Innocent sites caught in a dragnet...
- http://blog.stopbadw...ht-in-a-dragnet
June 22, 2011 - "A New York Times blog reported* last night that entire racks full of web hosting servers were seized by the FBI in an effort, presumably, to get at some evidence living on one of the servers... Other sites that were using those servers reportedly include popular services Pinboard and Instapaper. If the reported information is accurate, it appears the FBI really messed up here, harming several legitimate sites that didn't have to be harmed, and potentially damaging the reputation of the web hosting provider (presumably an innocent intermediary). This also raises questions about how to apply the concept of property seizures to the cyber world. If I'm suspected of a crime, law enforcement can — with a court's permission — seize my computer and search it for evidence. In this case, though, it seems the servers seized didn't belong to the party under investigation. Rather, that party was renting space on a shared server, which in turn was part of a server farm. The FBI's actions seem equivalent to seizing an entire lot full of rental cars because one of the rental agency's customers was suspected to have committed a crime using one specific car on the lot. Courts and law enforcement organizations are going to have to put some effort into figuring out a better way to execute seizures against shared digital resources. This might, for example, mean temporarily taking the server in question (and only that server) offline to create a forensically-valid clone of the contents, rather than seizing the physical equipment. In any case, I hope that we won't see many repeats of this apparent over-reaching."
* http://bits.blogs.ny...-sites-offline/
Confiscated Servers Take Down Sites Unrelated to Investigation
- https://www.sans.org...issue=50#sID307
June 22, 2011
Edited by AplusWebMaster, 27 June 2011 - 07:34 AM.
