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U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’

torrentfreak.com

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Re: U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’

#111

Post by Bossman »

jdp23 wrote: post #35
yardie wrote: post #8

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 ?

or the PATRIOT Act ...

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.

Re: U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’

#112

Post by aharrison »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #29
jimmyk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can file suits until the cows come home. It doesn't matter because of "sovereign immunity" (see http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Sovereign+Immu... ). 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…

Soap, ballot, jury, ammo.

Use your boxes, and please please please use them in that order.

Re: U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’

#113

Post by acabal »

tibbon wrote: post #4
w1ntermute wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems that this would trigger unreasonable search and seizure. Oh, I think that boundary was crossed a long time ago. It's more a problem of the US government not giving two fucks about its own Constitution.

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?

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.

http://www.aclu.org/national-security_technology-and-liberty...

Re: U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’

#114

Post by Bossman »

dedward wrote: post #49
patio11 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abo…

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…

> The problem seems to be (for lack of better information) that sites are shut down pre-emptively with no warning.

Well, you can thank the Patriot Act for that. It allows them to go after people without telling them until it happens.

Re: U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’

#115

Post by jusfacts »

blakeweb wrote: post #44
swombat wrote: post #31

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.

My first thought when I saw this was that it wasn't possible to bring civil claims against the federal government. But looking it up, I found the Federal Tort Claims Act ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTCA ) which changed that in 1946.

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.

Re: U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’

#116

Post by AlexTahan »

eli wrote: post #43

"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.

74.81.170.110 reallyfakehostname111.com 74.81.170.110 mooo.com

See the difference?

Re: U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’

#117

Post by jusfacts »

chopsueyar wrote: post #60
danohuiginn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which, incidentally, goes against every accessibility law in the book.

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?

"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?"

Are we going to se Anonymous v. ICE? j/k

Re: U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’

#118

Post by SmokenJoe »

anigbrowl wrote: post #109
GrandMasterBirt wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, an…

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.…

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.

Re: U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’

#119

Post by jhancock »

GrandMasterBirt wrote: post #56
yardie wrote: post #8

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 ?

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, an…

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.

Re: U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’

#120

Post by michael_dorfman »

tibbon wrote: post #20
joeybaker wrote: post #14

I can think of two questions I'd love to see a journalist track down: 1. What's the legal process for banning a book? 2. If it's not equally as hard (or harder) for the government to take down a website, why?

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 personally unaware of any book that the US Government has banned, although I'm always willing to be wrong

One of Wilhelm Reich's books was banned by the FDA in 1956. (Man, is that a strange story....)

But in the general case, your point holds.

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