The EFF has released a subpoena issued to Indymedia.us for visitor information. According to the EFF, "the government was asking for the IP address of every one of indymedia.us's thousands of visitors on that date — the IP address of every person who read any news story on the entire site." The recipient of the subpoena immediately contacted the EFF for legal advice which fought the subpoena.

As a legal lesson, the EFF says that these non-disclosure causes are not legally sound. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop them from being scary. As a basic practice, politically sensitive sites should NOT log IP addresses (editor's note, hackbloc.org does not log ip addrs, for more info on configuring apache and other services to not log ips see: http://riseuplabs.org/privacy/) so that if anybody comes looking they can honestly say no records are responsive.

I salute the strength of the subpoena recipient and their integrity. Thank you for your continued dedication to a better world.

Direct repost from http://uk.indymedia.org:

On 22 January 2009 an Indymedia server was seized by the Police in Manchester. This was related to postings about the recent Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) trial.

Kent Police had e-mailed imc-uk-contact in the morning requesting that personal information about the Judge from the recent SHAC trial in the UK be removed from the site. However this information had already been quickly removed in line with IMC UK policy. The e-mail also requested information relating to the poster be retained. Indymedia as an open posting news service does not log such information about its sources.

The machine was handed to the Police by the management of UK Grid, a Manchester based colocation facility, without a warrant being shown. It is believed that a warrant for this one server may exist and have been issued by a Chief Inspector. As the server was a mirror of the site, it can be concluded that the validity of the seizure wasn't checked, and the police attacked Indymedia infrastructure in the UK.

Other sites that have been affected as a result of this seizure include London Indymedia, the global Indymedia documentation project server, la Soja Mata – an anti-GM soya campaign focusing on South American development, Transition Sheffield and a Canadian campaign against the 2010 olympics.

For details see Indymedia Uk Server Seizure Info Page and Press Release #1

Indymedia Coverage: IMC Athens | IMC Barcelona [en] | IMC Brasil | IMC Germany | Indybay | IMC Ireland | IMC Nantes [fr] | IMC New York | IMC Poland | IMC Switzerland [it]

Other Coverage: The Register | SchNews | Gulli [de] | Annalist [de] | heise online [de] | slashdot

 

The committie to protect journalists is reporting today that for the first time ever the number of imprisoned online journalists has surpassed the number of print, radio, TV and film reporters combined.  As of December 1st 2008 the number of journalists imprisoned worldwide totals 125, with at least 56 of them being online journalists, meaning either bloggers or online editors and writers.
The country jailing the most journalists and the most bloggers is, of course, China.  China has jailed over 28 journalists of whom, 24 worked online.  In total %45 of all jailed journalists are online journalists.  From the story "The image of the solitary blogger working at home in pajamas may be appealing, but when the knock comes on the door they are alone and vulnerable."  The U.S. currently has one journalist in jail in Iraq.

This report only covers journalists that are currently held, so it does not have totals for the whole year, unfortunately.  It does not include for example, Josh Wolf, who was jailed for not turning over sources to federal investigators. Or Judith Miller, the reporter behind the infamous Valerie Plame case.  You can read the whole article here.
 

http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/203
Published: Sunday 09 November 2008 16:54

by Yossarian, IMC London, yossarian (at) aktivix.org

There has been controversy recently on the global imc-communication and
imc-tech lists over the issue of a $200,000 grant application sent to
the Knight Foundation by IMC Boston to do Drupal development work for
Indymedia sites.

The grant application was blocked by IMC Rosario in Argentina. As a
working technical volunteer who has been building a new Indymedia
website for the past year or so, I think this whole debate has raised
some interesting issues related to code, corporate monopolies, and the
dilemmas faced by a humble developer who's trying to help start a
revolution.

On November 12th the Yes Men, an orginization dedicated to culture jamming through the impersonation of various corporate entities handed out 1.2 million fake issues of the New York Times.  They stood outside the entrances to the NY Subway system handing them to early morning commuters. The Newspaper declared an end to the Iraq war and a maximum wage law, as well as universal health care and some other nice things.  According to reports many commuters actually thought it was  a real newspaper.  One commuter was in tears before she noticed the date on the newspaper, July 4th, 2009.  Issues were handed out in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Philidelphia and Washington DC.  Apparently the pranksters have recieved no legal backlash so far.

They also made a complimentary website where you can read the entire newspaper at http://nytimes-se.com