Sheffield Indymedia Server Seizure Newswire Archive

It is now apparent that IMC UK (www.indymedia.org.uk) is currently being attacked by elements that are attempting to degrade the authority of IMC UK on the World Wide Web.

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Last week the respected alternative news project SchNEWS published a story revealing long term malicious use of indymedia by elements within the states police apparatus. The piece was base on the so-called 303 Gateway article written collaboratively by a number of indymedia admins and proposed in secret as a feature for the UK site over six months ago. The proposal was blocked by London and Northern IMC. They claim they failed to get agreement on amendments aimed at distancing themselves from admissions within the article that indymedia admins had in fact had access to IP logs despite having repeatedly said the opposite in the past. Both London and Northern said that they would have no objection to the article being published as a feature on Indymedia UK if it was made clear within the article that the IP logging was a feature found within the MIR content management system used by IMC UK and its regional sites Birmingham, Cambridge, Liverpool, Oxford, Sheffield and South Coast, not those using alternative CMS such as Bristol, London, Northern, Nottingham and Scotland. However it seem tonight that their claim has be proven a lie...

The draft article stated, "what has never been openly stated before is that the CMS system we use has a number of anti-abuse measures which include the ability to monitor for particular IP addresses and log their behaviour." The draft goes on to say, "site admins believed that they would never be able to gain the trust of posters, if the range of anti-abuse measures were made public. As is often the case, once a body has failed to be completely open about something, it becomes 'the elephant in the room' and so a situation was created where the new and current admins were actively blocked from bringing these measures into the open. The stalemate continued until now, with site admins proposing a new approach of coming clean about the measures that are in place, and others in the collective blocking this."

Prophetically, that stalemate over coming clean about the IP logging meant that no consensus was possible on publishing the article. There was no way that the information about the governments disinfo campaign could be published without revealing that indymedia had been lying about IP logs. Apparently some suggested it could be published via a different alt media outlet while leaving out the info about indymedia but the story would have been weak without the evidence gathered by indymedia admins.

The impasse remained but then the draft article was leaked by a disgruntled admin using the name 'indyleaks'. The posts were repeatedly hidden from the indymedia sites it was posted to and a filter set up on IMC UK to automatically hide it whenever posted.

There remains no consensus about publishing the article which includes a frank admission that indymedia has misled its user since 2003. However the lack of consensus is now a moot point since SchNEWS has ran the story and Birmingham IMC has published the 303 gateway article as a feature on it's own site.

 https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/472622.html

Both the story about the government running a disinfo campaign via indymedia, and the story that indymedia UK has been hiding the truth about IP logging for all these years, that is big news for activists at a time when trust is already in short supply.

As the article says "continuing to gloss over the reality in a misleading way was detrimental to Indymedia UK, and that there was no small likelihood that at some stage we could be outed." Now that the truth is out, lets hope indymedia can recover from the damage to its credibility and move on to become more open and honest with its users.

Fisher

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Police have dropped their controversial six-month investigation of a Sheffield IT worker who had a minor role administering the activist website Indymedia UK.

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Attached is an interview about Indymedia that was broadcast on Sheffield Live  http://www.sheffieldlive.org/ on 1st May 2009 to mark World Press Freedom Day, 3rd May  http://www.worldpressfreedomday.org/ topics covered include the recent server seizure,  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/actions/2009/strummer/

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The article below taken from the Torygraph demonstrates the justifications the police aim to use in order to back moves to give them full access to all digital communications and insist on full data retention. This obviously has relevance to the recent indymedia server seizure and the arrest that followed.

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Recent events have got people talking and thinking about security implications of using indymedia or other online publishing outlets. Below is a guide to how to implement security measures for hiding your identity online.

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Police act on web comment including judge's details

A man has been arrested in connection with comments posted to the activist news site Indymedia.

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