A-Infos (en) US, IMC/Seattle - GAG ORDER LIFTED

[David Christian <dckomatlcom.net@mindspring.com>]

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      A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
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> From: Sheri Herndon <sheri@indymedia.org>

GAG ORDER LIFTED; INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER N FREE SPEECH BATTLE IN
WAKE OF FBI /SECRET SERVICE VISIT

=46OR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SEATTLE INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER
27 APRIL 2001

CONTACT: Seattle Independent Media Center 206.262.0721

On the evening of Saturday, April 21, a day during which tens of
thousands demonstrated against the FTAA in the streets of Quebec City,
the Independent Media Center in Seattle was served with a sealed court
order by two FBI agents and an agent of the US Secret Service.
 The terms of the sealed order prevented IMC volunteers from
publicizing its terms;  volunteers immediately began discussions with
legal counsel to amend the order.

 This morning, April 27, Magistrate Judge Monica Benton issued an
amended order, freeing us to discuss the situation without the threat
of being held in contempt.

The original order, also issued by Judge Benton, directed the IMC to
supply the FBI with "all user connection logs" for April 20 and 21st
from a web server occupying an IP address which the Secret Service
believed belonged to the IMC. The order stated that this was part of
an "ongoing criminal investigation" into acts that could constitute
violations of Canadian law, specifically theft and mischief.

 IMC legal counsel David Sobel, of the Electronic Privacy Information
Center, comments:  "As the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized, the
=46irst Amendment protects the right to communicate anonymously with the
press and for political purposes.

 An order compelling the disclosure of information identifying an
indiscriminately large number of users of a website devoted to
political discourse raises very serious constitutional issues.  To
provide the same protection to the press and anonymous sources in the
Internet world as with more traditional media, the Government must be
severely limited in its ability to demand their Internet
identity--their "Internet Protocol addresses."

 A federal statute already requires that such efforts against the
press be approved by the Attorney General, and only where essential
and after alternatives have been exhausted.  There is no suggestion
that these standards were met here.

The sealed court order also directed the IMC not to disclose "the
existence of this Application or Order, or the existence of this
investigation, unless or until ordered by this court."  Such a prior
restraint on a media organization goes to the heart of the First
Amendment.

 Ironically, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer learned about the
existence of the order from "federal sources," suggesting that the
purpose of the gag order was simply to allow the government to spin
the issue its way.

The order did not specify what acts were being investigated, and the
Secret Service agent acknowledged that the IMC itself was not
suspected of criminal activity. No violation of US law was alleged. It
is not clear whether federal law allows the Attorney General ever to
approve such an investigation of US press entities to facilitate a
foreign investigation.=20

According to IMC counsel Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier
=46oundation, "This kind of fishing expedition is another in a long line
of overbroad and onerous attempts to chill political speech and
activism. Back in 1956, Alabama tried to force the NAACP to give up
its membership lists -- but the Supreme Court stopped them.  This
order to IMC, even without the 'gag,' is a threat to free speech, free
association, and privacy."

Responding to questions from IMC volunteers, the agents claimed that
their investigation concerned the source of either one or two postings
which, they said, had been posted to an IMC newswire early Saturday
morning.

These posts, according to the agents, contained documents stolen from
a Canadian government agency, including classified information related
to the travel itinerary of George W. Bush (who was at that time in
Quebec City, participating in Summit of the Americas meetings).
Agents claimed that the Secret Service was notified of the existence
of such posts by a tip from an (unnamed) major commercial news
network.

The agents were unable to provide URL addresses or titles for the
postings they described. Additionally, the court order contained a
non-working IP address, rather than an address assigned to any of the
IMC sites. IMC volunteers nevertheless were able to identify two
articles posted to the Montreal IMC which partially matched the
agents' incomplete description.
These articles, posted first in French and then in English
translations
(http://montreal.indymedia.org/front.php? article_id=3D505, 514 and
515),
contain sections of documents purportedly stolen from a Quebec City
police car during Friday night anti-FTAA demonstrations; the documents
detail police strategies for hindering protesters' mass action. It
does not appear that any materials were posted to any IMC site
containing Bush9s travel plans.

Although the agents were concerned with only two posts, the court
order demands "all user connections logs" for a 48-hour period, which
would include individual IP addresses for every person who posted
materials to or visited the IMC site during the FTAA protests. IMC
legal counsel Nancy Chang, of the Center for Constitutional Rights,
comments that "the overbroad sweep of the information demanded by the
=46BI raises the disturbing question of whether the order is calculated
to discourage association with the IMC."

The agents arrived at the IMC around 7pm. Seattle IMC volunteers had
been busy all afternoon gathering regional IMC coverage of FTAA
protests underway in Seattle and in Blaine, Washington, and
coordinating coverage with other sites on the IMC network. Several
visitors were also in the IMC at the time, using public computers..
While agents were speaking with one staff volunteer, another began
making telephone calls in an effort to contact legal counsel. After
the agents left, volunteers discussed the court order's gag provision,
and began recontacting the handful of people who had already been
called, in order to make sure that the terms of the court order would
not be violated before legal counsel had time to appraise the
situation.

Initial attempts were made to contain news of the FBI/Secret Service
visit; however, a few details of the story were soon leaked via a
partially accurate report broadcast on the Vermont IMC internet radio
stream. Soon the Seattle IMC was flooded with phone calls requesting
information about what quickly began to be described as an "FBI raid,"
and speculations began to spread rapidly across the open-publishing
newswires of various IMCs.

=46or about three hours, a network of IMC technology volunteers
attempted to comply with the court order by removing such posts from
the Seattle IMC and other major IMC sites as they appeared. This had
the unfortunate effect of seemingly confirming the worst suspicions of
independent  journalists who posted brief articles announcing or
speculating about mysterious and terrible things going on at the
Seattle IMC, then finding their posts removed from view minutes later.
Volunteers called off this clumsy attempt at rumor control around
midnight, when it became clear that removing of posts was only serving
to fan the flames of rumor, and that in any case the story had already
spread beyond the confines of the IMC network. In acting to remove
these posts, IMC volunteers were motivated by fear of violating the
court order's gag provision even before legal counsel had had a chance
to review the document. We regret the feelings of confusion and
disempowerment which many users of the IMC sites experienced
due to Saturday night's blackout of postings on this topic, and the
general frustration caused by the gag order.

Since the incident occurred, several persistent, yet false, rumors
have taken shape; some of these found their way into coverage
published in  now dispel some of the more common of these: No search
warrant was served on IMC in connection with the court order, and
nobody connected to the Seattle IMC has been arrested. No equipment or
logs have been seized; the agents' visit was not a "raid."

Now, free from restrictive court orders, the Seattle IMC will be able
to cover this important story as it continues to unfold.

The Seattle Independent Media Center was launched in Fall 1999 to
provide immediate, authentic, grassroots coverage of protests against
the WTO. Just a year and a half later, the IMC network has reached
around the world, with dozens of sites scattered across six
continents. IMCs are autonomously organized and administered, but
share collective organizational principles and certain technological
resources. Each IMC's news coverage centers upon its open-publishing
newswire, an innovative and democratizing system allowing anyone with
access to an Internet connection to become a journalist, reporting on
events from his or her own perspective rather than being forced to
rely on the narrow range of views presented by corporate-owned
mainstream media sources.

During last weekend's widespread protests against a proposed Free
Trade  Area of the Americas, many IMC sites collaborated to produce
comprehensive coverage of demonstrations taking place in Quebec City
and Sao Paulo, as well as solidarity protests in cities across the
U.S.  and along the Mexican and Canadian borders. The breadth and
depth of coverage produced by the IMC's global network eclipsed that
of many corporate media outlets.

The Seattle IMC remains committed to its mission: "The Independent
Media Center is a grassroots organization committed to using media
production and distribution as a tool for promoting social and
economic justice. It is our goal to further the self-determination of
people under- represented in media production and content, and to
illuminate and analyze local and global issues that impact ecosystems,
communities and individuals. We seek to generate alternatives to the
biases inherent in the corporate media controlled by profit, and to
identify and create positive models for a sustainable and equitable
society."=20
CONTACT:

Seattle Independent Media Center
1415 3rd Ave.
Seattle, WA, 98101
206.262.0721
206.262.9905 fax
http://seattle.indymedia.org

David Burman, IMC counsel
Perkins Coie LLP
1201 Third Ave., 40th Floor
Seattle, WA  98101
206.583.8888
burmd@perkinscoie.com

Alan Korn, General Counsel
415.362.5700

David Sobel, General Counsel
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Suite 200, 1718 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009
202.483.1140

Nancy Chang, Senior Litigation Attorney
Center for Constitutional Rights
666 Broadway, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10012
212.614.6420

Lee Tien, Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA  94110
415.436.9333=20


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