Big Brother and Indymedia

Subject: Big Brother in the time of Internet activism


GAG ORDER LIFTED; INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER IN FREE SPEECH BATTLE IN WAKE
OF FBI /SECRET SERVICE VISIT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SEATTLE INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER 27 APRIL 2001

CONTACT:
Seattle Independent Media Center
206.262.0721

On the evening of Saturday, April 21, a day during which tens of
thousands demonstrated against the FTAA in the streets of Quebec City,
the Independent Media Center in Seattle was served with a sealed court
order by two FBI agents and an agent of the US Secret Service. The terms
of the sealed order prevented IMC volunteers from publicizing its terms;
volunteers immediately began discussions with legal counsel to amend the
order. This morning, April 27, Magistrate Judge Monica Benton issued an
amended order, freeing us to discuss the situation without the threat of
being held in contempt.

The original order, also issued by Judge Benton, directed the IMC to
supply the FBI with "all user connection logs" for April 20 and 21st from
a web server occupying an IP address which the Secret Service believed
belonged to the IMC. The order stated that this was part of an "ongoing
criminal investigation" into acts that could constitute violations of
Canadian law, specifically theft and mischief. IMC legal counsel David
Sobel, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, comments: "As the
U.S. Supreme Court has recognized, the First Amendment protects the right
to communicate anonymously with the press and for political purposes. An
order compelling the disclosure of information identifying an
indiscriminately large number of users of a website devoted to political
discourse raises very serious constitutional issues. To provide the same
protection to the press and anonymous sources in the Internet world as
with more traditional media, the Government must be severely limited in
its ability to demand their Internet identity--their "Internet Protocol
addresses." A federal statute already requires that such efforts against
the press be approved by the Attorney General, and only where essential
and after alternatives have been exhausted. There is no suggestion that
these standards were met here.

The sealed court order also directed the IMC not to disclose "the
existence of this Application or Order, or the existence of this
investigation, unless or until ordered by this court." Such a prior
restraint on a media organization goes to the heart of the First
Amendment. Ironically, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer learned about the
existence of the order from "federal sources," suggesting that the
purpose of the gag order was simply to allow the government to spin the
issue its way.

The order did not specify what acts were being investigated, and the
Secret Service agent acknowledged that the IMC itself was not suspected
of criminal activity. No violation of US law was alleged. It is not clear
whether federal law allows the Attorney General ever to approve such an
investigation of US press entities to facilitate a foreign investigation.
According to IMC counsel Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
"This kind of fishing expedition is another in a long line of overbroad
and onerous attempts to chill political speech and activism. Back in
1956, Alabama tried to force the NAACP to give up its membership lists --
but the Supreme Court stopped them. This order to IMC, even without the
'gag,' is a threat to free speech, free association, and privacy."

Responding to questions from IMC volunteers, the agents claimed that
their investigation concerned the source of either one or two postings
which, they said, had been posted to an IMC newswire early Saturday
morning. These posts, according to the agents, contained documents stolen
from a Canadian government agency, including classified information
related to the travel itinerary of George W. Bush (who was at that time
in Quebec City, participating in Summit of the Americas meetings). Agents
claimed that the Secret Service was notified of the existence of such
posts by a tip from an (unnamed) major commercial news network.

The agents were unable to provide URL addresses or titles for the
postings they described. Additionally, the court order contained a
non-working IP address, rather than an address assigned to any of the IMC
sites. IMC volunteers nevertheless were able to identify two articles
posted to the Montreal IMC which partially matched the agents' incomplete
description. These articles, posted first in French and then in English
translations (http://montreal.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=505,
514 and 515), contain sections of documents purportedly stolen from a
Quebec City police car during Friday night anti-FTAA demonstrations; the
documents detail police strategies for hindering protesters' mass action.
It does not appear that any materials were posted to any IMC site
containing Bushıs travel plans.

Although the agents were concerned with only two posts, the court order
demands "all user connections logs" for a 48-hour period, which would
include individual IP addresses for every person who posted materials to
or visited the IMC site during the FTAA protests. IMC legal counsel Nancy
Chang, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, comments that "the
overbroad sweep of the information demanded by the FBI raises the
disturbing question of whether the order is calculated to discourage
association with the IMC."

The agents arrived at the IMC around 7pm. Seattle IMC volunteers had been
busy all afternoon gathering regional IMC coverage of FTAA protests
underway in Seattle and in Blaine, Washington, and coordinating coverage
with other sites on the IMC network. Several visitors were also in the
IMC at the time, using public computers.. While agents were speaking with
one staff volunteer, another began making telephone calls in an effort to
contact legal counsel. After the agents left, volunteers discussed the
court order's gag provision, and began recontacting the handful of people
who had already been called, in order to make sure that the terms of the
court order would not be violated before legal counsel had time to
appraise the situation.

Initial attempts were made to contain news of the FBI/Secret Service
visit; however, a few details of the story were soon leaked via a
partially accurate report broadcast on the Vermont IMC internet radio
stream. Soon the Seattle IMC was flooded with phone calls requesting
information about what quickly began to be described as an "FBI raid,"
and speculations began to spread rapidly across the open-publishing
newswires of various IMCs.

For about three hours, a network of IMC technology volunteers attempted
to comply with the court order by removing such posts from the Seattle
IMC and other major IMC sites as they appeared. This had the unfortunate
effect of seemingly confirming the worst suspicions of independent
journalists who posted brief articles announcing or speculating about
mysterious and terrible things going on at the Seattle IMC, then finding
their posts removed from view minutes later. Volunteers called off this
clumsy attempt at rumor control around midnight, when it became clear
that removing of posts was only serving to fan the flames of rumor, and
that in any case the story had already spread beyond the confines of the
IMC network. In acting to remove these posts, IMC volunteers were
motivated by fear of violating the court order's gag provision even
before legal counsel had had a chance to review the document. We regret
the feelings of confusion and disempowerment which many users of the IMC
sites experienced due to Saturday night's blackout of postings on this
topic, and the general frustration caused by the gag order.

Since the incident occurred, several persistent, yet false, rumors have
taken shape; some of these found their way into coverage published in
Monday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other commercial media. We can
now dispel some of the more common of these: No search warrant was served
on IMC in connection with the court order, and nobody connected to the
Seattle IMC has been arrested. No equipment or logs have been seized; the
agents' visit was not a "raid."

Now, free from restrictive court orders, the Seattle IMC will be able to
cover this important story as it continues to unfold.

The Seattle Independent Media Center was launched in Fall 1999 to provide
immediate, authentic, grassroots coverage of protests against the WTO.
Just a year and a half later, the IMC network has reached around the
world, with dozens of sites scattered across six continents. IMCs are
autonomously organized and administered, but share collective
organizational principles and certain technological resources. Each IMC's
news coverage centers upon its open-publishing newswire, an innovative
and democratizing system allowing anyone with access to an Internet
connection to become a journalist, reporting on events from his or her
own perspective rather than being forced to rely on the narrow range of
views presented by corporate-owned mainstream media sources.

During last weekend's widespread protests against a proposed Free Trade
Area of the Americas, many IMC sites collaborated to produce
comprehensive coverage of demonstrations taking place in Quebec City and
Sao Paulo, as well as solidarity protests in cities across the U.S. and
along the Mexican and Canadian borders. The breadth and depth of coverage
produced by the IMC's global network eclipsed that of many corporate
media outlets.

The Seattle IMC remains committed to its mission: "The Independent Media
Center is a grassroots organization committed to using media production
and distribution as a tool for promoting social and economic justice. It
is our goal to further the self-determination of people under-represented
in media production and content, and to illuminate and analyze local and
global issues that impact ecosystems, communities and individuals. We
seek to generate alternatives to the biases inherent in the corporate
media controlled by profit, and to identify and create positive models
for a sustainable and equitable society."

CONTACT:

Seattle Independent Media Center
1415 3rd Ave.
Seattle, WA, 98101
206.262.0721
206.262.9905 fax
http://seattle.indymedia.org

David Burman, IMC counsel
Perkins Coie LLP
1201 Third Ave., 40th Floor
Seattle, WA 98101
206.583.8888
burmd@perkinscoie.com

Alan Korn, Attorney with the National Lawyers Guild
Center on Democratic Communication
415.362.5700

David Sobel, General Counsel
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Suite 200, 1718 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009
202.483.1140

Nancy Chang, Senior Litigation Attorney
Center for Constitutional Rights
666 Broadway, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10012
212.614.6420

Lee Tien, Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.436.9333