FBI takes out hosting comapny over one bad apple

[thecoalman]

http://goldandsilvernow.com/

In case the site comes back up here's a copy and paste:

In case you have been wondering what happened to GoldandSilverNow . . .

Last Thursday, April 2, 1984 - I mean, 2009 - the FBI confiscated the code for each of my online businesses*. They seized all of our servers. They seized our backup servers, and the backups to our backups. As of this writing, everything I have devoted my professional career to over the past three years is no longer in my possession.

My crime? Nothing. In fact, the FBI is not even after me. You will not see me cuffed in an orange jumpsuit on the nightly news. I am a law-abiding, tax-paying American citizen, just one of hundreds of business owners impacted by a secret government raid on a Dallas server company. Google and AT&T have been affected. Local city governments have lost data. Many are still without e-mail. Several counties have lost their 911 service.

FBI Raids Downtown Facility (see video)

The cause? Lest anyone doubt who our politicians answer to, the tax-payer funded government mafia known as the Federal Bureau of Instigation, while in the midst of supposedly fighting terror and protecting the common good against serial killers and drug cartels, spent Thursday morning confiscating the assets of businesses like mine because one movie pirate (who rented server space from the same hosting company) was facilitating downloads of the Hugh Jackman superhero movie, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." That is the rumor, anyway. I wish I was joking.

I am a published author and obviously do not endorse the piracy of copyrighted material. This is different, whether the rumor is factual or not. This is the equivalent of imprisoning a town because one of its residents is a thief; of evicting an entire apartment building because one tenant is dealing drugs. It is police work the lazy way. In the meantime, hundreds of businesses are now staring at the long and arduous process of regrouping after this fascist sucker punch. The collateral damage is unfathomable.

In the midst of corporate bailouts, stimulus packages, and a $3.6 trillion federal budget, let it be known the the Feds are busy at work raiding small businesses and disrupting the lives of private citizens. We live in a time when the prevailing creed is: some are more equal than others. This is the 21st century animal farm, and the smell from the glue factory is palpable.

According to the FBI, we might get our data returned to us soon. I received the following e-mail this weekend from the FBI agent in charge of the case: "Sir, we are working with Inverse Operations (note: our hosting provider) to provide them with a copy of all of the data on their servers - if you have any questions, please direct them to Inverse Operations."

Comforting.

Let this be a lesson to others. If ever there has been a time to protect your (ass)ets, it is now. Welcome to communism. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

*Lest any of our customers fear that his or her privacy has been compromised, we have kept (and will continue to keep) no customer information. This is the reason we conduct all business by phone. From our inception, all e-mail correspondence has been automatically removed from our servers the moment it was sent, precisely for instances like this one. We will continue to conduct business this way. Hopefully, we will be back up and running in a week . . . that is, if Big Brother allows it.

Tarek Saab
President, GoldandSilverNow

Here's the article:

http://goldandsilvernow.com/
DALLAS -- The FBI hauled away millions worth of computer servers from a company called Core IP Networks during a Wednesday raid in downtown Dallas.

But it affected a number of businesses that were not under investigation and about 100,000 phone customers across the country have lost part of their 911 service.

[thecoalman]

Article link for above: http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dw....96b29611.html

[thecoalman]

Upon further looking the wasn't a mistake, the hosting company is under investigation for fraud: http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2323%20Bryan.pdf

Damn, gotta fee l sorry for those people.

[Vin DSL]

http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2323%20Bryan.pdf

Interesting read!

[Gwaihir]

I don't quite understand what I'm reading. Exactly WHO is under investigation there? The folks running those two floors of PCs that were seized, or still some small person / company renting a small part of what was confiscated by the FBI? It seems to be about a single 42U cabinet to me, which only seems to confirm what thecoalman quoted initially: that they seized WAAAAYYY too much. So.. what mistake?

[thecoalman]

If my understanding is correct the people named in the affidavit are the owners of the hosting company and were directly involved in the alleged activities. The rationale for the FBI seizing everything would be correct IMO assuming the owners of the machines are the ones named in the affidavit.

[JPC-Greg]

Indeed, if they were involved then all the equipment would be suspect.

[the_ancient]

I don't know why anyone is surprised..

this is one of the reason (aside from increased hacking attempts) that every few host allow adult content on thier servers


the FBI, ATF, and DEA all have long long long histories of abuse of power. It will only get worse as more people become scared of their own shadow and abdicate their liberty and freedom for the false promise in increase government protection.

There are countless stories like this on, this is far far far from the first data center that has been raided in the "war on privacy" and it will not be the last.

[the_ancient]

This would be a good time to bring up Grid Based Hosting