Anarchist Groups: a web host’s computers are seized

Anarchist Groups: a web host’s computers are seized

[Posted to sketchythoughts.blogspot.com, March 20, 2008, translated by sketchythoughts]

Caroline Touzin
La Presse

Montreal police raided a web host in Montreal on Tuesday night to identify who was behind the recent crimes claimed by anarchist groups in the Hochelaga-Maisoneeuve neighbourhoud, Le Presse has learned.

Four police officers arrived, with a search warrant, at Koumbit, a non-profit organization which offers computer services to forty or so Quebec community associations and organizations. Koumbit hosts the Centre des médias alternatifs du Québec (CMAQ). This group distributed messages from the Your father, Your Uncle and YOUr Dog collectives, which claims reponsibility for (respectively) the setting on fire of six police cars, of automatic tellers as well as vandalism at a car sales lot.

The warrant authorized police to seize all computers on the premises and also stipulated that the organization hand over its “logs” to investigators, as well as as much information as possible about the four articles published on CMAQ. “Koumbit believes that such a warrant is problematic. The normal course of justice should not cause undue damage to businesses and organizations which are heavily dependent on the means of communication that we offer them, nor should it silence online media such as blogs or public forums,” emphasized the organization in a press release it issued last night. Koumbit also provided three lines of its “logs”, which are records of events which document visits to websites. A log normally contains the visitors address, the time they visited, the page visited as well as the kind of browser used.

The police, for its part, refused to comment on this information. “Those who commit crimes do not need added publicity. We refuse to discuss our investigation strategy,” said sergeant Ian Lafrenière, of the Montreal police.

A member of the CMAQ collective, Martin Deshaies, feels that the police are “exaggerating.” The CMAQ defines itself as a response to the mainstream media inspired by the international independent media network Indymedia. The site agreed to publish the communiqués as it has a principle of free publication, specified Mr Deshaies. “In the 1970s, the Front de libération du Québec send its communiqués to the mass media. The media reprinted them without necessarily agreeing with their message. It is the same thing with us today,” explained Mr Deshaies.

A Worrisome Sentence

The CMAQ has an editorial policy that a message’s contents cannot be defamatory. For this reason the CMAQ had removed a sentence from the Your Father Collective about the burnt police cars. “One sentence went too far,” explained another member of CMAQ, Michaël Lessard. This censored sentence was inviting people to burn “the hotels and houses of capitalists.” Mr Lessard also warned people not to be too hasty in assuming who was behind these messafes. “Watch out before you conclude that they are anarchists. These kinds of arguments can also be made by many far left groups or by young people who are angry about injustice.” In the past CMAQ has received other requests from the police and even a court order to remove certain claims about the police from its site. Requests that the CMAQ did not answer.