FBI Tries to Unmask Owner of Archive.today ⇥ 404media.co

Jason Koebler, 404 Media:

The FBI is attempting to unmask the owner behind archive.today, a popular archiving site that is also regularly used to bypass paywalls on the internet and to avoid sending traffic to the original publishers of web content, according to a subpoena posted by the website. The FBI subpoena says it is part of a criminal investigation, though it does not provide any details about what alleged crime is being investigated. Archive.today is also popularly known by several of its mirrors, including archive.is and archive.ph.

Sketchy as it may seem, Archive.today has become as legitimized as the Internet Archive. I have found links to pages archived using the site in government documents, high-profile reports, and other unexpected places treating it as a high-grade permalink. The existence of a subpoena does not mean the FBI is going after Archive.today or its operator, but its existence now feels a little more precarious.