Overstepping boundaries

The idea that you can host your server outside of countries that don't completely recognize free speech or open commerce has been an important concept on the net since the early days. I remember the first time I had to advise a client to host his server in the Philippines in order to get around a tax and censorship law that was looking likely to be passed here in Canada.

This concept of the absolute nature of physical national boundaries in the meat realm being ported into the digital realm has shaped many ways in which the net itself is organized or used. Just look at the country domains for many countries as n example - the notion of nation is still prevalent in the digital context.

Equally, the notion of nations being unable to flex their politico-legal muscle beyond their existing physical boundaries in non-digital space has been usually regarded as true for the net as well. So I'm more than a little alarmed at how far over those boundaries the US has gone recently in order to assert their cultural views of what is good or right or legal.

Case in point: The recent server and hard drive storage seizure by the FBI at Indymedia in the UK.

• The issue as covered on Metafilter
  
• News coverage of the issue at the Register, a UK alternate media outlet for IT professionals
  
• Statewatch's coverage of the issue - Statewatch is a civil liberties group that monitors happenings in Europe
• Indymedia's own "late breaking news" page on the issue
• The Slashdot post from a Seattle techie who said they received the order from the FBI (and she notes that she asked them for the URL they were concerned about, they "didn't know what a URL was")
  

What do I find disturbing about this? Quite a few things, actually.

First off, the fact that the FBI is supposedly an agency whose mandate is for work within the long-established, mapped and understood physical realm boundaries and borders of the US. The accepted split is that they take care of things at home and the CIA takes care of things abroad.

Secondly, why did the UK bow to this? One would assume they believe in the absolute sovereignty of their own physical realm boundaries and that they would reject any attempt by any other nation or state to control or dictate the social, political or legal happenings within those borders.

The third and perhaps most oxidize to my mind is the fact that this over-stepping of boundaries is intended to get at content and community that exists in the digital realm. Some will argues, "yes but it was just servers they seized" to which I would argue that this isn't the case. They have seized ideas, concepts, identities of individuals who participated in the Indymedia network, indeed they seized a part of a thriving community that was not under their control anyway.

Finally, I find it interesting that a few days have passed since the original incident and very little coverage of the issue has circulated in the mainstream media.

Ok so maybe I'm being an idealist. I'm sure plenty of arguments about traditional versus grassroots power could be thrown my way. And I don't say that they are necessarily invalid.

I guess I'm just disturbed by how intent the US is on maintaining hegemonic control over ideas, even in realms that they don't own, manage or have operated on their own physical soil.