The FBI is looking to ascertain the identity of the creator of a long-running archiving site that is used by millions of people all over the world.
Archive.Today is a popular archiving website—similar in many ways to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine—that keeps copies of news articles and government websites that users have submitted. The site can also be used for skirting paywalls. However, it can also be useful for documenting government websites that may be subject to change. The big difference is that the Internet Archive is a transparent and legitimate non-profit that gives websites the option to opt-out of having their content stored on its platform.
If you haven’t heard of Archive.Today, you may have run into mirror sites hosted at Archive.is or Archive.ph.
About a week ago, the X account belonging to Archive posted a link to a federal subpoena, which is dated October 30th. The subpoena, which was originally spotted by a German news site, is for a Canadian web registration company called Tucows, and demands that the company turn over “customer or subscriber name, address of service, and billing address†as well as an extensive list of other information related to the “customer behind archive.today.â€
404 Media notes that Archive.Today has hundreds of millions of webpages saved. The outlet further notes that “very little is known about the person or people who work on archive.today.†There is a modest FAQ page on the site, but it doesn’t offer anything in the way of identifying information about the creator of the site.
The subpoena states:
The information sought through this subpoena relates to a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI. Your company is required to furnish this information. You are requested not to disclose the existence of this subpoena indefinitely as any such disclosure could interfere with an ongoing investigation and enforcement of the law.
Well, I guess that ship has sailed.
Gizmodo reached out to Archive.Today and Tucows for comment and will update this post when we receive a reply.
Original Source: https://gizmodo.com/the-fbi-is-trying-to-unmask-the-registrar-behind-archive-today-2000682868
Original Source: https://gizmodo.com/the-fbi-is-trying-to-unmask-the-registrar-behind-archive-today-2000682868
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