[Imc-uk-process] Re: legal stuff

[cc]

Hi

On Thu 11-Nov-2004 at 09:30:53AM +0000, MrDemeanour wrote:
> 
> My belief is that Rackspace broke criminal law. 

Rackspace seem to have clearly disregarded the fact that
the servers were leased under a UK contract by their UK
company -- they appear to have acted as if the servers
were leased with a US contract and were hosted in the US,
there has been various speculation about what laws might
have been broken in the UK here:

  http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/AhimsaUkLegal#Speculation

> Blunkett confirms that no approaches were made to the
> Home Office prior to the seizure; that means that MLAT
> cannot have been invoked, since invoking MLAT requires
> the involvement of the Home Secretary.

Yes, from the defence from the US government it appears
that it was acting under a MLAT between the US and Italy
and there was no MLAT envoked between the UK government
and any other government in this matter:

  http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Indymedia/20041109_indymedia_govt_response.pdf

> It follows that there is a prima facie criminal case
> against Rackspace, which the CPS should be
> investigating.

There doesn't seem to be any evidence that they are
investigating this... I don't expect that the CPS will do
anything, and I'm not even sure if it would make sense to
ask them to since it would probably turn into an
investigation into Indymedia and not one into Rackspace
and the US government, after all the US government
considers that their actions "pertain to an ongoing
criminal terrorism investigation" and the UK government
don't exactly have much of a track record in standing up
to the US government over things like this (perhaps not
over anything at all...)... 

> IANAL.

Same here...

Chris