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Troll warning

28.08.2014 21:06
Untrue statements have been posted to this newswire claiming to come from "On(sic)of Bristol IMC collective". The false claim is that IP logs were kept for the last 16 months. As the site only launched, with a brand new CMS,on March 21st, 2014, this clearly cannot be true.

An IMC uk Moderator

Activist website Indymedia shuts down after police raid

Jules Mattsson and Alannah Francis
Last updated at 5:48PM, August 28 2014​

Police accessed servers belonging to the Bristol branch of activist news website Indymedia in a move that later ‘forced organisers to close it down’. The raid is believed to be the latest effort in the long pursuit of the “Bristol unabomber”.

Officers have been trying to locate those responsible for a series of attacks in the city — including a fire in a new police firearms training centre that took a fortnight to extinguish — for more than a year.

A copy of the production order, marked restricted but seen by The Times, authorises officers to seize “special procedure” journalistic material. It demands access to the details of administrators and bill-payers, login credentials, information on those who posted articles and the IP addresses of everyone who visited the site over an unspecified period.

Bristol Indymedia initially said: “Bristol Indymedia only knows the information that a user chooses to provide with a post. We do not keep any IP data on users.”

However, a statement on the national site claiming to be on behalf of the Bristol group reads: “Regretfully owing to an administration error by one of the techies all IP address details for the past 16 months were still stored on the server and these have been recorded by the police.”

The post adds that the Bristol site is “now officially closed for good” following the raid. Indymedia said that they are now consulting lawyers.

Indymedia is a global network of contributors and open publishing sites, effectively allowing anybody to post news reports, pictures and statements on activist issues. The Bristol site was previously used to anonymously post claims of responsibility for the series of arsons and other attacks, signed by the “Informal Anarchist Federation/Earth Liberation Front”.

Those involved in the group also called themselves the “Rogue Fire Brigade” in a number of claims of responsibility posted to Indymedia and other activist websites.

Although it is unlikely that the arsonists would have posted without masking their user details, the data now in the hands of police will send chills through activist circles.

Previous actions claimed by the insurrectionist group include burning a communications mast, disrupting broadcasts and emergency communications, sabotaging train lines, burning politicians’ cars and razing other vehicles ranging from the border agency to broadband providers.

The UK cell is one of many insurrectionist terror groups under the same umbrella worldwide. Most UK attacks have taken place in and around Bristol, with some in Nottingham.

In 2012, the same year as the first visible UK actions by them, an Italian cell took credit for the shooting of a nuclear executive - kneecapping him on his doorstep in Genoa. Other cells have claimed responsibility for attacks as far as Argentina and the United States.

The raid on Indymedia Bristol’s server providers Bytemark Hosting took place on Friday August 15 but details of the seizure have just begun to emerge.

Because of the citizen journalism element of Indymedia, as well as the open posting of statements, their files have sometimes been treated as journalistic in nature with the associated legal protections.

Matthew Bloch, managing director of web hosts Bytemark, said: “The police turned up unannounced at the office door with the court order, demanding several things from the Indymedia servers.

“Bytemark don’t have any choice about compliance with court orders, but we have never been keen on them.”

A source close to Bristol Indymedia said the first they knew of the seizure was when their web hosts contacted them while the warrant was being executed. They said that they had not seen a copy of the order “or know of the contents of it”, adding that they were unaware of any of the supporting evidence and were not informed of the application.

The legal position is that while normal search warrants can be granted ex parte, without the chance to contest them, this type of special material production order must have both parties informed and present.

In a recent Supreme Court case involving Sky News this principle was reiterated, with a previous decision to allow supporting evidence to be given in secret overturned as unlawful. It is not known what process was followed here.

Mr Bloch also said the web host did not “hand over hard discs or offer up physical access” to the police, saying that they “follow the letter of each order, painstakingly extracting and filtering the information ordered, accessing the bare minimum, even if that takes much more time.”

This isn’t the first time Indymedia have found themselves the subject of raids. In 2005 the British Transport Police seized a server and other IT equipment from the same Bristol group. This was believed to be over a posting to the site that referenced direct action against a freight train, which suffered £100,000 in damage.

In 2009 police in Manchester seized a server after personal information about the judge on an animal cruelty trial was posted to another Indymedia site and in 2004 the FBI seized hardware from their London branch for reasons unknown. Indymedia described police actions as an “attack on their infrastructure in the UK.”

Avon and Somerset Police said: “We have obtained a production order in order to access the server of a website as part of an ongoing inquiry.

“The action was taken to investigate claims made on a website about possible crimes committed in the Avon And Somerset force area. No arrests have been made in connection with this incident.” When asked whether proper procedure had been followed, the force declined to comment due to the “ongoing investigation”.

This latest move by police in the protracted case will prove controversial. After the 2005 Bristol raid the National Union of Journalists and pressure group Liberty condemned the force’s decision, arguing that journalistic material exemptions should have been engaged. Although on this occasion a special procedure material order was obtained, its legality could be challenged with claims of no prior notice of the application.

In a statement posted to the Bristol Indymedia site after learning of the raid, organisers said “we consider this server to be compromised” and that it was “unlikely that open publishing of news items will ever be re-enabled”.

In the further post to the main website they say that are now “closing down” and said “the power of the State when threatened can be immense and we have seen that this week.”​