While the FBI has made it clear to members of the press that the investigation is ongoing, there is not necessarily a connection between events in NYC and the FBI's seizure of the Rackspace servers. Currently, much of the speculation about the reasons for the FBI's move centers around photographs posted to the IMC-Nantes website.
The FBI's latest anti-free-press actions began at the beginning of October when they visited Indymedia's ISP demanding the removal of identifying information from photographs of undercover police officers that was posted on the Nantes Indymedia website.
When asked what the US government was doing requesting the removal of information from a French-run website that contained information about Swiss police actions, the FBI stated that this was a "courtesy" to the Swiss government. The FBI agents stated that no laws had been broken, and no crimes had been committed. However, because no identifying information was posted on the website in question, it was unclear what actions the FBI was requesting.
The article in question is/was posted here:
http://nantes.indymedia.org/article.php3?id_article=3910
On Tuesday October 5th, Indymedia received the following message from Rackspace:
"I apologize for the delay in responding. I have been trying to get a hold of the FBI agent I spoke with before, but haven't been able to at this time. As the request originated with the Swiss police, I can only speculate on what they saw or what they were concerned about. However, at this time, I have received no further communications from either the FBI or the Swiss authorities, so I feel like we can close this this issue."
Today the FBI seized Global Indymedia servers; however it is unclear if this is related to the Nantes issue or is a second FBI concern within the past week.
(14:20) Rackspace has issued a "no comment" response concerning the FBI's actions.
See also:
http://www.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/111987.shtml
http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/126052/index.php
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED
http://nyc.indymedia.org/feature/display/126066/index.php
