8/5/2005
Rackspace - A Puppet for the Man?
It seems that in bending over backward to abide by an Italian subpoena, Rackspace shuttered at least twenty websites for a week. Recently made public documents cited in a story on news.com.
In October 2004, a federal prosecutor sent a subpoena to Rackspace Managed Hosting of San Antonio, Texas, as part of an investigation underway in Italy into an attempted murder. Under a mutual legal assistance treaty, the U.S. government is required to help other nations secure evidence in certain criminal cases.
The newly disclosed subpoena, which has been partially redacted, asks only for specific “log files.”
But Rackspace turned over the entire hard drive at the time, taking the server offline and effectively pulling the plug on more than 20 Independent Media Center Web sites for about a week.
Rackspace claimed at the time that the subpoena required the company to turn over the customer’s “hardware.”
Now that the documents have been unsealed by a federal judge in Texas, though, Rackspace is backpedalling. “A Rackspace employee mistakenly used the word ‘hardware’ to describe the contents of a federal order,” company spokeswoman Annalie Drusch said in an e-mail message to CNET News.com on Tuesday.
I used to have a stable of servers at Rackspace.com, mine and many of my clients I helped move there. Back in the late ’90’s and early 2000’s they were one of the best deals in dedicated boxes (and they were located in my backyard, San Antonio). As they grew, the corporate culture took over and my eight boxes no longer warranted a dedicated account representative, I was relagated to level one support. Want an easy way to piss off long term clients, start taking away services they have grown accustomed to and continue to raise your prices.
I moved the lot over to Rackshack.com (now Ev1Servers.net) and haven’t looked back. Ev1’s support isn’t stellar, but their prices are slow low, its hard to argue (even though I rant every time I am forced to deal with their support).
I guess corporate culture also gets you in tight with the g-men too.
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