Bitchkoma
07-29-2009, 06:19 PM
I don't know if these articles have been posted, it's several months old but I just ran into them just now.
Company Caught in Texas Data Center Raid Loses Suit Against FBI (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/company-caught/)
[offsite:24mjjkf1]April 8, 2009
A company whose servers were seized in a recent FBI raid on Texas data centers applied for a temporary restraining order to force the bureau to return its servers, but was denied by a U.S. district court last week.
The company, Liquid Motors, provides inventory management and marketing services to national automobile dealers, such as AutoNation. It was one of about 50 companies put out of business last week when the FBI seized the servers at Core IP Networks, one of two data centers and co-location facilities raided by the FBI’s Dallas office in the last month in an investigation into VoIP fraud.
Although Liquid Motors was not a target of the investigation, the FBI took all of the company’s servers and backup tapes in the raid.
"As a result, Liquid Motors, Inc. has been put out of business and is in breach of its contracts with automobile dealers throughout the country," the company wrote in its application for the restraining order (.pdf). "Those automobile dealerships … may hold Liquid Motors responsible for all of their lost business, and may terminate their contracts with Liquid Motors, causing permanent and irreparable harm … for which there is no adequate remedy at law."
The company noted that it maintained duplicate servers to prevent outages and housed those servers in a building "on a five power grid with a generator that can last for thirty days."
Only "a bomb to the building" or, as it happens, an FBI raid, could cause the servers to go down, the company stated.[/offsite:24mjjkf1]
It gets more interesting in the related article.
FBI Defends Disruptive Raids on Texas Data Centers (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/data-centers-ra/)
[offsite:24mjjkf1]April 7, 2009
The FBI on Tuesday defended its raids on at least two data centers in Texas, in which agents carted out equipment and disrupted service to hundreds of businesses.
The raids were part of an investigation prompted by complaints from AT&T and Verizon about unpaid bills allegedly owed by some data center customers, according to court records. One data center owner charges that the telecoms are using the FBI to collect debts that should be resolved in civil court. But on Tuesday, an FBI spokesman disputed that charge.[/offsite:24mjjkf1]
[offsite:24mjjkf1]According to the owner of one co-location facility, Crydon Technology, which was raided on March 12, FBI agents seized about 220 servers belonging to him and his customers, as well as routers, switches, cabinets for storing servers and even power strips. Authorities also raided his home, where they seized eight iPods, some belonging to his three children, five XBoxes, a PlayStation3 system and a Wii gaming console, among other equipment. Agents also seized about $200,000 from the owner’s business accounts, $1,000 from his teenage daughter’s account and more than $10,000 in a personal bank account belonging to the elderly mother of his former comptroller.[/offsite:24mjjkf1][offsite:24mjjkf1]In addition to Crydon, the data center of Core IP Networks was raided last week. Customers who went to Core IP to try to retrieve their equipment were threatened with arrest, according to an announcement posted online by the company’s CEO, Matthew Simpson. According to Simpson, the FBI is investigating a company that purchased services from Core IP in the past but had never co-located equipment at Core IP’s address. Simpson reported that 50 businesses lost access to their e-mail and data as a result of the raid. Some of those clients are phone companies, and the loss of their equipment has meant that some of their customers lost emergency 911 access.
"If you run a data center, please be aware that in our great country, the FBI can come into your place of business at any time and take whatever they want, with no reason," Simpson wrote.[/offsite:24mjjkf1][offsite:24mjjkf1]The owner of a credit card processing company who had servers at Crydon says he lost about $35,000 in equipment in the seizure, and that the survival of his company is at risk until he secures a new location. He asked that he and his company not be named because the company is in the process of securing business partners to launch its processing service. He fears that news about the disruption to his business operation could lead potential partners to avoid contracting with him. To keep his launch on track, he’s had to purchase about $32,000 in new equipment.
He said when he tried to explain to an FBI agent that some of the servers that were seized belonged to him and not to Faulkner, the FBI agent implied he was lying.
"We were treated like we were criminals," he said. "They assumed there was no legitimate business in there."[/offsite:24mjjkf1]
And the best part of all:
[offsite:24mjjkf1]FBI spokesman White says the equipment seizures were necessary.
"My understanding is that the way these things are hooked up is that they’re interconnected to each other," he says. "Company A may be involved in some criminal activity and because of the interconnectivity of all these things, the information of what company A is doing may be sitting on company B or C or D’s equipment."[/offsite:24mjjkf1]
I don't know whether to laugh or cry or turkey slap Mr White.
Anyway, if you want to rage at the Fed, here's a link to an account by one of the datacenter owners on the FBI raiding his home at 5am.
http://uwwwb.com/FBIRaid.html
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13974347/mirror-of-wwwuwwwbcom-FBI-indiscriminate-actions-in-fascist-america
Company Caught in Texas Data Center Raid Loses Suit Against FBI (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/company-caught/)
[offsite:24mjjkf1]April 8, 2009
A company whose servers were seized in a recent FBI raid on Texas data centers applied for a temporary restraining order to force the bureau to return its servers, but was denied by a U.S. district court last week.
The company, Liquid Motors, provides inventory management and marketing services to national automobile dealers, such as AutoNation. It was one of about 50 companies put out of business last week when the FBI seized the servers at Core IP Networks, one of two data centers and co-location facilities raided by the FBI’s Dallas office in the last month in an investigation into VoIP fraud.
Although Liquid Motors was not a target of the investigation, the FBI took all of the company’s servers and backup tapes in the raid.
"As a result, Liquid Motors, Inc. has been put out of business and is in breach of its contracts with automobile dealers throughout the country," the company wrote in its application for the restraining order (.pdf). "Those automobile dealerships … may hold Liquid Motors responsible for all of their lost business, and may terminate their contracts with Liquid Motors, causing permanent and irreparable harm … for which there is no adequate remedy at law."
The company noted that it maintained duplicate servers to prevent outages and housed those servers in a building "on a five power grid with a generator that can last for thirty days."
Only "a bomb to the building" or, as it happens, an FBI raid, could cause the servers to go down, the company stated.[/offsite:24mjjkf1]
It gets more interesting in the related article.
FBI Defends Disruptive Raids on Texas Data Centers (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/data-centers-ra/)
[offsite:24mjjkf1]April 7, 2009
The FBI on Tuesday defended its raids on at least two data centers in Texas, in which agents carted out equipment and disrupted service to hundreds of businesses.
The raids were part of an investigation prompted by complaints from AT&T and Verizon about unpaid bills allegedly owed by some data center customers, according to court records. One data center owner charges that the telecoms are using the FBI to collect debts that should be resolved in civil court. But on Tuesday, an FBI spokesman disputed that charge.[/offsite:24mjjkf1]
[offsite:24mjjkf1]According to the owner of one co-location facility, Crydon Technology, which was raided on March 12, FBI agents seized about 220 servers belonging to him and his customers, as well as routers, switches, cabinets for storing servers and even power strips. Authorities also raided his home, where they seized eight iPods, some belonging to his three children, five XBoxes, a PlayStation3 system and a Wii gaming console, among other equipment. Agents also seized about $200,000 from the owner’s business accounts, $1,000 from his teenage daughter’s account and more than $10,000 in a personal bank account belonging to the elderly mother of his former comptroller.[/offsite:24mjjkf1][offsite:24mjjkf1]In addition to Crydon, the data center of Core IP Networks was raided last week. Customers who went to Core IP to try to retrieve their equipment were threatened with arrest, according to an announcement posted online by the company’s CEO, Matthew Simpson. According to Simpson, the FBI is investigating a company that purchased services from Core IP in the past but had never co-located equipment at Core IP’s address. Simpson reported that 50 businesses lost access to their e-mail and data as a result of the raid. Some of those clients are phone companies, and the loss of their equipment has meant that some of their customers lost emergency 911 access.
"If you run a data center, please be aware that in our great country, the FBI can come into your place of business at any time and take whatever they want, with no reason," Simpson wrote.[/offsite:24mjjkf1][offsite:24mjjkf1]The owner of a credit card processing company who had servers at Crydon says he lost about $35,000 in equipment in the seizure, and that the survival of his company is at risk until he secures a new location. He asked that he and his company not be named because the company is in the process of securing business partners to launch its processing service. He fears that news about the disruption to his business operation could lead potential partners to avoid contracting with him. To keep his launch on track, he’s had to purchase about $32,000 in new equipment.
He said when he tried to explain to an FBI agent that some of the servers that were seized belonged to him and not to Faulkner, the FBI agent implied he was lying.
"We were treated like we were criminals," he said. "They assumed there was no legitimate business in there."[/offsite:24mjjkf1]
And the best part of all:
[offsite:24mjjkf1]FBI spokesman White says the equipment seizures were necessary.
"My understanding is that the way these things are hooked up is that they’re interconnected to each other," he says. "Company A may be involved in some criminal activity and because of the interconnectivity of all these things, the information of what company A is doing may be sitting on company B or C or D’s equipment."[/offsite:24mjjkf1]
I don't know whether to laugh or cry or turkey slap Mr White.
Anyway, if you want to rage at the Fed, here's a link to an account by one of the datacenter owners on the FBI raiding his home at 5am.
http://uwwwb.com/FBIRaid.html
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13974347/mirror-of-wwwuwwwbcom-FBI-indiscriminate-actions-in-fascist-america