Admin of an anarchist Mastodon server raided by FBI

From Neowin
by Paul Hill
July 1, 2023

When Elon Musk took over Twitter and started getting on people’s nerves, some users left to join Mastodon. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon is a federated network where individual servers run by different people interact using the Mastodon software. Now, one server admin has been raided and plenty of unencrypted user data is now in the hands of the FBI.

Unlike Twitter and Facebook which have their own legal teams, follow laws such as GDPR, and can overall be considered professional, just about anyone with technical know-how can set up a Mastodon instance.

This is exactly what the admins over at Kolektiva.social have done and now one of them has been raided and charged by the FBI for activities unrelated to Mastodon. To top things off, the admin in question just happened to be troubleshooting an issue and working with a backup copy of the server’s database which was in an unencrypted state when the raid took place and it was seized.

According to the admin who reported the incident, the raid took place in mid-May and the backup was dated from the first week of May. User data that the FBI will now have access to includes:

- User account information like the e-mail address associated with your account, your followers and follows, etc.
- All your posts: public, unlisted, followers-only, *and direct ("DMs")*.
- Possibly IP addresses associated with your account - IP addresses on Kolektiva.social are logged for 3 days and then deleted, so IP addresses from any logins in the 3 days prior to the database backup date would be included.
- A hashed ("encrypted") version of your password.

The admin that announced the capture of his comrade (Kolektiva is an anti-colonial anarchist collective) said that as a precaution users should change their password to something “new, unique, and strong” and change their two-factor authentication if they had that switched on.

The most damaging impact on users is probably the seizure of private DMs and their IP addresses. In the case of the DMs, users on other Mastodon instances could be affected with regard to any messages they sent to Kolektiva users.

While federated platforms like Mastodon are nothing new, many mainstream users are only just coming into contact with them. One of the new issues people need to think about is whose server they join. Do you trust anarchists with your data and ones that have come under the suspicion of the FBI?

There are 25 Comments

never post what you don't want someone else reading, but fuck the feds.

letter writing needs to make a comeback. lol.

Oh, pretty sure the dear postal services of "our" governments aren't tracking down who sends what to whom!

true. best to never say anything to anyone then, i guess.

Binary much?

you are totally correct and i have absolutely no sense of humor.

Like from cars, construction sites, concert stages n shit.

YeAh, frOm the trunk or exhaust pipe, from the dumpster in the construction site and concert n shit toilet cubicles

I wish the moderators would've been able to tell us months ago instead of possibly risking safety and anonymity of users.

It's as if moderators are only in it for themselves and simply interested in controlling others.
Never trust your security or privacy with others that simply want to control you and the narrative for their own image or gains.

Posts and DM's on mastadon aren't end to end encrypted and you shouldn't share personal or sensitive information on there. It has a bunch of other security vulnerabilities that may have been patched. It's your responsibility to determine which server you should trust with your communications. If you or anyone used the particular mastadon instance/server without first determining whether it's safe and secure then that's your problem. Period. Don't rely on moderators having to tell you whether it's secure or not. You should've looked into that before you joined.

Fellow Anarcho-Communist Here. I am getting pretty paranoid that the government/police may do something about anarchists, espescially since I live in a very conservative region. This is why I started using TOR for such purposes.

Okay brilliant, so it's more secure to use the clearnet, lol...

What a rat.

"The users should've used a vpn or tor."

...is a claim, which doesn't provide with any useful information whatsoever. If you gotany solid reasons to believe people "shouldn't" to be using VPNs or Tor for more secure connection that is harder to track by the FBI, at least harder than the clear net which amounts to be talking inside a police station, then let us know 24/7!

Do you not know the difference between the words "should've" and "shouldn't"?

That anon was saying users should have (should've) used a VPN or Tor to connect to Kolektiva.

Are you okay?

"Do you trust anarchists with your data and ones that have come under the suspicion of the FBI?"

Uhm, no? If you are using the internet, it's generally to think of it like you are in a coffee shop and be careful about mentioning illegal activities.

For example, one time when I was using the anarchy planet chatroom anonymously, there was someone using a handle that was also the acronym of an Italian cybercrimes agency. It seemed like they were fishing for information about pedophiles. They said I could open a room to talk about things, so I did and I asked them why they were using that screen name. Then, they just that that wasn't an appropriate question for the time and place, so I just left. Wtfk what that was about?

To think of it like you are in a coffee shop

Sounds like a VERY REAL story and not made up AT ALL.

We're relieved you survived, CalvinSmith

site and encounter more sarcastic people! That's at least how i remember it, the most important point is you should always expect cops to be interested in online anarchist projects...even if there's definetly a chance that i have failed and jumbled some fax.

Two new restaurants open up in town where avowed enemies of the state can choose to dine and plot the destruction of the state.

One is called "Death to America Bistro".

The other is called "Applebees".

Which one do you think the FBI are going to surveil?

Think about, people!

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