http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/company-caught.html By Kim Zetter Threat Level Wired.com April 08, 2009 A company whose servers were seized in a recent FBI raid on Texas data centers applied for a temporary restraining order to force the bureau to return its servers, but was denied by a U.S. district court last week. The company, Liquid Motors, provides inventory management and marketing services to national automobile dealers, such as AutoNation. It was one of about 50 companies put out of business last week when the FBI seized the servers at Core IP Networks, one of two data centers and co-location facilities raided by the [1] FBI's Dallas office in the last month in an investigation into VoIP fraud. Although Liquid Motors was not a target of the investigation, the FBI took all of the company's servers and backup tapes in the raid. "As a result, Liquid Motors, Inc. has been put out of business and is in breach of its contracts with automobile dealers throughout the country," the company wrote in its application for the restraining order [2] (.pdf). "Those automobile dealerships ... may hold Liquid Motors responsible for all of their lost business, and may terminate their contracts with Liquid Motors, causing permanent and irreparable harm ... for which there is no adequate remedy at law." The company noted that it maintained duplicate servers to prevent outages and housed those servers in a building "on a five power grid with a generator that can last for thirty days." Only "a bomb to the building" or, as it happens, an FBI raid, could cause the servers to go down, the company stated. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas denied the request [3] (.pdf), however, after holding an ex parte discussion with FBI Special Agent Allyn Lynd, who led the raid. Lynd told the court that the owner of the co-location facility was being investigated for fraud and that even though Liquid Motors was not part of the investigation, its equipment might have been used to facilitate fraud by others. [1] http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/data-centers-ra.html [2] http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/Liquid_Motors_v_Lynd.pdf [3] http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/liquid_motors_v_lynd_tro_judge_ruling.pdf [...] _______________________________________________ Best Selling Security Books and More! http://www.shopinfosecnews.org/Received on Thu Apr 09 2009 - 04:08:51 PDT
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