US Gov't Mistakenly Shuts Down 84,000 Sites 296
Chaonici writes "Last Friday, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seized ten websites accused of selling counterfeit goods or trafficking in child pornography. However, in the process, about 84,000 unrelated websites were taken offline when the government mistakenly seized the domain of a large DNS provider, FreeDNS. By now, the mistake has been corrected and most of the websites' domains again point to the sites themselves, rather than an intimidating domain seizure image. In a press release, the DHS praised themselves for taking down those ten websites, but completely failed to acknowledge their massive blunder."
Welcome to the USA (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Welcome to the USA (Score:3, Insightful)
My favourite oxymoron is "American freedom".
Why ICE/Homeland Security (Score:5, Insightful)
Can someone remind me again why this falls under the jurisdiction of ICE/Homeland Security?
Are child pornographers planning on invading the US or something?
Yet another eason (Score:4, Insightful)
tog et rid of DHS. It's a stupid extra layer of management put there by someone who thinks problems are fixed with more management.
defund them, give the funds to the agencies them selves.
DHS has done nothing but blunder everything it touches.
With every agency I an think of, I can list a HUGE number of success to a very tiny number of failures, but not DHS.
Twads.
Gov't Blunder News Spreads Like Wild Fire (Score:4, Insightful)
... so come out with it immediately, fess up, apologize, and make a vocal effort to prevent such an error from being made in the future... AND THEN brag about your success.
Always admit your failures and shortcomings first that way it doesn't look like you're hiding them. This is A+, #1 advice for PR in the digital world.
and it's free!
Re:Welcome to the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Redirect? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This raises an interesting question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let's just forget (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Welcome to the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if they actually read and understand it, then weigh the competing interests carefully. Rubber stamping any old thing shoved under their nose doesn't cut it.
If a judge actually signed off on the 84,000 sites being grabbed, then he failed due process. If that's NOT what the warrent said then it's the FBI's failure. Either way, the domain holders WERE denied due process.
Naturally, whoever it is, I'll bet we can expect that sincere public apology to each and every individual domain holder and any of their visitors who were caused undue concern as well as a hefty settlement for the really serious libel any day now :-)
WHOAH Nelly (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't that the FBI's jurisdiction? I was working under some sort of obviously fucked up thinking that DHS was protecting us from, oh I don't know,
If any DHS personel happens to be reading this, please pass this on to the people running your little knitting bee: Hey DHS, you fucking nazi retards....FOCUS ON THE GUYS WITH THE ASSAULT RIFLES WHO WANT TO BUY DIRTY BOMBS.
Re:Welcome to the USA (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. If I were among these 84,000 site owners, I would be talking to a lawyer about a very large libel suit.
The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should at least now make clear that all those sites were unrelated to that kind of activity. A very simple way of doing this that costs next to nothing is by publishing a list of those 84,000 domains at their own site saying they had nothing to do with it. That way, site owners could link to that page and clear their reputation.
Re:WHOAH Nelly (Score:5, Insightful)
PROTIP: If you want to be safe from terrorists, the DHS can't help you. Not unless its mandate is immediately changed to "removing troops from hostile soil and ending all military and trade-based international extortion schemes".
But that would be unamerican, right ? God forbid your government would let people be.
Re:Welcome to the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone's JOB is to investigate things on the Internet.... If they have a months-long SPECIAL TASK FORCE to SPECIFICALLY exert extraordinary control over the DNS ROOT SYSTEM.
Did you seriously just claim "it is too much to expect" for them to understand the system they are directly targeting with international scrutiny aimed at them?
Srsly?
We're fucked!
Re:Welcome to the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
For the judge, making sure he's not about to tar 84,000 innocents with the kiddie porn brush is all part of due process. That's why they get the big bucks and respect. If he can't handle that, perhaps he should go get an easier job.
Same deal for the investigators. They're supposed to be experts and supposedly did enough investigation to be quite sure of what they saw and who was responsible. It's their JOB to make sure and to know how the net works. Surely they should have investigated these issues. There's always walking a beat if investigation isn't their cup of tea.
They have just made perhaps the most inflammatory possible accusation against 84 THOUSAND people because of their carelessness. People get killed over accusations like this.
Note here that they didn't HAVE to put the accusation on that page. They could have just put "under construction" (innocent until proven guilty!) but they couldn't resist crowing about it.
Re:Welcome to the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Out of curiosity, is there a penalty for lying on a warrant? If there is, how does they get away with it? If not, why not?
The EFF recently found massive abuse of the system by the FBI, but it's not exactly new news. The ATF lied about the Branch Davidians (saying they were drug runners) in order to get all that nifty heavy military equipment you saw at Waco, but they were never held accountable for their lie.
Something like this, where the government can so casually shut down free speech sites by the thousands... really concerns me. If they can just allege something on a warrant and shut down the internet, our society is less free in this regard than Egypt. They got internet access back after 5 days. Waiting for a lawsuit to resolve itself in America takes... longer.
And delays on internet sites or computer equipment is like dog years, except more so.
When a friend's 486 got seized by the FBI (not for something he did, but for information on it), he got it back in the Pentium 2 days. Great, thanks. A delay that long is the equivalent of destruction of property.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:presume victimhood (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that assumption should be made for every accusation. Everybody should be considered innocent until *proven* guilty. Failing to do so gets us to the actual situation where even the suggestion that someone is related to any of that shit can ruin his life.
Re:Welcome to the USA (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the freedom of the American government to do whatever their citizens don't want them to do.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)