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)
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My favourite oxymoron is "American freedom".
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.
Re:Welcome to the USA (Score:5, Funny)
Where due process only exists for the highest bidder.
Now come on - it wasn't that bad. Let's see ... 10 out of 84,000 ... that's not quite as good as the average baseball player but just about on par with a weather reporter. All in all I'd say they had better accuracy than we thought they would (though we all hoped for a bit more).
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I don't know about you, but where I live the weather reporters are right more than once in 8,400 days... And I think my high school's sucky baseball team managed more than 10 wins in 84,000 tries... Maybe you need to move to somewhere better...?
There's a place better than New Jersey? Do you know what it's called? Do they have a brochure or a pamphlet or something?
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There's a place better than New Jersey? Do you know what it's called? Do they have a brochure or a pamphlet or something?
Just had a look on Google Maps - looks like your best bet would be Montreal [wikipedia.org]; and you can drive there [google.com] in a little under 8 hours.
Re:Welcome to the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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DHS should personally contact those 84,000 falsely accused and convicted site owners and offer them all the assistance they need in getting back their visitors.
Minimally this should include a choice of banners/texts/links these sites could display, linking to DHS site explaining the fuckup and making clear the linking site is not offending. If SSL certifications are needed to make this linking trustworthy, DHS should provide these free of charge to any sites victimised. They should provide such explaination
Re:Welcome to the USA (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Welcome to the USA (Score:5, Informative)
Quote:
"As with previous seizures, ICE convinced a District Court judge to sign a seizure warrant, and then contacted the domain registries to point the domains in question to a server that hosts the warning message. However, somewhere in this process a mistake was made and as a result the domain of a large DNS service provider was seized."
You may not like this, but a warrant signed by a judge *is* due process.
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Well, it's certainly process, but it's clearly not due
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:WHOAH Nelly (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a point last year when the total number of DHS warrented searches (you know, the ones where an actual judge goes through all those silly processes from the constitution), had been aimed at 6 actual suspected terrorists and over 5,000 suspected drug dealers since the program started. Homeland security was never about actually stopping terrorists, it's always been about how all the money we spend openly on the war against drugs isn't producing results, so lets covertly spend even more and see if that helps. Why do you think there's all those efforts to track money flow in the program, all the requirements to show current ID to take out a loan and such? . it's hard to actually catch terrorists by tracking any spending except possibly that aimed at actual bomb components, chemicals, and maybe biological support. No one is going to figure out a plot from tracking a terrorist renting a car or opening a regular checking account. But drug dealers need to do a LOT of money laundering. .
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.
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Yeah, no kidding! It was all of our troops on foreign soil that caused 9/11.
Those Al Qaeda blokes were really chuffed about our lads in Germany and South Korea.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Switzerland would survive without middle eastern oil. The US might not.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Child Pornography is the official jurisdiction of Customs Enforcement when it's interstate/international. So yes you are very wrong. It's never been "assigned" to the FBI. Obviously inside a state it's the jurisdiction of local law enforcement although Customs usually will provide assistance.
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DHS isn't really a stand-alone agency like FBI or CIA. It actually exists to cut through the redtape associated with interagency movement of intelligence and such.
and the FBI is one of the agencies wired into DHS that way.
Re:WHOAH Nelly (Score:4, Interesting)
Fun Fact!
Although the anthrax mailings were played up in the media as a possible example of Hussein's use of WMDs in the lead-up to Iraq-super-fun-time, they were actually sent out by a US Federal Government scientist, from stock held at a US Government lab. When the "investigation" closed in on this bio-medical researcher, he suffered a misfortune: It was reported that he commited suicide by overdosing on acetaminophen. The drug where an overdose causes a slow, painful liver-failure death. So everyone packed up the "investigation" and went home.
Look it up; I'm not exaggerating, lying, or joking.
Those guys you refer to, with bombs and anthrax... they're closer than you think, they don't yell "Allahu Ackbar," and you're required to sign their paycheck every April 15th.
Re:WHOAH Nelly (Score:5, Informative)
According to a report by ABC News, the National Academy of Science just released a report saying he may not have actually done it. [go.com]. That's after the Feds had accused a previous scientist who didn't cooperatively kill himself.
Also, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed "Curveball", admits he made up the WMD story so Bush would attack Saddam Hussein [talkingpointsmemo.com], and says he'd do that again (in spite of how well it worked out for everybody..)
Bad enough that I have to watch The Comedy Channel to get TV news, but now I have to read FARK [fark.com] to get the updated stories on the causes of the Iraq war.
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The term "terrorist" has gotten a broader meaning now. Meaning pretty much "anyone that we don't like or that pesters us".
In Austria, there is currently a huge trial underway where a bunch of animal rights activists got slapped by the "terrorist paragraph" (mostly for picketing a big fur coat store with an owner that got pretty good political connections) because... dammit, they broke no other law, must be terrorists, they're the only ones sneaky enough for something like that.
So don't worry, the US is not
Re:WHOAH Nelly (Score:4, Informative)
Nah... DHS just ran out of people to falsely accuse of terrorism, so they've now set their sights on far more easily prosecuted targets. Just calling someone a pedophile, without evidence, is enough to ruin someone's reputation forever, if not get them killed outright from vigilante mobs.
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Aren't legal definitions great? It's so easy to say one thing and mean something completely different.
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 :-)
Re:Welcome to the USA (Score:4, Interesting)
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:4, Informative)
Quote: "As with previous seizures, ICE convinced a District Court judge to sign a seizure warrant, and then contacted the domain registries to point the domains in question to a server that hosts the warning message. However, somewhere in this process a mistake was made and as a result the domain of a large DNS service provider was seized."
You may not like this, but a warrant signed by a judge *is* due process.
Judges have to follow the law too.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The judge can't issue a warrant without probably cause supported by Oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
The problem is there is no penalty for government drones that violate our rights.
For example--if I break into your house and take stuff, I go to jail. If the government breaks in illegally (without a proper warrant), they say "Oops, sorry" and continue on.
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Judges are generally limited to their knowledge of the law, their personal knowledge of the technology (usually limited), and what the investigators tell them. Since there is no adversarial arrangement for warrants, there is no other input into the request.
Basically, what happened was a technical mistake. That domain was related to the case, the problem was that it needed to be treated differently for technical reasons. It would be nice if the judge knew that and could correct the investigators, but that
Re:Welcome to the USA (Score:5, Informative)
No it's not. Judges sign invalid warrants on occassions, law enforcement does more than the warrant specifies on occassions, law enforcement lies in their applications for a warrant and gets it signed on occassions. All of those involve a warrant signed by a judge, but both are violations of due process.
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.
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Not size that is the issue, just that it only works for the highest bidder.
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That's because only the highest bidder can afford the biggest government
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Letting other less rich folks buy the government would not help.
Pres can't fix Bush/Chertoff/Ridge mistake immed. (Score:3)
Oh so a President can change the way the entire government works overnight? Let's not forget who set up Homeland Security in the first place...
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It's big government in general. They have gotten so frickin' big the law doesn't apply to them anymore.
Big government? To clarify, you're saying that the government shutting down websites in response to child porn is a government that is too big? Because as long as governments have the power to seize websites and are tasked with using that power, mistakes are going to be made and websites are going to get mistakenly shut down, no matter what other powers or structure that government has.
ORLY? (Score:2)
Was it really done mistakenly?
Or was it a test of how to shut down large parts of the Internet in case Egypt style revolution starts in USA and the government needs to shut down flow of the information?
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Of course, it was done by mistake. The last thing you want to show your enemy before the real battle begins is your true capabilities. And I saw that the battle is imminent in the news last week. "It could happen in the US" was written in red, flaming letters on video walls across many newsrooms in this country. The end is nigh.
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That would be a tremendously ineffective way of locking down the internet. Seizure of DNS server domains will prevent domain names from being resolved, but if the IP address is known, then the site can still be reached. Furthermore, certain types of gateway DNS servers cache domains that have been looked up, so a great deal of Facebook users sitting in their offices may not even notice for a while.
This raises an interesting question... (Score:5, Interesting)
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The better question is if it'll create a backlash or even more of a "OMG the pedos are everywhere, think of the children" stampede. Remember, the police have no interest in downplaying the threat and their budgets and there's a molester lurking on every corner of the intertubes. It's like all their "crushing blows", there always seem to be people left for more blows.
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That's kind of sad, it seems like even people that are suspicious of government fall for it without asking questions. It's just one of those go-to conversation stoppers. I shudder to think if corrupt law enforcement start planting evidence.
that is what I was thinking (Score:2)
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I'd rather use free dns from a few different providers (so having multiple secondary DNSs). I use one from my registrar, https://freedns.42.pl/ [42.pl] and http://xname.org/ [xname.org]
Re:This raises an interesting question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can... (Score:4, Interesting)
These people sue the government for loss of access and libel?
Or is it just one of those oopsie moments which will never be resolved?
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Actually, I'm not sure you can sue the government
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You can sue anyone you want. And they can be kind enough to return the favor.
United States v. ... [google.com] (7,850,000)
The question isn't if you'll win or not. The question is, can you afford it?
There's a pretty well established procedure for dealing with lawsuits. He with the largest budget, who can drag the case on for the longest time, wins. It gets tougher when the folks you're trying to sue are also t
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Let's just forget (Score:2)
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...the fact that they've done damage to all those websites of businesses...im sure potential customers aren't at all put off seeing that domain seizure image.
If you're running your business' web presence through freeDNS, you have bigger issues than this my friend.
Re:Let's just forget (Score:5, Interesting)
...the fact that they've done damage to all those websites of businesses...im sure potential customers aren't at all put off seeing that domain seizure image.
If you're running your business' web presence through freeDNS, you have bigger issues than this my friend.
Come again? Care to elaborate? I might be dense today, I can't imagine what issues an organisation may have, issue bigger than to be falsely painted as a child abuser in public?
Any NGO which is happy to save every dime in costs and use that dime for the goals of the NGO has suddenly "bigger issues", eh? Yes, I can see they do have issues, except that the issue is not caused by them, but by incompetence...
What's scarier: the issue was caused by the active incompetence of those in power.
Even more, this also reveals there are not enough checks in the system to prevent such actions, no matter the cause/intent: incompetence, malice or corruption.
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I'm somewhat confused by that remark. Having been a user of the service for at least the last 7 years or so (http://web.archive.org/web/20040605003827/http://www.bettison.org/)
The service has been so consistently good that I signed up to the paid service some years back, which yes runs my business' web presence (the DNS part of it at least).
There are some stats are right there on the front page at http://freedns.afraid.org/ [afraid.org] . With 880 subscribers paying between $5 and $50 a month they turn over somewhere be
Re:Let's just forget (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Now, perhaps the current media climate has made "Immigration" into a cause celebré, but there was time when US Customs was so prestigious a sinecure that it employed famous writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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I believe the argument is that trading in illegal merchandise is used to move cash, to evade normal channels. I'm not agreeing with the logic though.
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Because a lot of human trafficking and counterfeiting happens across our nation's borders. Actually, that's the best way to do it because it hampers local law enforcement. For human trafficking it's the best way because it puts people into a strange environment where they will not know how to ask for help. Especially if they are illegal immigrants, which is usually the case.
This seizure it totally unacceptable, but it's well within the scope of their operation to try something like this. Who else would
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Should be Secret Service, one would think, since they're in charge of preventing forgeries, etc.
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What the fuck does counterfeit goods and child porn have to do with the DHS?
ICE is a part of DHS. You do understand what the "C" stands for, right? Right?
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Customs.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
so once again... what does that have to do with child porn?
or websites?
Re:Why ICE/Homeland Security (Score:5, Informative)
The child porn stuff is also their turf if those "services" are being sold from over the border. And of course, most of those operations are based overseas, taking credit cards from domestic (US) customers. If the sites are registered within reach of US law enforcement, those registrations are fair game, just like the warehouse full of fake Nike products.
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There are a whooooooole bunch of "if"s in that statement, big guy.
And who said anything about smuggling?
so they just shut down a big block to get 1 site? (Score:2)
so they just shut down a big block to get 1 site?
seems like they are going for the Shotgun way of taking sites down.
Shotgun approach (Score:4, Funny)
"Tis far nobler that 84,000 innocent websites be taken down than 10 potential violators go free..."
er wait, that's not the quote... oh well too late for your site!
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!
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You call that good advice? If you want effective PR in today's world, NEVER admit you were wrong. No matter how much evidence, no matter how obvious your blunder. Just lie with every breath, and people will believe it. Just look at the birthers, the young-earth creationists, the trickle-down economists, the anti-vaccination crowd, etc... It doesn't matter how obviously wrong you are -- as long as you never blink, you'll maintain your core crowd of supporters, because they don't want to admit to themsel
WRONG (Score:3)
You are summing up BAD PR. Yes, that is the most common form of PR but it is NOT good or effective PR.
The most simple example is with trains. Delays are pretty much inevitable on a complex network but trying to "hide" this does not work. The public can SEE the errors. If they find them out before you inform them they just get frustrated and feel cheated. So, if a train is running late. Announce it and announce it BEFORE everyone at the station can SEE it is running late. Train coming in at 10:30 getting a u
Admitting Fault? (Score:2, Offtopic)
The US Government? As of late, that has become a sort of pipe dream. We have revolutions and protests happening to try and secure more democratic ideals and oust the dictatorships and autocracies in Egypt, Iran, and several other prominent Arab/Muslim countries and states, but here in the US we are seizing innocent people's web sites and then pretending it didn't happen, enacting legislation that singles out groups of people by racial profiling them [newsweek.com], have senators and governors trying to repeal health care [huffingtonpost.com]
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Where the fuck do I live again?
In the "land of the home and free of the brave".
The Government doesn't care about "blunders" (Score:2)
"...the DHS praised themselves for taking down those ten websites, but completely failed to acknowledge their massive blunder."
Well, let's see, we could theorize as to why they failed to acknowledge this, but I think I'm gonna go with my tried and true theory instead:
They could give a flying fuck, because they answer to no one.
Yup, that pretty much sums it up.
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"My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" answer ... (Score:2)
Well, if they flubbed up, they should at least have the balls to admit it, and not try to sweep it under the rug. Because the story will get out there anyway. It reminds me of this:
VOICE: Inflamed caller and smooth politician replying, both unidentified. Radio call-in show, New York, July 1979:
What're you saying? He said "I'm sorry, I committed a sin, I made a mistake. I asked (?????) to forgive me... please forgive me." He said "Mea Culpa," can you put it better? "I'm saying I'm sorry, I made a mistake, I made... I committed a sin, I made a mistake. And I'm never gonna do it again, I never did it before and I'm never gonna do it again."
Is anyone else disturbed? (Score:3)
Redirect? (Score:4, Insightful)
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presume victimhood (Score:5, Interesting)
After this, I figure the only safe assumption when I see someone accused of child molestation or possessing kiddie porn, is that they are innocent.
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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.
They were just testing the kill switch. (Score:2)
n/t
You don't "shut down" websites... (Score:2)
Hey, it works in Afghanistan (Score:3)
I mean, what's the alternative, go through the courts? Some of those bastard judges like to see evidence!
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Oops! (Score:2)
Nice to know there's an online version of "Sorry 'bout shooting your dog/son/daughter, we got the wrong house".
Then again, I don't remember any apologies in real life.
--
pass
They MUST own up to this (Score:2)
People may well end up dead because of this if they don't offer up a sincere apology soon. Not everyone reacts with a calm weighing of the evidence when they see that someone local has been accused of child porn.
Dyslexia strikes (Score:2)
Oops, wrong domain. (Score:3, Funny)
Better to be safe, (Score:3)
than sorry. Take 'em all down - let God sort 'em out.
Is it just me? (Score:3)
Is it just me or doesn't anyone else wonder what the hell is a department set up to fight terrorism is doing spending taxpayers money to defend the interests of big corporations?
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That would be a public service.
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I'm guessing Sovereign Immunity says no you get nothing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_United_States
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