FTC Shuts Down Calif. ISP For Botnets, Child Porn 224
An anonymous reader writes "The Federal Trade Commission has convinced a federal judge to pull the plug on a 3FN.net, a.k.a. 'Pricewert LLC,' a Northern California based hosting provider. The FTC alleges that 3FN/Pricewert was directly involved in setting up spam-spewing botnets, among other illegal activities, the Washington Post's Security Fix Blog writes. From the story: 'Pricewert hosts very little legitimate content and vast quantities of illegal, malicious, and harmful content, including child pornography, botnet command and control servers, spyware, viruses, trojans, phishing related sites, illegal online pharmacies, investment and other Web-based scams, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest.' The story quotes a former Justice Dept. expert saying the FTC action may be a smoke screen for a larger criminal investigation by the federal government in 3FN's activities."
Re:OT: Which browser is slashdot supposed to work (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OT: Which browser is slashdot supposed to work (Score:2, Informative)
Turn off the new crap. Then it works.
I forget how I did that, though. Classic Index in Preferences?
Turn off Beta! (Score:3, Informative)
Turn off the damn stupid "beta" index.
I wish they'd just frozen the interface about three years ago, but at least you CAN disable most of the gratuitous Javascript crap.
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Informative)
"What does the Federal Trade Commission have to do with..."
From the article, they were dealing with (among other things):
"illegal online pharmacies, investment and other Web-based scams"
and:
"the FTC's authority gives it the power to shut down companies that appear to be engaged in unfair and deceptive practices"
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:4, Informative)
but it comes as no surprise to me that a seemingly unrelated government agency is going after these guys.
The FTC has the authoring to go after people running "illegal online pharmacies, investment and other Web-based scams". That's part of their mission.
Re:"including child pornography..." (Score:4, Informative)
Now if we were talking about a hosting company. That might be a different thing.
And they are. Did you even read the summary at all?
'Pricewert LLC,' a Northern California based hosting provider.
Re:Only diff this will make is in some DA's resume (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Informative)
It's got to be a joke, there are plenty of sections of the law that make ISP's not liable for such things.
Sure if they were unaware of the activity, but that is not the alleged case here. In this case the company gone after is alleged to be directly involved in the illegal activity.
Alex Kozinski (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Informative)
They overstepped their bounds in regulating companies here in that they shut down an ISP.
They didn't shut down an ISP. They shut down a hosting company of these websites that is alleged to be directly involved in helping set up these illegal operations.
'Pricewert LLC,' a Northern California based hosting provider.
An ISP that was NOT behaving irresponsibly to its customers.
Sure, only if they aren't directly involved in helping to setup the illegal activity which is what is alleged in this case. Did you even read the summary?
The fact that their customer's customers were involved in criminal activities is NOT their problem beyond complying with legal orders.
Of course it's not. It becomes their problem because it's alleged that "3FN/Pricewert was directly involved in setting up spam-spewing botnets, among other illegal activities". Do you happen to see a difference?
They are NOT responsible.
If they were directly involved as it is alleged they are responsible.
Certainly you could go after the programmer here-but that would require evidence in a court of law with proper jurisdiction. Shutting down the entire ISP goes way beyond the authority of the FTC.
Again, they didn't shut down an ISP. They shut down a hosting company that was directly involved in helping to set up a whole host of illegal operations including illegal pharmacies and investment scams (which would fall under the FTC's regulating authority).
The Federal Trade Commission and You (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, that's a shame, maybe next time we should hand this matter over to the USAF or at least the FBI. You know, someone capable of exterminating or prosecuting the 'rats'?
Federal Trade Commission [Home] [ftc.gov]
A Brief Overiview of the Federal Trade Commission's [ftc.gov]
Investigative and Law Enforcement Authority (1) [1995]
Statutes Enforced or Administered by the Commission [ftc.gov] [Home]
"AN ACT To enhance Federal Trade Commission enforcement against illegal spam, spyware, and cross-border fraud and deception, and for other purposes."
U.S. SAFE WEB Act of 2006 [loc.gov] [Final - Full Text]
It's about gathering evidence. (Score:3, Informative)
As a regulator, things are a little different. This guy has a license to operate and you are authorized to walk in and search his stuff just to see if he is complying with the terms of his license. If he isn't (virtually all licenses forbid criminal activity), you can just shut him down. In doing all of this you get to rifle throgh his files, interrogate his staff etc... Enough to gather the kind of evidence you can then pass on to the FBI or the local sheriff to say "Hey don't you have a cell reserved for people like this?"
This is just an extension of an old strategy. Just review the case of Al Capone if you are in doubt.
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Informative)
Well, the answer to that is found in the FTC's Memorandum of Points and Authorities in this case (available, here [ftc.gov], along with other related documents):
Plaintiff, FTC, is an independent agency of the United States government created by the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 41-58 (2006). The FTC is charged with, among other things, enforcement of Section 5(a) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 45(a), which prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce. The FTC is authorized to initiate federal district court proceedings, by its own attorneys, to enjoin violations of the FTC Act, and to secure such equitable relief as may be appropriate in each case, including restitution and disgorgement. 15 U.S.C. 53(b) (2006).
If the conduct charged wasn't against the law (which is all that "illegal" means), neither the FTC nor any other government agency could bring a case to stop it. You may be mistakenly using "illegal" to mean "criminal" (which some of the conduct alleged would also be), in which case I will note that an act can be simultaneously a violation of civil and criminal provisions of the law, and move on to...
Again, from the FTC's Memorandum of Points and Authorities:
It is the Commission's understanding that a parallel criminal investigation of the Defendant is underway. Although the Commission is not privy to the details of that investigation, the Commission is informed that a search warrant will be executed at the Defendant's data center on or about Wednesday, June 3, 2009. The Commission respectfully requests that this Court rule on the Commission's Ex Parte Motion for Temporary Restraining Order prior to June 3, 2009, so that - if the Commission's Motion is granted - service of the TRO can be effected at the same time the search warrant is executed.
Re:Hand It Over to Someone More Capable (Score:5, Informative)
There are safe harbor provisions that protect ISPs from liability for some of those things when the acts are committed by the ISPs users (not the ISP itself), and the ISP complies with certain other rules (including, as a general rule, taking effective action when they become aware of -- on their own or by notification -- the violation being perpetrated via their network.)
But this isn't about things Pricewert's users were doing without the knowledge of the ISP; from the complaint which resulted in the order here:
14. Pricewert is fully aware that it is hosting huge volumes of illegal, malicious, and harmful content. Moreover, Pricewert actively shields its criminal clientele by either ignoring take-down requests issued by the online security community or shifting its criminal clients to other Internet Protocol addresses controlled by Pricewert so that they may evade detection.
15. In addition to hosting illegal, malicious, and harmful content, Pricewert actively colludes with its criminal clientele in several areas, including the maintenance and deployment of bot nets.
.
.
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22. Pricewert's involvement in botnet activity is detailed in several Internet ICQ chat logs obtained by the FTC. In these logs, Pricewert's senior staff, including its Head of Programming, are observed directly participating in the creation and configuration of a botnet.
23. In one of the chats obtained by the FTC, Pricewert's Head of Programming is engaged in a conversation with a customer regarding the number of compromised computers the customer controls. The customer informs Pricewert that he controls 200,000 bots and needs assistance configuring the botnet. The head of Pricewert's Programming Department agrees to assist, but complains upon learning of the size of the botnet that it will require a lot of work.
24. In a second chat, a Senior Project Manager for Pricewert is told by a customer
that the customer controls a massive and rapidly growing network ofbots. Pricewert's Sales Director reassures the customer that "[w]ell, we know how to manage it."
Re:Only diff this will make is in some DA's resume (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think so. Public phones were privately owned, so as long as they turned a profit, their owners wouldn't care too much what they were being used for.
The thing that killed public phones was the ubiquity of cellphones. Now, unlike 15 years ago, cellphones are cheap and everyone has them. It's simply no longer profitable to buy a public phone and pay for its service, when so few people are going to pop a quarter in one to use it.
Even drug dealers are probably happy about this, as they were a little obvious sitting around pay phones all day, and now they can just get a cheap prepaid cellphone and be completely anonymous and do their business from anywhere.