyone with
access to an Internet connection to become a journalist, reporting on
events from his or her own perspective rather than being forced to
rely on the narrow range of views presented by corporate-owned
mainstream media sources.
During last weekend's widespread protests against a proposed Free
Trade Area of the Americas, many IMC sites collaborated to produce
comprehensive coverage of demonstrations taking place in Quebec City
and Sao Paulo, as well as solidarity protests in cities across the
U.S. and along the Mexican and Canadian borders. The breadth and depth
of coverage produced by the IMC's global network eclipsed that of many
corporate media outlets.
The Seattle IMC remains committed to its mission: "The Independent
Media Center is a grassroots organization committed to using media
production and distribution as a tool for promoting social and
economic justice. It is our goal to further the self-determination of
people under-represented in media production and content, and to
illuminate and analyze local and global issues that impact ecosystems,
communities and individuals. We seek to generate alternatives to the
biases inherent in the corporate media controlled by profit, and to
identify and create positive models for a sustainable and equitable
society."

###



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