Information Security News: French military closes Bit Torrent site

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1184608/french-military-closes-bit-torrent-site

By Nick Farrell
The Inquirer
8 June 2009

THE FRENCH MILITARY moved to close down a large Bit Torrent tracker in 
what is the first recorded use of a nation's armed forces under the 
control of the entertainment industry.

It seems that the French government used taxpayer funded military 
personnel to gather information in order to shut down the Snowtigers 
site.

According to Torrentfreak [1], French police arrested 10 members of the 
site's staff and seized more than 20 servers after the military assisted 
in locating them.

A representative of the French anti-piracy organisation ALPA confirmed 
that it had "worked very closely with the military" to locate the 
semi-private site.

ALPA president Frédéric Delacroix managed to convince the military that 
SnowTigers was a criminal organisation and therefore the use of spy 
technology in the hands of the military was warrented to shut it down.

[1] http://torrentfreak.com/military-intelligence-used-to-shutdown-250k-user-bittorrent-site-090606/

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