[Leica] FBI disrupts 20 Indymedia web sites hosted in England

[KCassidy at asc.upenn.edu (Kyle Cassidy)]

As this relates to news-reporting, I think it relates to photography and,
well, photojournalists use Leicas ... In a strange turn of events, the FBI
had Rackspace (a u.s. company with offices in london) turn over the
hard-drives of twenty IMC web servers. Some websites were back up within a
few days, others have yet to recover. 

Known both for less than rigorous fact-checking, granting "credentials" to
any yahoo who asks (I was going to say "worthless credentials" -- but it
brings up a more interesting point -- if the media represent the population,
why can't the populace be the media?), bad haircuts, mediocre photographs,
blurring the lines between newsmaking and news reporting, but also for
covering stories that the main stream media refuses to cover for one reason
or another, the ultra-left Indymedia clashed with the FBI most recently in
September during the RNC when an Indymedia web page posted the names of the
Republican Delegates. In what was likely arm-flexing on the part of the
feds, the FBI subpoenaed indymedia's ISP in a bizarre move to find out who
had posted a list of widely known and already publically accessable
information (lists of the delegates were, in fact, behind handed out by the
GOP -- which is most likely where where indymedia had gotten it in the first
place).

Web pages affected were Brasil, Euskal Herria, Poland, UK, Nice, Potugal,
Antwerp, Belgrade, Galiza, Italy, Liege, Lille, Marseille, Nantes, Uruguay,
Ambazonia, Andorra, Oost-Vlaanderen, Prague, Western Massachusetts,
West-Vlaanderen.

Indymedia.org has, in the past, printed a series of my portraits of the
Black Bloc (the masked anarchists fameous for throwing stones in Seattle).
All, incidentally, taken with a Leica M3.

Oddly, with the exception of the San Jose Mercury News, the mainstream media
hasn't covered this story.

Now,