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FBI seizes riseup.net server
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- rhizome 15y agoPretty cheap R&D by the FBI for anonymized communications techniques.
- rosser 15y agoIt's not like Mixmaster (and presumably everything else running on that host) isn't FOSS. This isn't R&D; it's swatting a fly with a thermobaric device.
- electromagnetic 15y agoI do not understand the sledgehammer approach the FBI 'cybercrimes' division deals with things with. The FBI are not police, are not detectives, and are not competent in these matters. I'm sorry but covert monitoring of a server is going to be vastly more beneficial for an operation than taking the server and is going to net more targets and more evidence. I remember stories of the FBI sitting on a known front for organized crime and waiting until they got someone worth catching before making a move. It's a universal truth that any action has a reaction. If the FBI shut down a money laundering front, then the Mob would get wise and get more sophisticated and you won't hurt their operation. If you wait until you can link someone important to the Mob infrastructure and then make a move, then you've seriously effected crime in a city. The FBI does shit like this and Megaupload before they appear to have their ducks in a row. They don't know what they're doing, and don't know what they're looking for so they consistently appear to jump the gun. My only thoughts with this are that someone with a lot of power and influence is making this happen. What I wonder is what politician or presidential candidate/whatever has a lot vested and a lot to lose from someone finding out they/their kids/their family is pirating, or running anonymous operations, etc. Seriously, it's the only reason I can think of other than incompetency as to why the FBI is consistently jumping the gun.
- 9999 15y agoAre there any legal scholars, lawyers, or law enforcement around that can comment on why they would take this approach? Would the burden of proof required for wiretapping authorization be more stringent than for seizure of a server? Could they have actually already been tapping the communications in and out of riseup and performed the seizure to use the server as evidence in a case that was already prepared based on information pulled from the tap?
- fennecfoxen 15y ago> I do not understand the sledgehammer approach the FBI 'cybercrimes' division deals with things with. ... I'm sorry but covert monitoring of a server is going to be vastly more beneficial for an operation than taking the server and is going to net more targets and more evidence. I wonder if they'll auction off the server? Fun fact. The federal government makes ~$3 billion a year off asset seizures. They don't have to charge people with a crime to seize property - the trial is actually conducted against the property itself.) The law enforcement agencies responsible get to keep 50-80% of the proceeds. http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/26/the-forfeiture-racket/print http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/26/the-forfeiture-racket/... (disclaimer - source does not pretend to be unbiased ;)
- jfoutz 15y agoYeah, but they have to hold on to that stuff for a while. a 5 year old cash is still cash. a 5 year old computer is a doorstop.
- echo-unity 15y agoI would point out the fallacy in your statement - but I will let you figure it out in the next 5-10 years.
- Tuna-Fish 15y agoI would be very interested in the fallacy you see, yet I see none.
- ihuman 15y agoI can understand the need to stop the bomb threats, but the FBI also should have respected the other users of the seized server and not removed it. And besides, nothing is stoping the person from using other anonymous email hosts.
- gee_totes 15y agoThis seizure is especially chilling because Riseup is used primarily by activists.
- ingrid 15y agoI agree and whom ever is doing this is motivated to keep doing it. Initially the bomb threats started in bathroom stalls and then to emails of just one bomb threat for a day. But the situation keeps escalating, today 13 bomb threats have been made.
- alaskamiller 15y agoAmerica's online law enforcement shaping up to be pretty much like the war on drugs.
- suneilp 15y agoIn other words, useless?
- fennecfoxen 15y agoLet's see. In the war on drugs, a number of police forces have been caught delaying drug busts so that they can make more money from seizing cash (as opposed to seizing drugs). What's the cybercrime equivalent?
- iamdave 15y agoIf you opt to not cherry pick the comparison, and look at the larger picture instead of trying to make it a 1:1 analogous comment, you'll probably find that what the OP of this chain was referring to is that both are shows of excessive waste where government entities are faced with something much larger than what they can lasso in, and are routinely going about very questionable methods to get what they want.
- gee_totes 15y agoIn total, over 300 email accounts, between 50-80 email lists, and several other websites have been taken off the Internet by this action. I hope Riseup posts a list of those 300 e-mail accounts that were taken offline, so the owners know that they are now on an FBI watch list.
- alanh 15y agoYou’re recommending a breach of trust/privacy by making this public — obviously the right thing to do is contact them directly & privately.
- joeyh 15y agoI have friends involved in Riseup, and I know they do good work. Software projects like monkeysphere and backupninja. Didn't realize they hosted so many mailing lists, apparently 14,000. This is a good time to https://help.riseup.net/en/donate https://help.riseup.net/en/donate .. lots of options, including bitcoin and flattr.
- _delirium 15y agoWith this rash of seize-servers-first-ask-questions-later, sounds like we're heading for a reprise of the glorious Steve Jackson Games era of blunt-weapon policing tactics when it comes to technology.
- younata 15y agoI'm sorry, but what are you referring to?
- LeafStorm 15y agoThe FBI raided the offices of Steve Jackson Games because Loyd Blankenship, the author of GURPS Cyberpunk, was the subject of a crackdown for disseminating a (largely non-technical) document about the E911 system on his BBS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._United_States_Secret_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._U...
- waterlesscloud 15y agoCheck the external links here for free versions of The Hacker Crackdown, a non-fiction account of the whole situation by Bruce Sterling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hacker_Crackdown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hacker_Crackdown
- xtracto 15y agoYou made me feel old. As others commented before, the documents at stake were released int he Phrack magazine (which had a HN article some days ago because of a new issue). The E911 article is: http://phrack.org/issues.html?issue=24&id=4#article http://phrack.org/issues.html?issue=24&id=4#article The funny thing is that after all the noise the FBI and government made, it was found that the same document was kind of publicly available (or easily obtainable by anyone). Good times those :)
- corysama 15y agoI don't have a written source, but according to my Russian friend, the position of the Russian govt on Bitcoin goes something like "We will have non-technical solutions for your technical mumbo-jumbo." Interestingly, Russia and Ukraine rank #1 and #2 on http://www.google.com/trends/?q=bitcoin http://www.google.com/trends/?q=bitcoin
- ssmall 15y agoAgain? Didn't they get all their servers seized back in the late 90s early 00's too?
- gee_totes 15y agoI want to say that they had servers seized running up to the 2004 Republican convention in Minnesota. However, I'm having a hard time finding news links about this. I also went to check their wikipedia page to see if there was a history section, and Riseup doesn't seem to have one. Now I'm going to go soothe my paranoia.....
- ssmall 15y agoIf I remember correctly... it was because they were offering free hosting to political groups and someone was using it to host bomb plans without them knowing. I'm sure the time I'm thinking of had to have been before 2004 because I remember not even having a drivers license at the time.
- mayoff 15y agoThis seems like a no-brainer to me. The FBI has the duty to find the Pitt bomb threatener. Perhaps Mixmaster truly does make the email untraceable, but it's the FBI's duty to try tracing it - not to take the Mixmaster claims as fact. If the FBI has evidence that criminal emails passed through that server, I absolutely want the FBI to be able to obtain and execute a warrant to seize it and search it for evidence. Analogy: the cops need to look at a gun store's records to track down a criminal shooter. The cops have reason to believe people with access to the gun store might go in and destroy those records. Should they be able to shut down the gun store (temporarily) and block access to it while they execute a legal search warrant on it?
- siculars 15y agoCriminals (and worse) use all sorts of things, including technology, that everyone else uses. By your logic, the FBI should execute seizure warnings against GMail, Yahoo mail and Facebook... every time they have "evidence that criminal emails passed through that server." Frankly, your logic makes no practical sense.
- JoshTriplett 15y ago> Criminals (and worse) use all sorts of things, including technology, that everyone else uses. By your logic, the FBI should execute seizure warnings against GMail, Yahoo mail and Facebook... every time they have "evidence that criminal emails passed through that server." They do, actually, except most of the time they don't bother with the warrant, and it doesn't make the news because neither law enforcement nor the companies involved have any interest in disclosing it. If secure anonymization technologies become a lot more common, law enforcement organizations will eventually learn not to bother. Until then, anyone running such a service (such as a Tor exit node) should expect to have this happen to them periodically.
- mayoff 15y agoThe FBI should absolutely execute a seizure warrant against those companies, if doing so is effective, but: - Those companies probably have too many servers and too much data to make seizing all of it productive. - Those companies would be less likely to be effected, as they have backups and redundant servers for handling outages. - Those companies keep records that they provide to law enforcement when presented with a warrant or subpoena. It's 100% ok to run an anonymizing remailer, with no backup strategy in place. It's retarded to act surprised and indignant when the server gets seized because it was probably used to commit a crime.
- agwa 15y agoSo if riseup.net had been hosted on, say, EC2, what would the FBI have seized? The server hosting the VM and many other completely unrelated VMs? Scary thought. Also, if you haven't done so already I encourage you to read the FAQ at the end of the page. It has one of the best answers to "Doesn’t Mixmaster/anonymous remailers enable criminals to do bad things?" I've ever seen.
- bgilroy26 15y agoIs there a law enforcement backdoor in Amazon TOS?
- ChuckMcM 15y agoIf previous seizures are any indication yes. They identify machines by IP and even if its a virtual machine they seize the server running it. Can't comment on whether or not its effective, and of course if you have a disaster recovery plan and your site pops back up I don't know what they do, I guess they play whack-a-mole with search warrants.
- smsm42 15y agoWait, seizing server running VM makes zero sense - VM can be run on different physical servers at different moments and freely migrated. What would they be seizing actually - silicon and metal in hope it somehow would given them a clue about something that happened eons (in CPU time) ago on the same hardware? That's like arresting a person because he was breathing the same air as a criminal did. Even if Amazon does not actually migrate VMs I'm sure some other cloud providers do. OTOH they could seize storage media where the images are stored. That would be a major catastrophe for any cloud provider.
- durin42 15y agoCan you cite any examples of this ever happening? I am curious now.
- ChuckMcM 15y agohttp://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1883984 http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1883984
- ingrid 15y agoThe building I work in and practically live in as student was evacuated two hours ago due to a bomb threat, and as of today 11 bomb threats have been made across campus. The total of bomb threats made is now 126. It is ridiculous. I do not agree with the FBI confiscating servers to figure out where the anonymous bomb threats have been coming from, but I'm kind of glad they are and feel bad for that.
- mikeash 15y agoWhen was the last time a bomb threat was followed up with an actual bomb in the US? Maybe it's time to stop blindly evacuating buildings in response to anonymous messages.
- watty 15y agoI'd still like to be known if there was a bomb thread in a building I was in...
- samstave 15y ago1993 World trade center And today is the anniversary of the 1995 Oklahoma city bombing. However I am uncertain if a "threat" was ever called in for either. This is evidence that a called in thread will likely never be real - real attacks aren't called in with warnings.
- ssmall 15y agoJust because those didn't come with threats doesn't mean all attacks come without threats. Also it doesn't prove that all threats won't be followed by an attack. The unibomber is one example. He would send mail bombs if newspapers didn't heed his threats and publish his ramblings.
- mikeash 15y agoIf you are uncertain if a threat was ever called in for either, how are those answers to my question? I was specifically asking about threats that were first called in, then followed up upon. To the best of my knowledge, neither of those qualify.
- sciurus 15y agoI met Jamie and some others associated with May First/People Link while volunteering to support the first US Social Forum. I was really impressed with their ideals and how they applied them to their work as technologists. I hope everything works out well for them and that this seizure brings more attention to what they are doing.
- loverobots 15y agoFrom a forensic evidence perspective, can an image or a drive clone suffice? And does anyone know what was this about, e-mail threat to do ... ?
- mayoff 15y agoThe warrant was (according to riseup) related to the recent rash of bomb threats against the University of Pittsburgh. https://www.google.com/search?q=university+pittsburgh+bomb+threats&tbm=nws https://www.google.com/search?q=university+pittsburgh+bomb+t...
- ArcticCelt 15y agoOr alternatively just seize the drives and let them keep a clone copy. This way they can conduct their investigation without causing so much unwarranted collateral damage.
- samstave 15y agoThis is a testament to why you would want to use AWS virtual instances and never have "a server" - point your domain at a new instance should one machine get ordered off by the FBI.
- carguy1983 15y agoWow, you place an awful lot of faith in amazon.
- samstave 15y agoNot really actually, I just mean having a discrete server that can be "seized" is not a particularly robust solution.
- carguy1983 15y ago... and what do you think an Amazon slice is? It sits on a physical machine that can be identified, located, and handed over by Amazon given a lawful request, all without the site operators knowing. You think they give a fuck about the other 4 slices on your server? No. They don't. In fact it says so right in their SLA.
- samstave 15y agoI used the word ROBUST If you are trying to defy the FBI, and 100% of your site architecture resides within Amazon's infrastructure you are not robust.
- soult 15y agoGood idea. "The cloud" worked real wonders for Wikileaks.
- guccimane 15y agoFlouting law enforcement does not strike me as a good design goal. If the law wants you to stop doing something, they will make sure you stop.
- viraptor 15y ago> "In total, over 300 email accounts, between 50-80 email lists, and several other websites have been taken off the Internet by this action." Dramatic description aside, I really hope that what they mean is - lost one copy of it, waiting for DNS change to propagate... Am I hoping for too much?
- nextparadigms 15y agoThe American version of SOPA already passed in 2008. It's called the Pro IP Act. That's how they are able to seize "local" domains like .com and .net, and I think .org, too.
- echo-unity 15y agoWhat recourse do the people have when voter fraud occurs? How much monitoring is done through those channels? *I know it is not a react quickly because human lives could be at stake - but considering anything tied to a presidential election could lead to a person voted to office that could jeopordize a nation.
- bbit 15y agoI've never understood what people don't understand about illegal. Reminds me of mega upload users who claim they had no idea illegal activity I.e copywriter files uploaded was taking place. I call it major ignorance this story above falls in line.
- rdl 15y agoFBI actually has some good agents, but the only ones I've met were on counterterrorism, either in the us or overseas trying to find foreign links to us terrorism. I know most of the other law enforcement funding got repriorirized after 9-11, and I could imagine it is still attracting the better agents. Most of the really stupid FBI stuff originates from their bush league regional offices or is pushed by idiot US Attorneys in those places (e-gold, mmj raids, etc). The Secret Service, at least on computer crime, is far more uniformly competent.
- philipithomas 15y ago"[. . .] search warrant issued by the FBI,” Doesn't a judge have to issue a warrant?
- tobyjsullivan 15y agoThere are a lot of comments here, but I don't see anybody asking one particularly important question (and please forgive my ignorance of Riseup.net). Why did removing one server cause so much disruption? Do they not have back-ups? Redundant servers? If this stuff is so gosh-darn important, I feel these users have put their faith in the wrong hosting organization...
- bruo 15y agoit is an important question, but it's far away from the issue. that's why nobody is asking that, because it's not important in this specific issue. riseup is a collective driven isp that is focused in social change activists, so they do have values and principles different than making money. the issue here is not the disrupt, it's the attack on those values. i hope you now understand why nobody ask about that, it is important, but not the issue about this. also it's because this values people put faith in them and not in google, amazon or another money focused company, me included :)
- dendory 15y agoLearn from the pirate bay. It's no longer a matter of protecting your business from hackers, but also from corrupt governments. When you start a business you better have contingencies in place to switch domain, server, country, etc seamlessly.