GoDaddy Silences RateMyCop.com

mikesd81 writes "Wired is running a story about GoDaddy shutting down a police watchdog site called RateMyCop. However, GoDaddy can't seem to give a consistent answer as for why. From the article: 'RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto says he was given no notice of the suspension. When he called GoDaddy, the company told him that he'd been shut down for suspicious activity. When Sesto got a supervisor on the phone, the company changed its story and claimed the site had surpassed its 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, a claim that Sesto says is nonsense. "How can it be overloaded when it only had 80,000 page views today, and 400,000 yesterday?" Sesto says police can post comments as well, and a future version of the site will allow them to authenticate themselves to post rebuttals more prominently. Chief Dyer wants to get legislation passed that would make RateMyCop.com illegal, which, of course, wouldn't pass constitutional muster in any court in America.'"

Comments

1984

[seanadams.com]

I am hopeful that mankind can avoid ending up like in 1984, for the simple reason that the same technology that enables today's widespread spying by our government on its own citizens can also be leveraged to help us keep tabs on them. Even if they make sites like this one illegal, they will be hosted elsewhere. Furthermore, unless they figure out how to take away all of our camera cell phones, tiny solid state audio recorders, etc then we will continue to have vastly more power to document police corruption than we did just 10 years ago when you'd have to have a camcorder at hand, charged and with a tape in it, to capture anything.

I might even go so far as to say that I'd _like_ to see the government try and crack down on sites like this (and wikileaks etc), as this will only draw more attention to the problem, causing replication of the data and hastening the process of smart people finding even better general solutions for circumventing censorship.

The current situation in America really does look like 1984 already - not just the spying and media manipulation, but also the continuous fearmongering and blatant lies to justify this protracted and costly war. However I believe there really is hope for us to turn this around, and that the solution lies in leveraging the internet, encryption, and the same technologies being used now to spy on us. Let's keep finding better ways to protect information, let's keep uncovering the corruption, and let's turn this around before it's too late.

Re:1984

[Atlantis-Rising]

Or, you could prohibit anonymous speech. This would have the dual purpose of both allowing people to speak and allowing them to be held responsible for their speech if need be (slander/libel).

Re:1984

[Penguinisto]

It's not that simple...

There is a legitimate concern for cops that do go undercover (they tend to do so off and on throughout a career), in that once they do, there's a big, fat online database that folks can check against before even asking "are you a cop?". This can present a legitimate danger if there's pictures or other personally identifiable information right there on the site.

There is a superior need for transparency in any society, but sometimes that has to be balanced against personal safety - including the safety of the cops.

As for the 1984 allegories? I suspect that you all-too easily attribute to malice what can be more easily attributed to incompetence, greed, and disparate desires that happen to run in parallel. For example, the Media manipulates to elicit drama and eyeballs, by which to convert into advertisement profit. Politicians manipulate and propagandize (in both directions!) in order to garner popularity, votes, and power (for both themselves and their ideology).

Trust me - having seen the US Government form both inside and out? I can say with certainty that as a group, it would be easier to put a colony on Mars than to organize that gaggle into any sort of overlord-type Big Brother organization...

/P

Re:1984

[Damocles the Elder]

I'm not saying that they need to, I'm saying that they have the option of rebutting if they care enough to. And we already have plenty of rate random people sites; hotornot, facebook, and myspace all come to mind. And as for your final point, that's all they do: Allow people to rant. The payment for the site isn't coming out of your pocket, beyond that, it's free speech. I'm not sure what you're getting so worked up about.

Re:1984

[mixmatch]

I'm sorry, the fact that someone was going to town hall meetings and talking nonsense and that same person went in and shot people don't seem to have any particular connection to me. Did free speech allow and/or encourage the person to shoot people? Would have shutting him up/barring him from the meetings somehow pacified this individual? Is there a direct correlation between people who are boisterous and loud and people that irrationally shoot others? Certainly I would agree with your statement that free speech is a double-edged sword in that you can be publicly criticized in the same way that you critique others, but I don't see the connection with the violent acts that followed.

Re:1984

[rtechie]

Cops have a sucky enough job as it is and while I see a rating system like this as useful for many things, it'll be used for pettiness most of all. The serious issues cops get called out on have more efficient means of getting handled. It's very difficult for me to imagine what tangible harm could be caused by internet review of police officers. Sure, they might be ANNOYED that people on the internet are talking smack about them, but so what? What do they really "suffer" exactly? You mentioned games, are game designers cripped by the criticism they receive on web forums? I don't think so.

And police officers aren't like game designers. Police officers have the right to come into your house and kill you. Given that, I think they deserve a bit of scrutiny. Hell, I think they deserve a LOT of scrutiny, like 24/7 surveillance, GPS implants, weekly gas spectrograph drug tests, yearly competency testing, affirmative action, no unions, etc.

Obviously the problems with police officers aren't getting handled, that's why there is all the guerrilla surveillance going on.

Re:1984

[vertinox]

I have been pulled more than once over and every time I have been treated with respect. You're making huge generalizations. Most police and troopers are good people.

Hold on there! Anecdotal evidence a universal case does not make.

Personally, I've seen both but it really depended on where you live. Generally, in larger cities you'll see cops that are too busy deal with little things whereas smaller municipalities often have quotas simply to meet budgets.

However, there are always cases of high level corruption everywhere and I've heard some nightmare stories about NYC cops. The real reason you haven't met any bad cops is because you haven't traveled enough.

Re:1984

[kcdoodle]

I was rear-ended during afternoon rush hour and cop (on his way home, on his own time) responded to the scene.
He didn't have to. We could have easily waited 4 hours for another cop to come along.

He was very nice and professional, calming the girl whose car was pushed into mine in a chain reaction.

I wrote a note to his superiors about how great he was.
They sent me back a thank-you which had also been copied to the superior's superior, the cop himself, and the cop's service record.

Always Always Always Always try to reward good behavior when you observe it.

Bandwidth explanation reasonable

[Rampantbaboon]

AFAIK this site went down after it was mentioned on Fark last night. That could easily surpass the limit for a GoDaddy hosted site.

Get Involved as well!

[scenestar]

become a participant for http://www.copwatch.org/ .

All you gotta do is just simply watch the police go about their usuall routine. If they threaten you to leave remind them that they are public servants and that you are fully within the scope of the law if doing so

Go on and observe, It is your patriotic duty!

handicappped permit trumps all, in some places

[name_already_taken]

A former employee of my company had a handicapped parking permit, and she was told by the police that because of her handicapped parking permit, in Illinois the parking rules basically did not apply to her. She could pretty much park anywhere and not get a ticket. She'd park all day in the two hour parking spaces on the street, park across the lines, you name it - and there was nothing the police could do - nor did they make any attempt.

Had she been blocking traffic, that might have been another question, but the simple reality of it was that she never got a parking ticket in a town that lives on parking ticket income.

Protection must be inversely proportional to power

[harrumph]

In light of comments against this sort of site in general, I wish to point out a couple of things:

Those in positions of power must not have the same protections as those who are powerless.

1: The position of police officer is a position of great power.

2: The position of police officer is extremely attractive to sociopaths.

3: Some (many) police agencies are--umm--less than perfect at filtering out these especially-eager applicants. Some departments do not filter at all (i.e. they don't perform personality inventories on applicants), with the obvious results. Given that non-sociopaths generally strongly dislike working with sociopaths, it stands to reason that these departments quickly become dominated by the latter. I've lived in city with a police department that did not test its applicants for mental disorders, and that's a large part of the reason I now live in a city with a police department that does.

4: It does not make sense to give a person in a position of power all the protections that are afforded to others. For those in a position to cause suffering to members of society, the interest of the society in preventing abuse clearly outweighs the interest of the individual. (If you want all the usual job protections, don't pursue a job that lets you hurt people.)

Yes, some police officers will be treated unfairly in such a forum. Some will be publicly embarrassed when they don't deserve it. If the forum is effective, some will lose their jobs when they shouldn't. I would think it would even make undercover operations more difficult. All these issues are far outweighed by the benefit of exposing those who should not be allowed to be in positions of power.