Slashdot Mirror
UK Police To Get Major New Powers To Seize Domains
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."
Two weeks ago, Fitwatch, a site dedicated to campaigning against what it sees as heavy-handed practices by police surveillance units, was taken down by its UK-based web hosting company,
With its domain name suspended, the only way for visitors to find a rogue site would be to type in its lengthy (and decidedly less memorable) numeric IP address.
This shows how well prepared is the british police to deal with matters regarding the internet: I reckon they never heard of the hosts file or, for an URL only, favorites.
Such simple minds... life for them must be a permanent bliss.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
They haven't seized paypal yet? If the people running that site aren't criminals then I don't know who is.
Monstar L
They've already done it without legal backing. The US-hosted, UK-centric police monitoring site FitWatch was closed by the British police, by simply asking the US host to remove it. The police officially objected to a single article, so requested that the whole site be closed for 12 months. The host complied.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/16/student-anti-police-website-closed
-- boggle! Of course there must be an appeals process.
The UK is becoming worse, there is a proposal by the home secretary to throw someone out of his house even if there was not enough evidence to charge; this is going to be abused by wifes who want a divorce -- get the bloke out on made up complaints of violence; by the time that he would be allowed back in she will have started the legal process and grabbed the property and stopped him seeing the kids.
Dear Police,
Please be informed that not just one but multiple criminals use the domains Hotmail.co.uk and yahoo.co.uk. Please disable these immediately to prevent further crimes from occurring. (and they annoy the hell out of me).
What do you want to bet that serious and well-planned out crimes won't include:
Goldman Sachs UK (where to start)
Paypal UK (seizure of users' money without refund)
Microsoft UK (organized monopoly abuse)
Intel UK (organized monopoly abuse)
and anyone else who's a paymaster?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I wouldn't necessarily call it free under those terms. If I can get in trouble for merely saying something, I don't think it's really free speech. Freer speech than in some areas, but not necessarily free at it's foundation.
soon you'll lose your right to trial by jury, be logged on some huge data base, sections of the population will be segregated, forced to move from the desirable areas into slums then the trains to the gas/torture chambers will start.......
Are you being ironic? Because as it happens, every one of these is the case in the UK except the gas chambers.
Right to trial by jury - 28 day detention/recent use of this power/"Kettling" of students as young as 15 on demonstrations for 12+ hours at a time - did you know this particular policing technique originated in Nazi Poland to force Jews to the gas chamber? :/
Logged on some huge database - Police DNA database (they take a sample if merely questioning you and will lie about removing the data - EU has to get involved and force them), TV licensing, DVLA, Council Tax, Electoral register, etc, etc - in most of these cases the operating body also sells an edited version of the database to private companies for targeted mailing or other purposes.
Sections of the population segregated - Largely propaganda driven in the media against certain groups/ethnicities; in particular the Muslim population has been targeted for example by CCTV
Forced to move into slums - The new government is stripping out housing benefit and cutting down the length of time you can 'own' social housing to two years minimum (previously they were owned for life) and if your earning power increases above an arbitrary threshold they'll toss you out; the Conservative mayor of London even finds this unpalatable ) and predicts that it will lead to the cities becoming the preserve of the rich and white.
So yeah, no gas chambers just yet, but I'm sure some bright spark will suggest it as a way to cut down on the money spent in fuel subsidies for pensioners or whatever soon enough.
Posting AC because I really don't have any faith in this country any more.
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.