2011-05-20 Servers of German Pirate Party confiscated [Update]

Today, servers of the Pirate Party Germany were confiscated. According to news reports, Darmstadt prosecutors confirm that there is currently no legal action against the Pirate Party itself. The target of the raid is information stored on these servers. The raid was carried out on request of French authorities who are investigating an alleged Anonymous attack on Électricité de France SA.

The Pirate Party released a statement saying that they fully cooperate in the investigation. A spokesperson confirmed to Der Spiegel that Piratenpad, the presumed target of the raid, does not log the IP addresses of its users. According to another statement on the official website of the party, the investigation centers around a SSH key which allegedly appeared on Piratenpad.

The servers were operated by the Offenbach based company AixIT. The raid was carried out on a Friday, two days before state elections in Bremen.

Spiegel Online and German public broadcaster ZDF report that the website of German Federal Police suffered performance problems for some time on Friday afternoon, which were consistent with a DDoS attack. The Pirate Party stated that they do not support such attacks.

Read more on Frankfurter Rundschau:

http://www.fr-online.de/home/polizei-schaltet-piratenpartei-kurz-vor-bre...

Statements by the Pirate Party:

http://vorstand.piratenpartei.de/2011/05/20/polizei-beschlagnahmt-server...

http://www.piratenpartei.de/Pressemitteilung/server-durchsuchung-wegen-f...

More on Spiegel Online and the ZDF news:

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,763939,00.html

http://www.heute.de/ZDFheute/inhalt/18/0,3672,8240242,00.html

[Update]

The servers have now been returned, and the Pirate Party is checking whether they have been manipulated during the raid. The party also filed a complaint with the magistrate's court (Amtsgericht) Darmstadt, on grounds that it was not proportionate to confiscate the entire IT infrastructure of a political party two days before a state election because of one alleged forum post.

Read more on Süddeutsche Zeitung:

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/digital/nach-polizeiaktion-piratenpartei-wied...