Police have tonight shut down Bristol Indymedia by seizing the local IMC's server. An IMC volunteer has also been detained and his personal computer confiscated. Red Pepper cannot link to the site because it currently doesn't exist.
The move comes just 6 days after police contacted IMC Bristol to
request IP logs - stored data indicating the addresses of computers
from which posts to Indymedia are made - apparently in response to a
vague posting, quickly hidden by IMC Bristol, about an act of sabotage
in the Avon and Somerset region. As an independent news service with a
clear code of practice not to reveal non-public information, and on the
advice of human rights lawyers at Liberty, IMC Bristol refused the
police's request. The police have now seized the server in what many
media activists tonight are calling a clear transgression of legal
process and an outright assault on Indymedia and press freedom. SH
see http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/06/315042.html for the full story and this month's Red Pepper article by an IMC volunteer warning about the potential for state repression. There is also a posting on Slashdot
you can link to a really good thread on slashdot though
Posted by: | Tuesday, 28 June 2005 at 17:36