Wednesday, July 21, 2010

An excuse?

Seems the blogging host that was shut down was host to (alleged) Al Queda sites. I understand the (alleged) reasons for shutting the individual blogs down, but to take the whole server down for this? And confiscate the server with no recourse?

One wonders.

All those blogs, gone forever. For no real reason. It would (should) be technically feasible to dump all the data, or make a backup of the other blogs. Alternatively, to simply shut down access to the (alleged) blogs in question.

Methinks that there is something else involved in this.

And dollars to doughnuts the people using the (alleged) blogs for nefarious purposes will simply set up another account and be back in business in no time.

Is the DHS that technically inept? Or is there more to this? Or do they simply not care?

3 comments:

Scott McCray said...

"Is the DHS that technically inept? Or is there more to this? Or do they simply not care?"

Yes, yes and yes.

Absolutely nothing coming out of DC surprises me any more. Just when I think they've hit rock bottom - they keep diggin'.

Tam said...

If the physical server is needed for evidence, it's not like they could just bag'n'tag certain sectors of the hard drive...

Technology has gotten a little ahead of the law in some respects.

Scott McCray said...

From my perspective, it would be easy enough for them to clone the drive - any data forensics will be performed on a cloned drive anyway.
Then give the business owners their own cloned copy and allow them to resume business with the alleged "bad guy" directories, DNS ptr records, rDNS records, and MX records all deleted. Realizing that all of that would likely have required multiple court orders to pull off - it was probably the most "field expedient" to seize the physical server and just not sweat the collateral damage.

W/V = flush...as in crapper.