8/1/2005: A number of Italian and U.S. government documents related to the seizure of Indymedia server "Ahimsa" from the UK have been unsealed by order of the federal court in San Antonio, Texas. On Thursday, October 7, 2004, more than 20 Independent Media Center (IMC) websites and other Internet services were taken offline after webhost Rackspace received a "Commissioner's Subpoena" for Indymedia's website logs.

Initially, the disappearance of the Indymedia servers was shrouded in secrecy, with no one willing to provide an explanation. On October 20, 2004, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a motion to unseal the Indymedia documents in the U.S. District Court in San Antonio, where Rackspace is headquartered. In the motion, EFF attorneys argued that "the public and the press have a clear and compelling interest in discovering under what authority the government was able to unilaterally prevent Internet publishers from exercising their First Amendment rights." EFF argued further that secret court orders circumvent due process, undermine confidence in the judicial system, and deny those affected by the order any way to challenge it.

Nine months later, on July 20, 2005, the court granted the motion and ordered the majority of the underlying documents unsealed (but with the specific URLs of the pages being investigated redacted). On August 1, 2005, EFF received the newly unsealed documents and posted them on their website.

According to EFF, many questions remain regarding the unsealed documents. Rackspace has not commented on the matter since the case files were unsealed.
Previous Indybay Coverage of the Ahimsa Seizure