Last October, the government served a search warrant on Rackspace asking for server log files for Indymedia, which had a server hosted there at the time. Since there were no logs, Rackspace instead handed the government the entire server, taking Indymedia offline for a week.

Documents recently unsealed by the court reveal that the government had only requested the server log files in the Indymedia case, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which published the information today.

“When Rackspace received a government demand to examine logs that didn’t exist, it had a responsibility to the customer and to the principles of freedom of the press to fight the order and resolve this without taking more than 20 news sites off the Internet,” said Kurt Opsahl, EFF staff attorney.

“Rackspace may claim to provide its customers with ‘fanatical support,’ but in this case it looks like it was more interested in serving the government,” added Kevin Bankston, EFF attorney and Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow. “Despite these new revelations, a key question remains: Did government agents intentionally mislead the web host into thinking it had to hand over complete copies of the Indymedia servers?”

The court order served on San Antonio-based Rackspace Managed Hosting was issued based on a treaty request from the Italian government as part of an ongoing criminal investigation in that country. — Electronic Frontier Foundation

It looks like I’m not going to do business with Rackspace.