It's amazing that these operations and bills are intentionally wrapped in wording that makes them politically untouchable. I can see why lawmakers wouldn't want to investigate this. Who wants to be the congressman/woman that went against Operation Save our children?
Note that these are operations that haven't waited for any new bills to pass.
As has been debated here previously, these actions are based on importing the draconian "civil forfeiture" device from the drug war into a "war on counterfeiting" or whatever they would call it.
Some have argued that this wasn't a big expansion of US state power.
Indeed, this is not technically an expansion of legal power. It is certainly a expansion of effective powers. It's so not much that someone just put a knife in US rule of law. It's more someone grabbed the wound already opened by the "war on drugs" and ripped it a fair bit wider. I don't know to what degree civil forfeiture" found been found constitutional by the courts. Regardless, in my opinion, it makes a mockery of basic justice in the US (specifically, innocence until proven guilty and the right to face your accusers).
Fine with me - everything gets spin-friendly nicknames in the media, it's just apalling when that's allowed to be absorbed into the system itself.
What really bothers me is that the lines separating media, commerce, and legislation have been blurred beyond recognition - candidates are rarely measured on any sort of substantive metric, but on fundraising numbers and media presence.
Then all bills should be given memorable but neutral official nicknames, generated semi-randomly. This bill could be called the "Eight-headed Platypus Act", for example. The name has nothing to do with the bill itself, but hopefully it will fill the name niche well enough to crowd out less entertaining competitors.
I think the rule should be that the people who vote against it get to collectively vote on a name. This would be a pretty cool game theory case study, actually.
Then you'd end up with every bill having a name like "The Job Killing Health Care Bill". It would just be biased from the other side. That might be good in this case, but when a bill you want to pass comes along, and gets renamed into the "FCC is taking over your internet and will burn sites like Hitler burned books", it may seem less attractive.
Not exactly. You'd get logrolling--the worse the name, the fewer votes it would get, meaning that former voters can tone down the name.
What you'd actually get is accuracy, like the "Necessary expenditures with a side of pork act" or the "Handout to lobbyists that will also probably protect consumers, but not necessarily enough to justify the higher costs" bill.
Or the "Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act of 2007"
The more detailed title: "To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, and for other purposes."
It's only when you read the text you discover things like tax credits for low sulfur diesel fuel, tax subsidies for small business, and a $700 billion bailout for the financial services industry.
Ah, yes, the 'Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act of 2007'.
I'm no tax attorney, but I believe that was the act that subjects me to immediate capital gains tax on all my illiquid assets (read: start-up stock) at their fair market value should I ever stop being a permanent resident of the United States.
Woo, nothing like potentially bankruptcy-causing exit taxes, especially when they're triggered by losing permanent residency - a status that's not 100% up to me. And my fiancee wonders why I get nervous whenever I cross the American border.
Can you believe I was eventually planning to naturalize when I got my green card eight years ago? Now that just cracks me up.
Heh. The Patriot Act was the biggest in recent history. Remember how little debate there was when the entire Congress was afraid of looking weak after 9/11? You'd think some of them would go back and read the bill and have second thoughts, but it looks like 10 years later, we're going to renew it again.
It's interesting that this was downvoted while the parent was upvoted. My initial reaction is that people on Hacker News react positively when somebody makes a snarky remark about the PATRIOT Act, but react negatively when told how they can make a difference. Or is there some other explanation?
You and I may know that but your average voter probably doesn't, and they certainly wouldn't two or three years later when it come back up out of context, in a attack ad.
This seems a key failing of our system: people that try to be moderately informed (the best you can reasonably expect - the vast majority can't/won't be political wonks) may end up even less informed in part because the relationship between voting record and the appearance of that record is radically distorted by this kind of thing.
So what can be done about this? It's hard for me to imagine a structural remedy.
How about a better question: Why is this allowed in the united states? This is an absofuckingloutely clear violation of the due process in our constitution. Yes save the fucking children, but do it properly. We see the abuses that arise from improper giving of power. I guess people are waiting until basically we live in communist russia where you got to bribe cops to not give you speeding ticket, impound your car, and throw you in jail, because they felt like breaking some balls. And then you get to sit in a nice abusive prison cell for a few months awaiting trial.
Sure it sounds like paranoia, but the government will never turn to a giant powergrab overnight. It will always be gradual, slowly taking power until its too late.
The government has been doing things like this for ages. Like they say, "you can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride". In this case, they might close down a website and you can get it back after due process, but not before your business and good name has been ruined. Same thing would happen if they walked into your business and arrested you for something.
If you want a more modern problem, look at drug forfeiture. They regularly take physical property and cash from people who are often not charged with crimes or even arrested, and even worse, distribute the cash and proceeds from sale of the items seized among the law enforcement agents themselves.
Personally, I had a vintage car seized because of a situation with a college roommate unrelated to me. I was not arrested or charged with a crime, they said my car was cool and maybe they could use it for drug investigations, and just took it! After 16 months of stalling, they gave it back, for a fee of $1000. My car sat in the sun in an impound lot all that time, and required $4,000 of work before it started again.
The U.S. government has had the ability to seize property for quite a while. The earliest I recall it happening is with drug related crimes. These laws were passed in the '80s allowing officers to seize not just drugs, but all your property and bank accounts prior to trial. This has been argued in court many times and our judges have upheld the feds ability to make such seizures.
The IRS has quite a few powers that seem to violate due process as well.
As to your comment about living in "communist russia" and dealing with corrupt cops...I'm pretty sure what you described happens daily in Atlanta and LA.
Democracy belongs to those who show up and pay up.
What, specifically, is a violation of due process? According to the story, ICE mistakenly included mooo.com in the domains they were seizing. Since that site functions as a DNS provider, the 84,000 subdomains hanging off it had their names resolved to the IP address with the scary law enforcement warning. That's a bad thing, of course, and I'll come back to that aspect of it - but it's not a violation of due process.
Let's back up a little. There are sites that host child porn or support a traffic in counterfeit goods, and part of ICE's job is to shut that down. Every country has a customs service, and the US is no exception. Art. 1 sec. 8 of the Constitution begins 'The congress shall have power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States [...]' and later in that same section, 'to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States [...]' A1S8 is also the source of authority to act against counterfeiters (of currency), to define and act against piracy, and various 'Offenses against the law of nations.'
So there's nothing unconstitutional about the existence of an agency such as ICE: Immigration and Customs Enforcement are among the specific enumerated powers granted to Congress, and Congress can in turn delegate those powers to agencies that it creates. This is why some kinds of customs activities can be conducted without reference to the judicial branch - no warrant is necessary for inspection of cargo at the border for collection of customs duties, and the various other enumerated powers in that section combine to give the government fairly wide latitude to poke around in people's baggage and so on too. It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway, that all nations assert the power to decide what may be imported, whether to protect their domestic agriculture or to prevent the spread of things like child pornography. Of course such power can be abused to support despotism too, but that's an issue of governance, rather than some inherent flaw in the law itself - just as a computer and the software it runs can be used for worthwhile or nefarious purposes.
Now when it comes to seizure of websites, ICE is exercising its power (as delegated) to regulate commerce, both foreign and interstate. For this, they do need to get a warrant. Here's an example of a warrant in template form: http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/FormsAndFees/Forms/AO109.pd... I am not sure if this the same warrant that would be used for a domain name seizure (IANAL) but if not then it will be quite similar - the principle is basically the same as impounding a boat or cargo container. Child porn is certainly subject to forfeiture, and if it's being trafficked across state or national borders, then all ICE has to do is show the court the website, the fact of its illegal content, and request the warrant be issued. And that's exactly what they do - there's no fourth amendment violation.
As for due process, that isn't abridged either in this situation. If the warrant was correctly issued, then the court is already satisfied that contraband exists. When it's executed against the listed websites, their domain names are seized and fall into the custody of ICE who has them redirected to their warning page. If one of the domain owners disagrees - say, because he does host porn but had a statement on the website that all performers are over 18 and he has documentary evidence on file - there is an opportunity to argue that in court. The warrant is not the end of the process; the government puts the seized property into evidence and a civil trial is held; if the government wins, then the domains become the legal property of the government.
Often in customs enforcement, counterfeit goods or money are seized but nobody is caught. The trial is still held; if you look at court calendars you'll see entries in federal district court every week for cases with names like 'United States v. $250,000 in cash,' or 'United States v. 100,000 capsules of a controlled substance,' or 'United States v. 5603 counterfeit handbags.' The US attorney describes the issue of the warrant and the seizure, displays the seized material or documentary proof of where it is stored, nobody shows up to contest the government's claim upon it, and the government wins and takes ownership of it (if it's money) or destroys it (if it's drugs or counterfeit stuff). I always like to imagine an actual heap of cash piled up on the defense table with its own lawyer in cases like these, but that doesn't happen :) Anyway, they will do the same thing as regards these seized domains that had child porn, and likely nobody will show up to claim them as their property - because unless they had ironclad proof that it was not child porn and so a legal mistake has resulted, then they'd be arrested for the criminal act of trafficking in such material.
With mooo.com, ICE made a technical mistake - but they made this mistake while they were in the process of executing a legitimate warrant. they have not any point claimed that mooo.com or any of its subdomains were involved in illegal activity. If they did so, then it would be weeks or months before the matter was put to trial. That the mistake was reversed within hours tells you that mooo.com was never listed on the search warrant in the first place. I'd bet money that the mistake actually occurred at a computer console - as the seized domains listed in the warrant had their DNS altered, the operator miscounted and pasted the ICE IP address over the next entry in the list, which happened to be mooo.com. Why? Because I have made that sort of mistake many times, and so has anyone else who uses a computer.
It is not acceptable, but it is understandable - whereas there is no evidence at all for the picture that's being painted of corrupt authoritarians abusing the helpless public. Imagine the scene: a technician sitting at a console, while some uniformed ICE officers clutching a crumpled warrant in their sweaty hands stand behind her, drunk with power. The technician says 'well, all done officers.' 'Wait! Wait! What is that other site, that m-o-o-o dot com?' 'Oh, that's just the next entry in the DNS database, officer - totally unrelated.' 'Well, I'm on a roll - take that one out too.' 'but, officer, that's not-' 'Silence! Obey, unless you wish to live out your life in a federal prison surrounded by the scum of humanity! I can totally do that, you know. Now, zap it!'
Really? You find that more plausible than a simple screwup, of the kind we have all experienced and which was quickly corrected? Come on.
I repeat, it should not have happened. ICE has a responsibility to use its enforcement powers carefully and accurately, and failed to do so here. Because mooo.com happened to be a DNS business, ICE's mistake did not just affect one site but mooo.com's 84,000 customers as well. And their mistake didn't simply result in those sites being inaccessible for a few hours - they resulted in those sites (and by implication, their owners and operators) being publicly identified as traffickers in child pornography.
That is a very serious charge, easily enough to wreck a person's reputation or even put their life in danger. When the government says such a thing about a person, even as a mistake which is quickly corrected, many people think no more but accord that accusation the same weight as a criminal conviction. With so many people affected, it's probable that at least a few of them have already been fired from their jobs, or received a visit from their local child protection services, or had their spouse file divorce papers. All those results would be radical overreactions to the sight of ICE's web page, but an official government seal and the words 'child porn' will be enough to provoke that in some viewers - it's literally something that people do not like to think about, and so people do not bother to question the immediate emotional response they feel. 10 years ago in the UK, a bunch of uneducated vigilantes ran a doctor out of her home - they misunderstood her job title of 'paediatrician' on her clinic door to mean 'paedophile,' assumed she was a sex offender, and vandalized her house. Imagine how much more damning an official government warning of actual crime must look to anyone unfamiliar with the DNS or the legal system. You'd be better off being accused of murder than a sex crime; even if you were falsely convicted, you would be able to survive in prison while you appealed. Convicted child abusers usually have to be isolated for their own safety inside prison, and are marked for life outside.
ICE's carelessness seems seriously negligent, and since so many people were affected a class action lawsuit against the agency seems very probable. Suing the government is more complex than suing a private party because the government has immunity from some kinds of liability, so I do not know what technical path the lawsuit might take. But for the government to slap a 'child porn warning' on 84,000 or more people at once, even if it was 'only for a few hours, and only on the internet,' is about as bad a screwup as you can make. With 1, 5, or 10 people it might be feasible for ICE to write some humble letters of apology and offer a settlement to mitigate their trouble, but with tens of thousands a trial is the only efficient solution.
But this was not a failure of due process - it's just another example of internet's multiplier effect. In this case, technology allowed a technical error to affect 84,000 websites at once. The problem here is not the law, but the fragility of the domain name system.
Civil forfeiture in and of itself makes a mockery of due process.
Indeed, once you make once exception to due process, you can argue ten more through.
Whether civil forfeiture is done by a judge or cop, it involves the justice taking stuff from you without a trial. The final result is the "Judge Dred scenario".
Merely a trial called "United States v. $250,000 in cash" should be a rather bald statement that what is going on is a twisting of concepts to suit bureaucracy.
The reason to avoid search-and-seizure without real due process are fairly simple. One is that such huge powers cause cops to become sloppy (as we've seen). Another is that that a person's stuff is taken and their reputation destroyed, their ability to defend a later trial is effectively destroyed and "you can sue to get it back" is a completely empty claim. A third is that this becomes so easy a method for dealing with criminals that it becomes the method of choice for any criminality and soon you wind with no trials as such - just papers presented to judges.
A). I want to hold a trial before any punishment can be meted out. Yes, I think that concept has a long history in common law. Warrant for evidence are a different story.
B) Read my statement again. Your example doesn't contradict it at all. The fact that some people sometimes get some relief after the fact doesn't prove that doing things this is fair or that it involves anything like the spirit of due-process. You can fight bureaucracy and win occasionally in even extremely authoritarian countries.
Edit: OK, reading my original post, I should have said "when you lose everything before, the claim that you can sue to get it back becomes a mostly empty claim". I hope the direction I'm going is clear in any case.
I want to hold a trial before any punishment can be meted out.
You may be in luck. It just so happens that at least one member of the US Supreme Court doesn't believe punishment can be inflicted before conviction because the entire concept of punishment requires a conviction. That's right, there is no such thing as pre-trial punishment by definition.
As for B, you can't always sue to get it back. In fact, under my understanding I'd say you rarely can.
A) forgive my pedantry, but I'm not sure that having illegal property seized in a civil proceeding counts as punishment. Distributing child porn is very illegal, and I don't see any benefit in allowing the domain to stay up while the trial proceeds.
B) I am not a fan of ever-expanding civil asset forfeiture policies either. But some things are illegal to possess and thus subject to forfeit in the first place. The contraband nature of such items are established before the seizure warrant issues, which is what happened here.
forgive my pedantry, but I'm not sure that having illegal property seized in a civil proceeding counts as punishment.
Well, when talking of doubtful distinction in argument, some may pedantry, others might say sophistry. If I say "I never touched him!" (but rubber hose did a fine job on his kidney), which am I engaging in?
More seriously, how the frickin heck can taking someone's stuff not be punishment? Moreover, given that this is a broad power, the existence of some instance where one can argue isn't punishment doesn't mean that there aren't many, many other instances where it is.
But some things are illegal to possess and thus subject to forfeit in the first place.
Note that civil forfeiture was not historically created or used for taking drugs themselves or other "illegal property". If someone has drugs, you can arrest them for possession and take the drugs as evidence. If you drop the charges, they could come to collect, except they won't since they'll be arrested for possession so you can dispose of the stuff (not that I'm particular in favor of drug laws but that's a different story). Civil forfeiture is for taking money and "instrumentalities".
"Asset forfeiture is confiscation, by the State, of assets which are either (a) the alleged proceeds of crime or (b) the alleged instrumentalities of crime..."
IE, it's not used for "illegal property" as such.
And the addresses in this discussion certainly aren't "illegal property".
I don't see any benefit in allowing the domain to stay up while the trial proceeds.
So you believe in guilty until proven guilty?
The content of 83990 sites was taken down, none of which had any disturbing or illegal content. There is great benefit in allowing this to stay up while the trail proceeds.
Quite, but none of them from mooo.com on down should have been included in the first place - the error appears to have taken place during the change to the DNS records, not inside a courtroom. As I said before, if that domain had erroneously been included on the warrant itself, there would have had to be another hearing held before that could be cleared up. There is no mention of such in the story; instead work began to restore the DNS records almost immediately (but propogation time means that's not an instant fix).
A technical error like that could have occurred just as easily following a trial as following a warrant. It was negligence which was to blame, not a lack of due process.
I think he's saying that sometimes it is necessary to take action before a conviction in a court of law.
If I see you about to stab someone I'm not going to get a police office to review the case, pass it on to a legal team to assess and bring before a judge, wait for a subpoena, wait for legal representatives to make submissions and then have you arrested. Instead I'd do my best to stop you stabbing them.
Sometimes one has to take action when a crime appears to have been committed or some wrongdoing appears likely to be occurring. Seriousness is IMO a large factor in appropriate response.
I was not. I was describing evidence of distribution being offered to justify seizing control of the domain from whence child porn was being distributed.
If I were a defense attorney, it's possible I could find myself having to represent someone on trial for that kind of crime. In fact, I have spent quite a bit of time thinking over that very issue in the last year, and the complex ethical responsibilities involved. Although I expect it would be a very unpleasant task, I would have to be prepared to do it as best I could, because that's what 'the right to an attorney' boils down to.
But I really don't think there needs to be any legal protection for the continued operation of a child porn website. The people abused during the creation of such material have rights too, which I think are a lot more important than the porn distributor's property right in a domain name.
Yes, but someone has to determine whether the evidence is real Typically this is a judge's job, isn't it?
Of course there isn't and shouldn't be protection for the continued operation of a child porn website, but shouldn't it be found to be one first? You seem to be saying "yes," but that the evidence should be given to I don't know...a dude at Comcast or wherever? I'm fuzzy on this last part.
??? It sounds like you've only been half-reading my posts above.
Yes, examining the evidence is a judge's job. And it is the judges who issue the warrants (or not) after conducting a thorough review of the evidence provided. That's what is supposed to happen, and that's what almost always does happen, and that's due process in action.
When I referred to the likelihood of a technical error by a network administrator, that would be the person implementing the DNS changes under ICE supervision AFTER being presented with the warrant authorizing the domain seizure. The warrant which the ICE staffers got from a judge, who had first examined the evidence thoroughly.
One more time, in chronological order:
Someone in the DoJ/ICE finds a child porn website, and begins collecting evidence by making screenshots or downloading content or whatever methodology they use.
Everything known about the website is written up in an affidavit (ie a statement), and along with the evidence it is taken to the local District Court.
A judge reads the affidavit and examines the evidence - maybe as collected, maybe by going to the website directly to verify the statements made by the DoJ agent.
If the judge is satisfied that it is the real deal, then she issues a warrant authorizing the seizure.
The warrant is taken to ICANN or InterNIC or wherever it is easiest and fastest to patch the DNS, and is shown to the staff there as proof of legal authority. This is called executing the warrant.
A technician then redirects the domain name of the porn site(s) to point at an ICE server. On this occasion, mooo.com was accidentally redirected as well, which should never have happened. Exactly who screwed up and how is still a mystery.
Despite their excess length, I'm fairly sure I've got an idea of what you're aiming at.
You're noting that the large web site shutdown was probably a mistake but are using that argument to defend the basic mechanism. Seems like a reversal of the principle "better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished" into "better a thousand innocents get hit with accidental collateral damage than one guilty man get away with having something really dangerous on the Internet".
Yes, it was probably a mistake. The point is when it gets easy for repressive measures to happen, they get sloppy and hurt innocents. And when a cop has the luxury not having to have a trial, things will be easy whether there's a judge involved or not.
Constitutional guarantees really do exist to "make the cops job hard". The urge for the good citizen to agree with the cops is too great.
And also, these action were carried out as "civil forfeiture" (in this case "virtual property") so my comments on this seem entirely justified - indeed, I don't think anything I said was specific to physical as oppose to "virtual" property.
Edit: It's not really the judge's "job to interpret evidence" fairly. There really aren't ANY uncorruptable experts on fairness. The ONLY, ONLY, ONLY thing that keeps the justice system honest is the public, adversarial institution of the trial itself (it's kind of like the market that regard - two would-be monopolists can be very honest with enough daylight on them). The trial system hasn't done a terribly good job lately but if it is entirely absent, you get really bad things.
You're right, I haven't read all of your posts. I only have time to read 20,000 words a day and just couldn't fit it in. That said, it appears your stance is either shifting with time or you're playing piggy-in-the-middle while you sit on the fence. It was bad, but hey, mistakes happen, and what's qualified immunity?
I have not changed my opinion about this at all. Obviously I need to work on my communications skills. I do not think qualified immunity will apply here.
I do not think qualified immunity will apply here.
Well that's the most concrete point you've made so far, but I fear you've chosen brevity at just the wrong time. In addition, I think slaps on the wrist like some guy being forced to resign is effectively the same as immunity, since we're talking about legal repercussions here, and escaping the merest suggestion of criminality creates no deterrent.
Statutes exist to allow people to take emergency action when a crime is in the process of being committed - but they have no relation to civil forfeiture, which isn't about stopping an action but to remove peripheral resources permanently.
Why do you keep going on about civil forfeiture? That is not what I have been talking about at all. So you are opposed to it, so am I in many respects.
Shutting down hott_kiddie_porn_pix_4_free.com is quite different from impounding someone's car or putting a lien on a bank account. Please stop arguing with me about the latter when I have only ever been talking about the former.
No part of a criminal investigation which involves disabling a DNS entry. A warrant is required for the transfer of goods or freedom from an entity to the government. This is simple destruction.
Please note more words don't ad validity to an argument.
Violation of due process is simple to show. There is no warning or process for trial or appeal. The trial is secret and there is as of yer no appeal. This is a simple end run around the court system.
I really don't understand the need to complicate things this is outside the intended capacity of the customs. There are still people that don't have their sites back that were falsely accused and no means of appeal. How can this possibly be justice? Secret trials are not part of due process either they are not notified prior to conviction.
Please note more words don't ad validity to an argument. Violation of due process is simple to show. There is no warning or process for trial or appeal. The trial is secret and there is as of yer no appeal. This is a simple end run around the court system.
If they're secret, how is it that I can see customs-related asset forfeiture cases on the court calendar, and that they're open to the public?
edit: I forgot to mention that of course the website owners who were affected can sue the government individually or via a class action. I'd be very surprised if they didn't; I'm sure there are attorneys who specialize in such things busy typing articles about it right now, in case any of the persons affected are wondering who would be able to advise them on the subject.
The problem here is absolutely the law. (disclaimer: IANAL)
You're viewing it from a sympathetic light from the start. While one might argue that domain names are property, the seizure of an access point to an online service means that the seizure can effectively act as an injunction against a business.
Moreover, this is publicly-visible "property". It's like going to your house and turning it into a strip club and putting up a sign saying "We employ minors" (regardless of whether you are a strip club or employ minors). Sure, your house still exists, but the address that it used to be at now showcases something that can damage your reputation irreparably.
So while you might consider the actions legal using an interpretation favorable to law enforcement, if you view it from a different lens of "A harmless business owner's livelihood was suspended without warning by ICE and his reputation untruthfully damaged by said action", then it's clear that some level of legal protection (whether it already exists as a part of due process or not) is missing and that ICE was criminally negligent in its handling of the situation. Of course, this is a favorable viewpoint on the other end of the spectrum, as not everyone whose domain was seized is necessarily a business owner or a highly-trafficked site. However, it is a viewpoint that assumes innocence, rather than guilt, before proven otherwise.
I'm confused. I spent 3 of the last 4 paragraphs talking about the potentially life-changing consequences for all those website owners whose domains were mistakenly tagged with child porn warnings, and why I expected it to result in a big class action lawsuit, and how irresponsible and unacceptable it was for ICE to make such a mistake. Did you just not read that part? I know I'm long-winded, but you're basically agreeing with 95% of what I wrote.
Where we differ is that I'm saying the seizure warrant and the legal procedure before and after are OK. Most of the time they work as intended. The court didn't issue a warrant for the shutdown of 84,000 subdomains due to laziness or ignorance on the part of law enforcement or the judge. They issued a warrant for 8 or 10 specific domains, and when it was executed someone accidentally ran the same process on mooo.com, which was never included in the warrant to begin with (unless I am very badly mistaken, in which case I'll eat humble pie when that comes to light).
The website owners whose reputations and blood pressure were put at such grave risk have a claim on ICE for the needless trouble they were caused. Which will get resolved in a court. I appreciate that you would like to see someone prosecuted for criminal negligence, but that usually happens only in cases involving immediate loss of life.
>the government will never turn to a giant powergrab overnight.
They've learn through history and the wisdom of the public relations industry: consolidate power gradually and using numerous pretexts. I'd guess the power consolidation has an end vision in mind: one doesn't spend the kind of effort they've spent without a goal.
one doesn't spend the kind of effort they've spent without a goal.
Never credit to malice what can be explained by incompetence.
I personally believe that pretty much all democratic governments are slipping towards fascism, not because any one or any group has that as a far vision, but because all have short term goals which create the emergent long term effect of a slow slide towards fascism.
Ever bigger law enforcement in the name of "Save the Children" is a prime example. I really do think the motivation here is primarily to help, not drive America towards fascism. The secondary effect is just not something the prime movers want to bother their minds with.
That is just what the evil, power-mongering scumbags want you to think. Just because it is (probably) true most of the time does NOT mean it is always true.
Sure can't wait for "net neutrality." What could possibly go wrong in having politicians determine what fair traffic is rather than letting sysadmins manage the bandwidth on their privately-owned networks as they wish?
From my understanding, there are no 'banned books' in the US, but rather ones that are blacklisted by library, teaching and bookstore groups making them difficult to come by. I'm personally unaware of any book that the US Government has banned, although I'm always willing to be wrong :)
I'm pretty sure that the book was sent to the relevant government people to be vetted, before it was published. The first time around, someone in the government must have missed the details.
The second time around, I'm sure they combed through it and pointed out the things that they would prefer the author left out. After that, the modified book probably got the green light.
I don't see why you would want to be an ass and just republish the book again without talking to the people.
Since when does the government need to approve books for publication? You want to "be an ass" because as the author, you want those details out, and as the publisher, you know those details are what will sell the book.
Depending on what kind of security clearance you have/had, you sign some long-term (ie: for life) NDAs and other paperwork that gives the government right of refusal to allow you to publish (in any fashion) any work. Including things like your resume.
It's not something normal, regular, average citizens deal with, but for those who are trusted with highly sensitive knowledge, it's par for course.
The book Bridge to Terabithia (of which a 2007 film was adapted) was at number 8 on the ALA's list of frequently challenged books because:
"The censorship attempts stem from death being a part of the plot; Jess' frequent use of the word "lord" outside of prayer; concerns that the book promotes secular humanism, New Age religion, occultism, and Satanism; and for use of offensive language."
Maybe it's better we don't have a similar process.
Fair point, but the merits of the book banning system: are that it appears to be relatively difficult to implement or enforce, and that it's restricted to localities instead of a whole country.
The only way to have a publication legally banned in the United States is to have it declared legally obscene. Obscenity is a local consideration and it's practically impossible to get something banned universally. The only way publications are kept out are complaints to vendors and/or the willful adoption of mandatory rating systems, which generally have a rating that is equivalent to a commercial blackout (see "AO" from the ESRB or "NC-17" from MPAA; material so rated is not generally available because most "respectable" vendors refuse to stock it).
Because banning books invokes Fahrenheit 451 and 1984, but banning websites doesn't. In short, because they think they can get away with it for websites.
Presumably those "books" with child pornography in them aren't allowed to be sold in the States. As someone who doesn't live there, I'm curious: how is that enforced?
As long as they're only describing the act in text it's legal. If there are photos, it's obviously right out. If there are illustrations, then the courts haven't definitely settled the question last I heard.
Not necessarily. Remember that pedophilia book that got Amazon some flack? A rogue sheriff in Florida had one of his deputies buy the hard copy and then arrest the writer for "distribution of obscene material depicting minors engaged in harmful conduct". Horrible precedent for several reasons.
True, but that case has yet to be settled. Either way as far as I know the US government has made no move to ban the book, and even if they do get a conviction it will be under local laws and not federal laws.
So altogether, the procedure for banning books and banning websites is similar - in the sense that both approaches use "obscure clauses" and twist the meaning of free speech and due-process to suit their goals while covering up their effect.
The one good thing is that free speech still has popular support here.
I don't really understand how come, in the lawsuit-happy US, there isn't a class action lawsuit in place already to sue the government for the damage caused by this sort of error.
That bill was passed after the b-25 crash on the empire state building in 1945 to allow for exceptions to soverign immunity in only very specific and sometimes hard to define cases. In 1947 there was the texas city disaster where 581 people died. The largest industrial accident in us history. Under the FTCA legislation the case was taken all the way to the supreme court where they ruled the government wasn't liable for claims of damages.
Pretty sure that's why they added the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
(Not saying you should go shoot up the government whenever you have a minor disagreement, but the only reason why guns are legal at all these days is because the Framers thought that this would help keep the government honest. Not sure that this actually works in real life though.)
If you're fuzzy on this allow me to provide clarification. A truckload of assault weapons, bunker full of food and a couple of dozen like-minded compatriots are a hand-written invitation to get raided by the Feds. It's not possible for a citizen or group of citizens to arm themselves sufficiently to provide any kind of real check on the government.
While there are more important things in life (like being accused wrongly of child pornography), I wonder how that effects their Google rankings to suddenly have your entire domain ripped out from underneath you and pointing to a duplicate content site.
Is there any recourse for this action? Seems that this would trigger unreasonable search and seizure.
While there are more important things in life (like being accused wrongly of child pornography), I wonder how that effects their Google rankings to suddenly have your entire domain ripped out from underneath you and pointing to a duplicate content site.
My educated guess based on experience working with people affected by dissimilar causes but similar appearance to Google: a massive hit to rankings/traffic within about 48 hours, and recovery to a fraction of normal several weeks later.
I doubt that one can easily convince a judge that loss of Google rankings is a cognizable harm under tort law, but given that an agency of the US government just called you a child pornographer on your own property, if there isn't a sovereign immunity defense you will hardly need to justify what a high ranking on Google is worth to receive damages.
The problem seems to be (for lack of better information) that sites are shut down pre-emptively with no warning.
I'm all for prosecuting child pornographers, and shutting down their content as quickly as possible - but that should be possible by a court order against the hosting provider.... or if said provider is unreachable / out of jurisdiction, and has STILL had some reasonable attempt at contact to press charges, then sure, go after the domain - but there needs to be some due process behind things rather than just having the federal authorities and DNS layer just whomping things down with little to no oversight.
Well that's just the thing - if someone is unambiguously a child pornographer - throw their ass in jail!
WTF are they doing screwing around with DNS registrations in cases where they know that is taking place?
It sure seems to me like some adversarial government entity simply found a knob they can turn to screw with people when they don't actually have the standard of evidence required for a prosecution.
I doubt that one can easily convince a judge that loss of Google rankings is a cognizable harm under tort law
Considering how many sites have analytics these days, being able to show a strong correlation between a big blow to your traffic and a decline in revenue would (I think, IANAL) be very good evidence. Instead of asking the judge to imagine the possible ramifications, you'd be presenting solid data whose admissibility the judge could make a quick decision about.
I don't know the entire process well, but wouldn't that be something that you'd presumably file in Federal District court and start there? Once/if it hits the Supreme Court, I don't think the government could really ignore it could they?
As an example, let's look at the warrantless wiretapping that AT&T did on the behest of the NSA[0]. The EFF filed two cases in response that claimed it was a blatant violation of the 4th amendment: Jewel v. NSA[1] & Hepting v. AT&T[2], against the government & AT&T, respectively.
Here's the latest news on Jewel v. NSA:
> In April, the Obama administration moved to dismiss Jewel, claiming that litigation over the wiretapping program would require the government to disclose privileged "state secrets,” and that they were immune from suit.
According to the documents on the EFF site, they appealed the ruling, but there hasn't been anything posted about the results of that.
How about the case against AT&T?
> In June of 2009, a federal judge dismissed Hepting and dozens of other lawsuits against telecoms, ruling that the companies had immunity from liability under the controversial FISA Amendments Act (FISAAA), which was enacted in response to our court victories in Hepting. Signed by President Bush in 2008, the FISAAA allows the Attorney General to require the dismissal of the lawsuits over the telecoms' participation in the warrantless surveillance program if the government secretly certifies to the court that the surveillance did not occur, was legal, or was authorized by the president -- certification that was filed in September of 2008. EFF is planning to appeal the decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, primarily arguing that FISAAA is unconstitutional in granting to the president broad discretion to block the courts from considering the core constitutional privacy claims of millions of Americans.
>> In April, the Obama administration moved to dismiss Jewel, claiming that litigation over the wiretapping program would require the government to disclose privileged "state secrets,” and that they were immune from suit.
Hardly surprising, since he voted to immunize them while in the Senate.
I see how they could evoke state secrets for wiretapping and such, but there's no secret here except that they screwed up and seized something they shouldn't have. I don't know how this specifically would be as easy to dismiss, but lawyers and the government always can find new tricks I'm sure.
EDIT: Sorry, meant to reply to w1ntermute, not tibbon.
The so-called "Constitution-Free Zone": the Constitution allows for warrantless searches at borders for the purposes of customs enforcement. But our government has conveniently decided that the "border" is now defined as any land within 100 miles of a physical border.
Guess what? 2/3 of the American population lives within that definition of a border. Guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure died long ago.
This is clearly an example unreasonable seizure, and it seems the DHS exists solely to perform unreasonable searches.
This trend towards outright censorship is a worrying one. While I can't speak to the content of any of the sites in this round of censorship/seizure, the DHS certainly seems to be acting outside their mandate.
As a supporter (and someone who voted for) Obama, I'm frustrated by his lack of comment/participation on this subject. There's no way he can think this is constitutional.
Considering he chose Joe Biden as his vice president, you shouldn't be too shocked. I still think he was a better choice than McCain, but his reputation in these situations isn't why.
Yes, there is recourse. IANAL, but as far as my understanding goes, the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances includes the right to sue the government, or at least to file a suit against the government in court.
Basically, the government is immune from lawsuit unless it chooses to allow you to sue it. And this is the presupposition, so they don't need to justify it.
You've got only two defenses against this: (1) The right to vote; and (2) the right to keep and bear arms.
Yes, I'm aware of sovereign immunity, but the government has waived it for certain circumstances through the Federal Tort Claims Act. Since I'm not a lawyer, I'm nowhere near qualified to say whether or not this would be included in that exception, but it seems plausible to me that it might be. The act of the government seems to be non-intentional (I can't read the article due to a corp firewall, but it says "By Mistake" in the title) and it was committed by a person acting on behalf of the USG.
Unreasonable search and seizure doesn't exist, take for example the patriot act which was just extended. The constitution and bill of rights is what they teach little kids, no one takes that junk seriously.
Wow, it's not just that they shut them down, but the US government put a big label on all the sites for all the users to see which basically says it was a child porn site, even though it wasn't, it was all some sort of error and most of the sites were small business sites doing normal ordinary things.
Their customers are going to assume that the government would have done some sort of investigation, got a warrant, there was a trial, etc, so they will believe that the claims are true. Some people might be angry enough that they track down the owners of the site or business and kill them.
What has happened is criminally negligent and outrageously dangerous. But the out of control government is not responsible for any of its actions, therefore these abuses will not only continue, but get worse.
<html>
<head>
<title>This domain name has been seized by ICE - Homeland Security Investigations</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div align="center">
<img src="IPRC_Seized_2010_11.gif" width="1024" height="768" border="0">
</div>
</body>
</html>
As you can see, this page being run by the DHS has no compliance with
Section 508 and is completely inaccessible to citizens and users with
disabilities. I find the lack of accessibility by a government office
to be highly disturbing and hope that you can direct me in such a way
that will help resolve this situation.
This is email is being sent to the DHS and U.S. General Services
Administration Office of Governmentwide Policy, IT Accessibility &
Workforce Division in hopes that both agencies can work together to
create an alternate site that is in compliance with the law.
You never know what is going to get through to these people. Three disabled people with canes and wheelchairs on the steps of a building in Washington DC may mean more in the media than 80000 people who are able to host their own websites.
"Interesting point.
No Section 508 compliance.
5th amendment violation - taking property without due process
Libel - falsely accusing a domain name owner of peddling kiddie porn
Any others I am missing?"
I worked as a subcontractor for a vendor servicing ICE back when it was INS. Nobody that I knew was very impressed with the quality of service that INS was providing, either internally or externally. Changing their name to make them sound better and then putting them in charge of something like this is just, well, very sad. (I don't mean to disparage an entire agency. All I have is my personal experience)
Having dealt with the INS and then the Dept of Homeland Security. The changes were for the worse. I get that they wanted to integrate all the agencies now making up the DoHS for better information sharing but there is a point when departments get so big that it just doesn't function anymore. They should have kept them smaller to remove the bureaucratic cruft.
So does this render DNSSEC effectively moot? It's not much good for authentication if the government can change the authoritative name servers for any .com/.org/.net domain and then sign that change.
But perhaps I don't understand how DNSSEC works. It seems unlikely that its designers would ignore that concern.
Edit: Or were they only concerned cache poisoning? There's been much talk of using DNSSEC to authenticate websites and even people. If I'm understanding DNSSEC correctly, it seems terribly misguided, even worse than the idea of "government key escrow".
My understanding is that DNSSEC neither helps nor hurts in this scenario. It mainly enforces the accuracy of the registration database, which in this case is being modified at the request of DHS.
Am I right in assuming that even if a domain name is seized, the IP address will still work? If this is true, couldn't there just be a hosted index of all IP's and their associated domain names so that people could get to these sites by referencing this information? Hell, it could even be a browser plugin, so that if you type the domain name in and it happens to have been seized, it will be redirected to the proper IP address. Is this feasible?
Many (most?) web server configurations require a 'Host' header specifying the domain to be accessed (which allows multiple domains to be hosted on a single IP).
So in a lot of cases just typing the IP into your browser won't be enough, but thats pretty easy to work around. The greater difficulty is ascertaining where a domain should point to once it has been seized. One solution is to grab the old records from a DNS cache, but then there is no way to update them should the IP ever change.
DNS is really just a huge peer-to-peer network with a few central nodes, so this shouldn't be too difficult. You can already use an alternate primary nameserver, such as Google's 8.8.8.8. You'd just need your alternate nameserver to maintain a different cache than all of the other servers.
"Even at the time of writing people can still replicate the effect by adding “74.81.170.110 mooo.com” to their hosts file as the authorities have not dropped the domain pointer yet"
What's a "domain pointer"? That IP address serves up a seizure notice no matter what hostname you request it with.
Yes they have wildcards set up, but the server displays a copyright warning on random names you try. The server displays a child porn warning when you add mooo.com.
This is one of the reasons I host my DNS outside of the US. Hopefully there would be a few more hurdles to jump over before a mistake like this could happen.
But it wasn't the DNS providers for those domains, was it? I'm pretty sure they got it changed on the master .com dns. So unless you mean you avoid all the US top level domains, you are still vulnerable.
Back when the government didn't know about the internet it was very nice. Then a bunch of folks decided this could be a great new method for selling stuff, distributing porn, etc, and now you see where we are.
I know of people and groups who are talking about it, the kind of folks who actually do stuff.
The problem is that the single point of failure in this system is the registrar operating in some legal jurisdictions. Registrars do provide a useful service some large percentage of the time.
I have said this before I will have to say this again until we can get a good answer:
What the fuck is the government waisting time doing this crap when they have a war on terror to fight? Concentrate on what is necessary for the war effort, dammit.
The solution to terror is not war, but understanding and working towards a future where all mankind can live peaceful and happily. Not exploiting each other and respecting each other's believes and religion.
Of course war is not a solution to terror! Everyone knows that.
The "war on terror" is a convenient windmill to keep tilting against. It'll keep this country in a perpetual state of war; making it easier to deny the individuals' rights (while the rich folks get tax breaks, the corporations get more powers).
Why doesn't anyone (democrats, repubs) bring up 'war on terror' when the taxes are being discussed? Because they know that that is not the desired goal of this so-called 'war'; it is to make it easier to govern, and keep the citizens down.
This is what you get for voting R or D, people. STOP voting along party lines.
