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Blogetery Shutdown Due To al-Qaeda Info
Archness1 writes "Over the weekend we discussed news that blog host Blogetery.com had been shut down at the request of the US government. Now, it appears the site was shut down because some of the blogs it was hosting contained information on al-Qaeda hit lists and bomb making. According to the article, Burst.net shut down Blogetery of its own accord after the FBI made a request to the host for information on the people who made the posts. '[Burst.net CTO Joe Marr] said the FBI contacted Burst.net and sent a Voluntary Emergency Disclosure of Information request. The letter said terrorist material, which presented a threat to American lives, was found on a server hosted by Burst.net and asked for specific information about the people involved. In the FBI's letter, the agency included a clause that says Web hosts and Internet service providers may voluntarily elect to shut down the sites of customers involved in these kinds of situations.'"
I'm not sure why the above is considered trollish, though the tone might be snippy. It's true that US policymakers didn't shut down the blog themselves, but what are you supposed to think if you're a website owner and you get a letter from FBI advising you that material on your website threatens American lives and that you "may voluntarily elect to shut down the sites of customers involved in these kinds of situations." If anything the feds should be doing the opposite -- advise the blog owner to keep open a potentially useful source of information so it could be watched. The guys who want to blow things up are going to find a way to connect with each other and find whatever info they need to build bombs elsewhere; the question is whether they do it with or without their enemies watching.
So, the Burst.net guys get a request for information about a machine they host which has ~70k users, give or take. Instead of asking the box's sysadmin (who's their CLIENT), they pull the pin, then go on to mutter vague conspiracy-minded commentary such as "getting a refund is the least of his (the site owner/sysadmin) problems" on fora such as WHT (see http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=05a61aabdfcacdb369e1582aff4686a1&t=964013 ) Apparently the fact that he _received_ abuse complaints in the past was grounds to terminate his service; never mind the fact that he had SEVENTY THOUSAND USERS and acted on DMCA notifications and other abuse requests in a timely fashion, which is better than can be said about a lot of sites.
Had burst.net forwarded the request to the site owner (or even simply given the feds his name, and explained how he fit in) instead of disconnecting the machine, making borderline slanderous statements (such as 'he'll never get his data back' and 'a refund is the least of his worries right now',) they would have come out of this looking reasonably good. As it stands, you'd have to be completely brain-dead retarded to even think about giving them money.
You're doing it wrong.
on those guys. or they wouldn't have made the request, including the little line at the end that basically said, "you have a pistol. you know what to do for esprit de corps. we will be back in 15 minutes."
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
But bomb-making by itself isn't a crime is it? I have a few friends that still live in the woods, and they have a bit of fun with blowing stuff up occasionally, like stumps and old cars. It's their property.
Ask F-troop.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and (recently added) Explosives seems to think it is, if you didn't get the right certifications and licenses and pay the right taxes.
Your state may think so, too.
Explosives are a very useful tool for, among other things, farming. You can remove a stump quickly with a little dynamite, girdle or fell a tree in seconds, dig a ditch in an hour or so with a string of small charges detonated simultaneously. rather than weeks of work with earthmoving equipment or months of backbreaking labor, and I could go on. (There was one guy who got the snow off his sidewalks and driveways in a couple minutes with a little primacord, too.)
But our federal government has injected its jackboots into this, as well as firearms, since about 1934.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Maybe the guys at Burst.net are neither villains nor tools.
As I understand it, when the Stasi want something removed from the net, they typically send a National Security Letter demanding said removal, and forbidding disclosure of their demand. One convenient way to bring light to a secret removal order is for the hosting company to comply with it in a way that maximizes inconvenience to the internet community at large. It's a nice alternative to quietly silencing a blog without due process in open court -- who does that anymore? -- that probably (probably...) won't get anyone from Burst.net thrown into the Gulag, sued into destitution, or disappeared off to Guantanamo for some "enhanced interrogation".
I don't know if that's allowed in China, but in the UK people have been convicted under terrorism legislation for possession of documents that may be of use to a terrorist. In one case recently, someone was convicted for owning copies of the anarchists handbook. Not for making anything from it, just for having it.