Indymedia.us and the EFF successfully fight back against bogus FBI subpoena

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Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 2009-11-13 10:22

fufbi Indymedia.us is happy to announce that we've managed, after nearly a year of legal action on our behalf by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to successfully fight back against a bogus subpoena request issued by the FBI in conjunction with a grand jury investigation. The request demanded we turn over all IP address logs for a day in June of 2008 - not only did Indymedia.us object to this blatantly illegitimate and overly broad request, but, per accepted Indymedia best practices, we do not keep such logs in the first place, in order to maximally ensure the privacy of our site users. Also troubling was the fact that the indymedia.us sysadmin who received the subpoena was also bound by its gag order provision, making her unable to discuss the legal issue with the broader network of collectives cooperating on the indymedia.us site. We're happy that the EFF was ultimately able to get this demand for silence shown to be illegitimate as well â€”- one can only wonder how many ISPs silently capitulate to similarly broad and unconstitutional requests. Rochester Indymedia does not log IP addresses or any other information about users when they visit our site. This story is why!