The (strong) arm of the law...

[XMEN Gambit]

<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.carrierhotels.com/news/2004/ ... <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>This ISP had all its servers confiscated because they couldn't provide information to the FBI "quickly enough." <br><br>Now, I'm all for catching crooks and believe we should cooperate with law enforcement, but if I had a business and my entire operation was hauled off in a truck because someone MAY have done something illegal in/with/through part of it, and thus was prevented me from doing business, I'd be awfully upset about it. I think this was more than a mite excessive.<br><br>If the FBI wanted records of IRC communications, could they not use a backup? Take only the hard drives? SOMETHING? <p></p><i></i>

[Scorch]

Why doesn't the FBI dig up the phone lines and whatever else that carried the criminal activitry. lol now that I think about it I can just picture a guy in the middle of the street with a black FBI hat jackhammering away at the street to rip up the lines underneath.<br><br>maybe a bunch of men in black suits and shades standing around in a circle saying nothing to see here move along. A FBI helicopter up above... LOL<br><br> <p></p><i></i>

[Ambush Bug]

The /. discussion about it was pretty interesting.<br><br>I heard, but have not verified through links, that the equipment was returned the next day.<br><br>However, that's still no excuse. What they were asking was for a specific set of information buried somewhere within something like a full terabyte of database. Doesn't matter how you get the information out, it's going to take a <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>good long while</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> to dig through that much data.<br><br>As a sort of side note, has anyone else read <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... books">The Hacker Crackdown</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> by Bruce Sterling? It's a book that primarily deals with the 2600 'E911' case from the early 90s, though it has plenty of information about what the Secret Service did to Steve Jackson Games in the process. Short version is that the SS swooped in and gutted SJG by taking a large number of their machines, and didn't give them back until <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>years</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> later.<br><br>The E911 case itself is an interesting read, too. <p></p><i></i>