FBI Defends Disruptive Raids on Texas Data Centers

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/data-centers-ra.html

by ccarpenterg • 17 years ago

50 28 17 years ago

blog.wired.com

njharman• 17 years ago

That wasn't a defense, it was an acknowledgment of incompetence.

It looks like the FBI is due for a Judge delivered smack down like the SS got for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._Un...

stcredzero2• 17 years ago

Seems like there's a new branch of law or law enforcement that needs to be developed. People who have some expertise in IT need to advise law enforcement about raids like this.

sangaya2• 17 years ago

One issue with this is that all of the FBI raids that go well and consist of competent decision making regardless of IT knowledge involvement will never make the news. No one wants to read that a raid went off without a hitch. Or that the field agents sent in to raid a data center were competent enough that no network other than the suspect's was interrupted. Those stories don't make the news.

* Admission of possible bias - I'm a member of the Chicago FBI InfraGard program that exists for information sharing between private industry and the government. I've met, talked to, and shaken hands with, many smart and knowledgeable people in the FBI working on computer crime cases.

plaes• 17 years ago

  > 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.

Well, talk about competence (err... the lack of it). I really hope they won't come to pick up my machine, because it is also interconnected...

swombat• 17 years ago

It looks like the FBI is due for a Judge delivered smack down like the SS got for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._Un...

At $250k? I don't think so. Disrupting, and potentially bankrupting, hundreds of businesses... that sounds more like somewhere in the hundreds of millions, or potentially low billions.

Importantly, the US govt now needs to convince the rest of the world that this will never happen again. We've got servers hosted in the US. Should we move them? Are we safe from this kind of indiscriminate abuse of force?

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patrickg-zill2• 17 years ago

How many companies are reading this and wondering if their next datacenter project should involve servers located outside US jurisdiction?

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SystemOut2• 17 years ago

Do you seriously think that other countries have more respect for rule of law or knowledge of data centers than the FBI? It's not that I have any respect for the FBI when it comes to how they have handled this or other investigations but I have a hard time believing that this couldn't easily happen in any other country you might choose to house your servers in.

What this case tells me if I'm running a business or in charge of the operations group is to make the case for investing in a good disaster recovery strategy. Basically, this is the equivalent of your data center catching on fire, blowing up, falling into a sinkhole, etc.

You should always budget for and have plans to be able to be back up and running with 24 hours if your business depends on what's in the co-location facility. If you're big enough then probably already have multiple sites and can sustain the hit from one going down or being removed anyways.

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wheels• 17 years ago

A coordinated raid of multiple sites inside of the US wouldn't be that hard. A coordinated raid spanning multiple countries would be hard enough that you'd have to suspected of Really, Really, Bad Things for it to come off.

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wmf2• 17 years ago

Don't be so sure that will help: http://cryptome.org/fbi-imc/fbi-imc-doc.htm

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tlb• 17 years ago

You need location redundancy anyway. Fires, floods, earthquakes, etc. A few years ago burglars broke in and took all my machines. So there are many reasons to have an off-site separate-provider backup of everything.

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mpk• 17 years ago

Well that's just great. I'll have to add incompetent law-enforcement to the BCP/DRP list of stuff you have to take into account along with network outages, terrorism, fire, flood and all the rest.

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patio11• 17 years ago

Given the relative incidence of FBI raids to datacenters you might as well pick your server location based on perceived threat of meteorite strikes.

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tesseract• 17 years ago

A location under a mountain in Kinakuta would be an ideal safeguard against both.

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vaksel• 17 years ago

shouldn't the people enforcing the rules, actually know what the hell they are doing? Is a bare minimum level of competency too much to ask?

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pskomoroch• 17 years ago

So by this logic, they could raid Amazon's datacenters and seize everything because a few people were using EC2 to send spam?

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greatfog• 17 years ago

[attitude=prudent]

I do not want my company's communications disrupted by an FBI raid on a service firm that turned out to be a criminal enterprise. I had best look for a service provider that has been _pre-investigated_ by the government. After all, I have a responsibility to my company's shareholders and customers.

[/attitude]

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wmf2• 17 years ago

Perhaps you could convince AT&T to host your servers right next to the Echelon equipment.

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RobGR• 17 years ago

These events remind me of Operation Sundevil and the raid on Steve Jackson Games, described in Bruce Sterling's book "The Hacker Crackdown".

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grouchyOldGuy• 17 years ago

This wasn't imcompetence--it was thuggery. They use the same "shock and awe" tactics as the police and military--crush your opponent with overwhelming force so that everyone else will be terrified of you and cower before you. This is a deliberate tactic on their part. All federal LEOs work this way--DEA, FBI, etc.

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ConradHex• 17 years ago

Weird. I fully expected to read the article and be able to figure out what the FBI was trying to do, and see their side of the story. But I'm more baffled (and frustrated) than ever.

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raintrees• 17 years ago

If Mike Faulkner truly was not involved with the alleged illegal actions, he and his family ought to do well, living off of a considerable settlement from the FBI. Hopefully enough to start a new business or two...

Unfortunately, that ultimately means I, as a tax payer, will be funding it. Sigh.

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FBI Defends Disruptive Raids on Texas Data Centers

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