Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Catch-22

Yossarian | 11.10.2004 01:12 | FBI Server Seizure | Indymedia | Repression | Cambridge | Oxford | World

Catch-22: Indymedia internet servers in London have been disappeared into U.S. custody, but we don't know where they went or who took them, as the hosting company refuses to tell us. We can't generate any corporate media interest because there are not enough facts available to make a coherent story, but unless we can generate interest we will never be able to put enough pressure on the authorities to get any facts out of them.

One thing is very clear. The equipment that we use to help people 'be their own media' has been spirited away to some sort of Guantanamo Bay for "terrorist" computer hard drives. There are also some interesting negative facts. No one has been charged with a crime. The Home Office in the UK "can neither confirm nor deny" their involvement in the seizure of the equipment. The US embassy denied knowledge of the seizure on Friday; an exploratory phone call to the crack investigators at Scotland Yard on Saturday revealed that "you need to tell us who took the equipment before we can find them." And there is a gaping hole on the internet where about 1 million Indymedia news articles, comments, photos, audio reports, and videos used to be.

The wound is closing, but unless the equipment is returned the scar tissue will never go away. The IMCs that had more tech resources and paranoia were keeping constant backups - IMC-UK was back online within four hours of the seizure, with virtually no loss of content. Others were not so fortunate. IMC-Italy has now reappeared online after four days, and have permanently lost about two months worth of data; IMC-Uruguay has lost everything since last April; others are still assessing damage but most of the 20-odd sites affected have major damage. Thousands of articles have been pulled from the sunlit internet into the dark prison of the U.S. government's "undernet." Perhaps the FBI will use the stolen equipment to set up an Undermedia network for use by the detainees in Guantanamo, Belmarsh Prison, Abu Ghraib?

If you have ever read an Indymedia site, posted to the newswire, made a comment, then please consider: this incident is not an attack on Indymedia, it is an attack on you. Indymedia volunteers are few in number, and we don't produce much content compared to what is produced by the hundreds of thousands of people who have contributed to the sites over the last five years. The FBI has stolen an irreplaceable piece of our collective history. Worse, they have made a direct attack on an important component of the global movement against neoliberalism, a part that carries messages to and from the different parts of our body politic without the need for the authoritarian brain of a Central Committee to tell us how to move.

Indymedia is still assessing the damage; but in the next few days as the shock wears off, it will likely be looking for other actors in the global justice movements to do solidarity actions, sign petitions, put pressure on governments, and cause trouble on its behalf. You are invited to take part. Please check in for regular updates at a (surviving) Indymedia site near you.

Sites with major damage:
brasil.indymedia.org euskalherria.indymedia.org germany.indymedia.org italy.indymedia.org liege.indymedia.org lille.indymedia.org nantes.indymedia.org nice.indymedia.org pl.indymedia.org portugal.indymedia.org

Sites that are still off the net:
ambazonia.indymedia.org andorra.indymedia.org antwerpen.indymedia.org belgrade.indymedia.org keys.indymedia.org oost-vlaanderen.indymedia.org prague.indymedia.org uruguay.indymedia.org wmass.indymedia.org wvl.indymedia.org

Yossarian

Comments

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech