“American authorities have shut down 20 independent media centres by seizing their
British-based webservers,” the London Guardian reports this morning.
An “American-owned web hosting company” was forced “to hand over two servers” used by
“an international media network which covers social justice issues and provides a ‘news-wire,’ to
which its users contribute. The websites affected by the seizure span 17 countries.”
An FBI spokesman, quoted by the Guardian, told Agence France-Presse: “It is not an FBI
operation.” The FBI “acknowledged that a subpoena had been issued … but said this was at the
request of Italian and Swiss authorities.”
Is this another Aschroft “initiative” to conceal legal abuses by the Justice Department? It
reads like one.
A British journalist at the media network told the Guardian: “The authorities may just
be using this as a trawling exercise. We don’t know.”
