Attack on Indymedia

[Derek McMillan]

Without any questions in the house or voluble outcry from the media the FBI has used its extensive powers on the pretext of counter-terrorism against independent media. On Thursday morning, US authorities issued a federal order to Rackspace ordering them to hand over Indymedia web servers to the requesting agency. Rackspace, which provides hosting services for more that 20 Indymedia sites at its London facility, complied and turned over the requested servers, effectively removing those sites from the internet.

Since the subpoena was issued to Rackspace and not to Indymedia, the reasons for this action are still unknown to Indymedia. Talking to Indymedia volunteers, Rackspace stated that "they cannot provide Indymedia with any information regarding the order." ISPs have received gag orders in similar situations which prevent them from updating the concerned parties on what is happening.

It is unclear to Indymedia how and why a server that is outside the US jurisdiction can be seized by US authorities.

At the same time an additional server was taken down at Rackspace which provided streaming radio to several radio stations, BLAG (linux distro), and a handful of miscellanous things.

This has affected indymedia around the world and it is a provocation to the anti-war and trade union movement. If we tolerate this, who is going to be next?

Details and updates and a petition

http://solidarity.indymedia.org.uk/

[John Simkin]

During my research on the JFK assassination I received information that an anti-communist group called the Intercontinental Penetration Force (Interpen) was involved in the operation. Interpen was a privately funded right-wing group that received support from the CIA in operations against Castro. After JFK's refusual to invade Cuba and remove Castro it was decided to change the president. I produced a page on Interpen for my website. I also produced biographies of the groups leading members, including those I had been told was involved in the assassination.

When I produce a page on a group or individual, within a few days it is ranked first at Google (this is because of the large number of websites - about 170,000 - that link to my website). For example, if you type in “Intercontinental Penetration Force” into Google search box my page comes out 1st out of 5,680 pages.

The same is true of my biographies of Interpen members. For example, Gerry P. Hemming (1st out of 3,040), Roy Hargraves (1st out of 5,230), Howard K. Davis (1st out of 857,000), James Arthur Lewis (1st out of 2,680,00), Dennis Harber (1st out of 5,360), William Seymour (3rd out of 560,000 – he shares a name with a popular USA actor I have not written about), etc. However, if you type in Bernardo De Torres, one of Interpen's key members, you then find it does not appear. In fact, further research shows that my biography of Torres is not in the Google index. You can test this out by typing in a passage from this page in the Google search-box. The page is just not in there. My whole website is automatically indexed by Google every couple of days by its spider software. The only explanation is that someone at Google has consciously deleted it from the index. Torres obviously has some powerful friends. Interesting, another member of Interpen is also being protected by Google/CIA. Loran Hall also does not appear in the Google Index.

It was of course only a matter of time before Google came under pressure to censor its indexes. A growing number of people get their information via the web. Google is the main search-engine used by researchers. It was only natural that the intelligence services would have to get involved in censoring this information.

[John Simkin]

Ed Sherry put my complaint in his JFK newsletter. He had an interesting reply from Peter Dale Scott, the author of Deep Politics and the Death of JFK.

Thank you for sending the John Simkin notice about Google. I have been aware of Google and Google News censorship for a long time, and even have a very inadequate warning about the latter posted on my website.

They may only have reached John Simkin recently. But the policy is an old one, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were not coeval with Google itself.

I agree this is a very important subject - someone should put up a Web article on it.

This was a comment sent by Ed Sherry:

This bears explaining. When certain people were speaking on line about German camps during WWII, or objectionable statements that irritated neighboring Countries, Google agreed to remove these "problem postings". Likewise with the Middle East. If issues create political problems that may inflame others or incite others, they are likewise removed.

I believe that Wired Magazine ran an article on this policy by Google. They probably have a blog or statement on it somewhere. You may want to google: "Information removed by Google" Herein is explained how to remove indexes among other things. Perhaps someone is spoofing JFK Researchers asking Google to remove them from the index. If so, it is logical that Google may put you back in the Index if requested.

Since we now have people that "disappear" that were part of the Interpen Group, it is likely that some National Security people in the Govt. have decided that showing their names may not be in their best interests.

Since Google has now gone public with their IPO, there will likely be future search engines that bypass them, rendering them obsolete as 8 track tapes. This was the gist of an article that appeared recently in an article that I forwarded to some.

[John Simkin]

I have been contacted by someone at Google-Watch to say that my page on Bernardo De Torres used to be ranked number 1 at Google. According to Google-Watch, Google is involved in censoring certain pages. Google-Watch argues: “Matt Cutts, a software engineer at Google since January 2000, used to work for the National Security Agency and has a top-secret clearance. Google would like to hire more like him. Can you trust Google with a database of all the search terms you've ever used?”

It suggests you use Clusty Search to reveal how this works. From this it is clear that it is not only my page that is being censored. So also is this page:

http://www.namebase.org/main1/Bernardo-De-torres.html

http://clusty.com/

http://www.google-watch.org/