Due to a series of emailed bomb threats made to a University in Pittsburg, the FBI decided to seize a server which they suspected that the sender of the threats was using to stay anonymous. Thing is, the owners of the server and their company claim to have to idea as to who the perpetrator might be, nor would they have the means to track him/her. The reason being is their company specializes in creating private, "untraceable" servers for their clients to use in secrecy, and obviously taking the server offline for investigation (or worse yet, bugging) is only going to set a crapton of complaints.

Obviously the question of the matter is: was the FBI justified in seizing the server for investigation purposes? Or are they abusing their power by taking it without the permission of either the server company OR company being investigated?

Link Here

The internet IS based in the real world, that means laws do apply to it. If someone was really planning a bombing over that server, they have just as much right to tap it or take it as they did to tap the phones of Mob bosses back in the 50s and 60s.

Yes, they are justified to confiscate it in the process of an investigation. They don't need permission from the company, and if anything their protests only make the company look like they don't want the FBI to figure out who did it because it might be one of their anonymous clients.

Not really sure what the point was. The article says there cannot have been evidence on the server, it's returned and will doubtless be restored from a backup for safety's sake and hardware auditted. Seems like a big waste of time.

That's what the article says, maybe the FBI thinks those sources are wrong.

Yeah, I can't really blame them for wanting to double-check on this stuff. Considering that bomb threats are kind of a big deal and all.

edited 11th May '12 2:18:46 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

That and I really wouldn't give a shit what a company who runs a business based on anonymous server access says, I'd figure they wanted to protect a client.

My only concern is did they have a warrant or did they kick down a door and take it with that claim.

If they had a warrant then yes they had a reason to seize it. No warrant they can go pound sand.

According to the article, yes they had a search warrent and there was a subpoena issued that had them disclose details about their servers.

So yeah, everything was done legally.

Then I don't really care if they snatched it up then brought back. While it is obviously a trap for them to return the server and plug it back into the server frame.

If they had a search warrant, it was not only fair game, but about as by-the-book as they could've done it. Which we should encourage from intel agencies.

edited 11th May '12 4:21:56 PM by Pykrete

Pretty much. If they kicked down the door it would have been an issue but they did things by the book so I see no problem.

1) The FBI have a search warrant, given to them by court, which means that they have good reasons to suspect something.

2) The FBI was done with the server after four days, probably because it was not useful for investigation of a serious crime.

Doesn't sound like if there's anything wrong to me.

They followed legal procedure while investigating bomb threats. I don't see any reason why the general public shouldn't be praising this kind of stuff.

Yeah, this is a case where the FBI appears to have done things with the correct procedure. Which is nice to hear after certain other complete fiascos.

The FBI tends to be at least...better about that kind of thing than our other agencies.

It still doesn't consolidate the world's , or my losses from them taking down Megaupload

I'm staying neutral on this one. Procedural legal and completely legal are different. If what they do fits the latter like a glove then I can let this slide

edited 12th May '12 7:20:40 AM by Cassie

Cassie: That is offtopic.

The only thing I have even a little bit of an issue with is them plugging the server back in without telling the company that they were returning it. I find it mildly suspcious but not exactly heinous or malicious.

I find it kind of funny, especially if there's the possibility that they put a trace program in the server so that as soon as they plugged it in, they could monitor these "anonymous" clients.

That makes me smile.

I dunno, that fuckin terrifies me.

I don't like the smarmy attitude of businesses who don't cooperate with law enforcement on the basis of "Oh, we run secret shit that we don't want you to see."

If you're running a business and know that if Law Enforcement got a good hard look at everything in it and wouldn't like what they see, you've got a problem.

The funny thing is that a lot of the first commenters were surprisingly intelligent and level-headed about the topic on the MSNBC comments section: only a few whack-jobs and conspiracy theorists popped up for the first hundred posts. One even brought up the point that although the owners of the server wished to protect their user's anonymity as per their service, they also should have kept some sort of record or means of reporting in the event their website was being used for malicious purposes. Having such a record would've not only helped them assist the FBI, but probably could've avoided the whole fiasco in the first place.

edited 12th May '12 9:45:05 AM by SgtRicko

I agree with that. But I dont like the idea of people secretly dropping in watchdog programs without telling you. Because if they do it to a server, it isnt much of a leap to cook up a reason to do that to private citizens computers too.

edited 12th May '12 9:44:46 AM by Midgetsnowman

In all likelyhood they already do that. It's more of a question to what extent do they spy on the public?

Honestly, the FBI doesn't really care about spying on the average citizen. Now if you're someone semi-important who the FBI could possibly want to use leverage on politically? Be. Very. Afraid.

Some of the Hoover Era habits haven't left the Bureau yet. Collecting impressive amounts of dirt on important figures in government and industry is one of those habits.

Honestly, I just think about what would happen if the FBI took my laptop and combed through every byte of data. Would it give them cause to arrest me?

No, it wouldn't. Thus I don't take issue with it, it's no big deal. Now if you're running around on the internet talking about shooting cops, overthrowing the government, etc, well, then I can't exactly say you didn't deserve it.

edited 12th May '12 11:08:37 AM by Barkey