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UK Police To Get Major New Powers To Seize Domains

Posted by samzenpus on from the mine-now-I-take-it dept.

Stoobalou writes "British Police forces could soon have the power to seize any domain associated with criminal activity, under new proposals published today by UK domain registrar Nominet. At present, Nominet has no clear legal obligation to ensure that .uk domains are not used for criminal activities. That situation may soon change, if proposals from the Serious and Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) are accepted."

16 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Just out of curiosity, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does that include Google?

    1. Re:Just out of curiosity, by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 2, Interesting

      More ironically, does that include mil.uk

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  2. US does it already on much larger scale by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    US already seizes any .com .net .org domain too.

    Thinking of it, maybe we should give this right to every country, including Iraq, China and North Korea.

  3. A big deal by NaCh0 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Since the UK doesn't have freedom of speech like here in the US, this could really change the internet by creating a roadmap for other countries to follow.

    1. Re:A big deal by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The UK does have freedom of speech protections, but they are implimented in a very different way. And are somewhat easier to overrule.

    2. Re:A big deal by TheBlackMan · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So is it the time for alternative censorship-free DNS system yet ?

    3. Re:A big deal by 91degrees · · Score: 2, Interesting

      On the other hand, from what I read in Viz I would assume that the UK had no libel laws.

      There's the "reasonable man" test. In the case of Viz, would a reasonable man believe what he's reading to be true. since Viz is a crude comic, the newspaper style articles in Viz are entirely ridiculous parody, and clearly intended as such, it's unlikely that anyone would think it to be true.

      The extra "strictness" comes in two fronts. Firstly, the defendant needs to prove the allegations are true (not just that they believed they were true - journalists are meant to fact check), and secondly you can sue the author or the publication (not unresonable) or the publisher. There is legal opinion at least that a publisher includes everyone up to the retailer. In the case of online material, the fact that it's technically published everywhere it's accessed effectively gives British courts jusrisdiction over the entire internet. It's possible to sue an ISP over a usenet posting even if the posting originated from a user of a different ISP.

      After the American revolution, the British governmnet was a lot more open to greater independence in the other colonies since the War of Independence was something of an expensive embarrassment. In fact, even before 1776, there was reasonable support for representation of America in parliament.

    4. Re:A big deal by Voulnet · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Freedom of speech in the US? Are you kidding? Just today the US Gov't seized torrent domains and is actively trying to stop WikiLeaks.

    5. Re:A big deal by Max+Romantschuk · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Merely saying is a bit like merely killing.

      I think it makes sense that speech should be restricted in the sense that actions are as well. It's not OK to hurt other people physically, and I think it should be no less OK to hurt people through speech. From another perspective one could argue that a society that restricts you from taking other people's lives as you see fit is not truly free, at least from the perspective of a single individual.

      The problem is determining what is actually hurtful. "I wish you we're dead you fucking cunt." might be anything from a joke, to a sexist and hurtful remark. "I'm going to kill you and rape your wife as she cries over your dead body." Is a pretty clear case of threatening someone.

      So the hard part is really determining where to draw the line. This is very much a cultural issue. Is it more free or less free to be free to hurt? I don't claim to know myself.

      --
      .: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
  4. UK only? by MrQuacker · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I can't understand TFA. Does this give the registrar power to steal only .co.uk domains, or any TLD that's registered with them?

  5. Disappointing by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They haven't seized paypal yet? If the people running that site aren't criminals then I don't know who is.

    --
    Monstar L
  6. Re:Laughable by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'd have thought it more than effective to just take down the domain, thus rendering every hit for the site on google unavailable. Almost all people searching would give up at that point.

  7. Re:It has started already by bedwards · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Key phrase in the guardian article:

    The Fitwatch blogpost, which last night had reappeared on several other websites

    They had this problem a while back with the company Trafigura who tried to remove information regarding their activities that was in the public domain. It was available in hundreds of places within the hour.

    Usually people do not replicate information, instead pointing to the origional source. Only when the origional information is threatened with censorship is it replacted to the point of it not being able to be removed.

    Of course - being able to shut down domains such as www.facebookaccounts2010.co.uk, preventing idiots from giving away all their credit card details is probably quite a good thing.

    It is too bad that in the hands of the Serious Organised Crime Agency; a department with the ability to violate almost every one of our civil liberties (car-number plate tracking, Bank snooping, hidden CCTV cameras to name but a few) but not it would seem the ability to make a single dent in the crime felt by any community, my less than competent friends will still be able to hand their data over to www.facebookaccounts.co.uk whilst I read material I do not particularly care about becuase "they" wanted to stop me reading it, and giggle at the absurdity of trying to censor the internet.

  8. Just the UK? by skywatcher2501 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is it just the UK that is fracked up w.r.t. surveillance issues and excessive police rights, or am I just not noticing it in my own country (Italy)? And what about other countries (excluding usual suspects such as China)?

    I once confronted a friend of mine from the UK with her countries' big brother issues, and she didn't show any real concerns about these issues and said that everything was fine. Perhaps she isn't noticing, because she does live in the UK?

  9. Re:Serious and Organized Crime? by jimicus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's not quite as simple as that. When they're talking about Serious and Organised Crime, they don't mean "serious criminal allegations about an organisation". They mean organised criminal gangs (which are probably about Number 3 on the Official UK List of Things to be Scare the Population With, directly under terrorists and paedophiles).

    And while there's quite a few companies I would dearly love to see investigated under that kind of statute, the world tends to be rather more pragmatic than that and if an organisation by and large benefits society, IME they're generally not likely to find themselves being effectively outlawed.

  10. Re:It has started already by chrb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's hard to have sympathy for a site ("fitwatch") that promotes violent protest. The Guardian's perspective on violent protest is a bit hypocritical too:

    • The Guardian is strongly critical of violent protest when done by the English Defence League. (And they should be, the EDL is basically just a modern remake of the National Front, and is attracting the same mix of football hooligans, fascist skinheads, and other assorted nutters).
    • The Guardian does not appear to criticise the violent protests by students (which, in reality, are probably not students - real students don't tend to wave anarchist flags), including the attempted murder where a fire extinguisher was thrown down onto at a police officer from the top of a building.
    • The Guardian appears to support the author of "fitwatch" (the article you linked), which publishes counter-intelligence on the Police Forward Intelligence Teams (the same guys who are also responsible for policing violent protests by the fascists, football hooligans, anarchists, etc.)

    Violent protest is usually counterproductive. If these people really wanted to win, then martyrdom is where it's at. Imagine 100 students on hunger strike outside the Houses of Parliament. That would win the argument. But of course, they won't do that, because it would mean actually putting your supposed ideals before your own well being.

    When it comes to policing protests, do you want police that actually do the job regardless of the source of public disorder, or do you want police who do the job when you disagree with the protesters (EDL) but do nothing when you agree (students/anarchists)? The second is an immature point of view, but appears to be the one espoused by the Guardian.