Category: Journalism

Apparently, it sounded like the Web hosts‘ fault (though they may have been pressured more than the documents show).

EFF last week won a motion allowing it to access sealed court documents about the mysterious disappearance of two web servers used to host news websites for Indymedia, a global collective of Independent Media Centers (IMCs) and thousands of journalists. After six months of secret litigation, EFF obtained a copy of the federal court order that resulted in the October 2004 handover of copies of Indymedia servers to the government by Indymedia’s web host. That handover resulted in the silencing of more than 20 news websites and radio feeds for nearly a week.

However, the unsealed documents reveal that the government never officially demanded the computer servers – the subpoena to Rackspace only requested server log files. This contradicts previous statements by the web host that it took the servers offline because the government had demanded the hardware. The documents also contradict Rackspace’s claim that it had been ordered by the court not to discuss publicly the government’s demand. It cannot be determined from the unsealed documents whether or not the government informally pressured Rackspace to turn over the servers.

Full Story via Library Autonomous Zone. Original story about the server takedown on EFF’s site.

In the past four and a half years, members of Congress have taken nearly 5,000 trips. The cost of these trips was more than $14 million. And whose paying for it? Corporations and outside interest groups. The abuse of this system and the ethical implications of this are staggering.

This was an impressive investigation by Marketplace, American RadioWorks, and a team of graduate students from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, who cataloged every privately sponsored trip taken by members of the House or Senate since 2000. You can find out how much your representative and senators are travelling on corporate America’s dime, where they’re going, etc… . Some interesting things that come from the study:

• The top eight spenders and nine of the top 10 are Democrats with John Breaux from Louisiana leading the way with $158,311.92 and 208 days traveled (was he ever there?).
• While Democrats are big spenders overall, four of the top five most expensive trips have been Republican.
• Oregon’s representatives in Congress are a mixed spending bag with our Senators roughly in the top 40% of the spending (with Gordon Smith getting/spending more than Ron Wyden), but three of representatives in the House are in the top 30% (with Earl Bluemenauer spending the most of any Oregonian).

All in all, an interesting read and great report.