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70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement

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Re: 70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement

#11

Post by MadWombat »

Well, there is a link to a thread on a webhostingtalk.com, where some people are discussing the issue. After reading the original posting by the blog service provider and some of the replies, here are some basic lessons to be learned from this.

1. A lot of people have no clue as to the legal process

2. It pays REALLY well to have external backups

3. It might be a good idea to use encrypted volumes to store sensitive data, so if authorities are involved, they have to serve you with papers to get your decryption keys. This way you stay more informed.

4. Your hosting provider probably has a clause in their ToS that more or less says "we can terminate your service whenever, the hell, we want and there is nothing you can do about it". Deal with it.

5. This story still sucks.

6. Seems like this guy was simply small enough to just serve a court order and shut down his service. I don't think anyone would shutdown Google for questionable content on a blogger account or google web pages.

7. I am pretty sure, that there is no legal way for a law enforcement agency to remain anonymous while doing something like this. Either I am wrong about it or something is amiss.

Re: 70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement

#12

Post by kwamenum86 »

From BurstNET:

"We cannot give him his data nor can we provide any other details"

I guess this is one of the dangers of hosting a user-generated content site- law enforcement may confiscate your server. This seems highly unusual even for something like child pornography. Usually they ask (politely then forcefully) the server owner for cooperation. It's possible that the owner of Blogerty is a suspect.

Re: 70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement

#13

Post by blantonl »

ndimopoulos wrote: post #7

I am thinking that the subject might be child pornography, espionage or cyber terrorism. Should some of those blogs had some sort of method of communicating information with terrorists I do not see why the NSA would not shut the whole thing down. I hate to be in the shoes of those 70000 people but from the article and evidence available right now this is a really serious matter.

The NSA doesn't have legal authority to do anything as you have indicated. Legal authority to bring down these sites were almost certainly done through the FBI, via a National security letter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Letter

Re: 70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement

#14

Post by adamc »

MadWombat wrote: post #11

Well, there is a link to a thread on a webhostingtalk.com, where some people are discussing the issue. After reading the original posting by the blog service provider and some of the replies, here are some basic lessons to be learned from this. 1. A lot of people have no clue as to the legal process 2. It pays REALLY well to have external backups 3. It might be a good idea to use encrypted volumes to store sensitive…

Your hosting provider probably does have such a clause, but after exercising it they should expect to go out of business.

Re: 70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement

#15

Post by jacquesm »

A blogging service works on a per-account basis, for them to shut down the whole server instead of just taking down the offending account(s) seems to be pretty excessive, no matter what those accounts have 'done'.

There is some chance they found themselves the unwitting participant in a child pornography distribution network, and that they don't know which accounts are 'the ones', and they've taken everything off-line until they've verified which accounts are bad and which are good.

Re: 70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement

#16

Post by MadWombat »

adamc wrote: post #14
MadWombat wrote: post #11

Well, there is a link to a thread on a webhostingtalk.com, where some people are discussing the issue. After reading the original posting by the blog service provider and some of the replies, here are some basic lessons to be learned from this. 1. A lot of people have no clue as to the legal process 2. It pays REALLY well to have external backups 3. It might be a good idea to use encrypted volumes to store sensitive…

Your hosting provider probably does have such a clause, but after exercising it they should expect to go out of business.

Not if they only do it to a small percentage of clients and within common sense. Generally the clause is there, so that they have a legal ground to shut you down without waiting for legal process to catch up (i.e. if legal authorities ask them without providing a warrant, if they get complaints about some questionable content etc.)

Re: 70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement

#17

Post by fmora »

DavidSJ wrote: post #10
joshwa wrote: post #6

If the hosting company says that they can't name the agency and can't say anything about the nature of the claim, that immediately makes me think of a National Security Letter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter "[A National Security Letter] is a demand letter issued to a particular entity or organization to turn over various record and data pertaining to individuals. They require no probable cause…

derwiki replied to this comment by saying: "The gag order was ruled unconstitutional as an infringement of free speech, in the Doe v. Ashcroft case." (same article) For some reason, his reply is dead, but it seems like a valuable comment so I'm reproducing it.

Thank god for the separation of powers. It is incredible how many rights the Bush presidency attempted to take away from its citizens all in the name of national security. The more I read stuff like this the more it seems that we were heading to a totalitarian government.

Edit: In case anybody wonders why I threw in Bush's name in there is because the Patriot Act, created during his presidency, greatly extended the NSL powers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Letter

Re: 70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement

#18

Post by DanBlake »

I am skeptical - The host, https://www.burst.net/ Looks like a template monster design with a reseller system, no traffic rank and a nearly empty forum- From a outsider looking in, it looks like a host that is barely in business and likely ran by one guy from his apartment.

Maybe they are over-exaggerating for press? Maybe the server crashed, and they dont want the bad press so did a bogus excuse? Stranger things have happened. But I highly doubt this has even remotely anything to do with "operation in your sites" and is likely related to some issue at burstnet. I wouldnt be surprised if law enforcement isnt even involved.

Re: 70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement

#19

Post by fmora »

fmora wrote: post #17
DavidSJ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

derwiki replied to this comment by saying: "The gag order was ruled unconstitutional as an infringement of free speech, in the Doe v. Ashcroft case." (same article) For some reason, his reply is dead, but it seems like a valuable comment so I'm reproducing it.

Thank god for the separation of powers. It is incredible how many rights the Bush presidency attempted to take away from its citizens all in the name of national security. The more I read stuff like this the more it seems that we were heading to a totalitarian government. Edit: In case anybody wonders why I threw in Bush's name in there is because the Patriot Act, created during his presidency, greatly extended the N…

If you are going to down vote me at least explain why.

Re: 70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement

#20

Post by datawalke »

BurstNET is located very close to where I am. About a year and a half ago I toured their facilities for a colocation project. Upon walking in I was horrified. They rows of tower based servers with their cases ripped off on the wire-frame racks you would find in a home improvement store. After seeing that and hearing they lacked any fire suppression system I respectfully walked away from their bid.
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