Today Salon has an article on the Seattle IMC & FBI situation that sheds light on a few more details. One of the most interesting facts is that the FBI and Secret Service made no request to remove the two messages posted to the Montreal IMC site that most closely matched what they were looking for, according to their court order. Amazingly, the Seattle IMC was gagged from talking about a court order looking for messages supposedly containing sensitive Quebec City security information that the feds didn’t even bother to have taken off the site, leaving them for all to see. Sounds like the feds were more interested in covering their asses and the asses of the Canadian authorities who supposedly put them on the chase rather than actually getting the security documents hushed. Based upon the accounts of Seattle IMC volunteers present during the FBI visit, the agents didn’t really know what the hell they were doing or really looking for. It seems like that is the big story, and what the gov’t most wanted gagged.
As Wired News reported last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is providing legal representation for the IMC. The Salon article further reports that the IMC is preparing to challenge the validity of the subpoena in court, guided by the belief that the real purpose of the order was to intimidate IMC volunteers, posters and readers. The question is: were the Feds successful in their intimidation?
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