Police seize indymedia server in Bristol

international | summit mobilisations | news report Monday June 27, 2005 21:44 by soundmigration - dissent ireland

Have just been informed that police visited the home address of a
member
of the Bristol Indymedia Collective (BIM) late this afternoon (approx
5.30pm) armed with a search warrant.

Have just been informed that police visited the home address of a
member
of the Bristol Indymedia Collective (BIM) late this afternoon (approx
5.30pm) armed with a search warrant.

They seized from the property the persons personal computer, as well as
the Bristol Indymedia server. The member of the collective has also
been
taken into custody, although his partner was told this was just for a
'chat' and he'd be home soon!?

LIBERTY, who have previously been involved in this matter have been
advised of the situation, and action is being taken to contact a local
solicitor to take on the immediate case.

As at 7pm Avon & Somerset police, specifically the Trinity Rd police
station custody suite, have stated that the collective member is not
presently in their custody. It is possible he is being held by Bristish
Transport police?

The background to this situation is that on approx 17 June an anonymous
post to the Bristol Indymedia newswire reported an 'action' in which
objects were dropped onto a freight train carrying new cars somewhere
near
Avonmouth (I think). The action was contextualised as highlighting
climate
change/car use/over-consumption etc in the run up to the G8 summit.
Rumours suggest the action caused around 100k damage. One regular
poster
to Bristol Indymedia, and expelled ex-collective member, Mark Watson
(of
Zaskar films) then posted a comment saying he morally disagreed with
the
action, that the post breached BIM guidelines, and that he had
contacted
the police & advised them BIM kept IP info (since denied by BIM). There
was then a period of dialogue between BIM, Liberty & the police, in
which
Liberty/BIM argued that any info on the server was in any case subject
to
special rules covering journalistic info, and the server could not be
seized using a standard search warrant (see BIM press release 24/6/05
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/06/314820.html). No links to Bristol
Indymedia are included here as the site is presently down!

Whatever the legal case, the cops have now gone ahead and seized the
server. This differs from the recent instance when UK Indymedia's
servers
were seized from their 'host' Rackspace, as BIM have their own
stand-alone
server. This poster sincerely hopes they have some mirror servers to
back
it up!

This poster is also trying to contact the rest of the BIM collective to
discuss/find out what action can be taken to defend Indymedia.

As the G8 summit approaches, threats to our freedom of expression, and
action, appear to be increasing rapidly.