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DHS Seized Domains Based On Bad Evidence
An anonymous reader writes "Back over Thanksgiving, the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit (ICE) made a lot of news by seizing over 80 domain names. While many of these involved sites that sold counterfeit products, five of the domains involved copyright issues. Four of them involved hiphop-related blogs — including ones that hiphop stars like Kanye West and others used to promote their own works, and the last one was a meta search engine that simply aggregated other search engines. Weeks went by without the owners of those sites even being told why their domains were seized, but the affidavit for the seizure of those five sites has recently come out, and it's full of all sorts of problems. Not only was it put together by a recent college graduate, who claimed that merely linking to news and blog posts about file sharing constituted evidence of copyright infringement, it listed as evidence of infringement songs that labels specifically sent these blogs to promote. Also, what becomes clear is that the MPAA was instrumental in 'guiding' ICE's rookie agent in going after these sites, as that appeared to be the only outside expertise relied on in determining if these sites should be seized."
Cops lie. News AT 11. Cry me a river.
Wait until there's a law that requires all Internet activity be made after logging into your ISP via some sort of government issued biometric scanner. As they say with driving; it's a privilege, not a right. As for all the problems that would cause? Suck it up cupcake! That's your problem, not theirs.
Why else would the TSA be carrying out all those testicular cancer screenings at airports?
I want to know the identity of this rookie college moron.
I also want to know which college trained him, so I can make sure to tell everybody to avoid that garbage establishment.
Next, since this was based upon false evidence, I want to see him, and those responsible for handling him, sued into oblivion.
This shit is getting to a breaking point.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The agent also said the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade groups for the major film studios and record labels, had confirmed that the music and movies on the sites had not been released with the authorization of their copyright holders.
Yeah, after some poking around I found PROTECTING U.S. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OVERSEAS: THE JOINT STRATEGIC PLAN AND BEYOND presented to a House of Representatives committee. In it they talk about the sting and the lengthy history of their actions:
We worked with many different agencies - including CBP, DOJ’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) and the Government of Mexico’s Treasury and Customs – and industry, including the Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA), to target importers and distributors of counterfeit goods. This operation was specifically timed to coincide with U.S. and Mexican consumers’ increased purchasing during the winter holiday season.
Then later:
Representatives from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and RIAA assisted participating customs authorities with focused training, targeting and analyses of certain interdicted parcels. This operation was specifically timed by the IPR Center to coincide with the movie industry’s summer releases, when the biggest blockbusters are illegally recorded, reproduced on DVDs, shipped around the world and sold on street corners and in other markets.
There's plenty of interesting tidbits in this lengthy document about how everybody's getting involved -- even China:
ICE previously worked with China in September 2003 when ICE initiated Operation Spring, a joint IPR investigation by ICE agents and Chinese authorities that resulted in the extradition and conviction of DVD pirate Randolph Guthrie, who was sentenced to 48 months incarceration and ordered to repay $878,793 in restitution to the MPAA.
And the American sports associations:
Earlier this year, the IPR Center partnered with the NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA, industry and local law enforcement to conduct operations targeting counterfeit sports merchandise sold during the Super Bowl, NBA All-Star Game, Stanley Cup championship, and NCAA Final Four and Frozen Four tournaments. These operations resulted in seizures of over 14,000 counterfeit items valued at more than $760,000.
Personally I hope DHS and ICE get their asses handed to them over the music blogs. Turn that into freedom of speech and take those bastards to the cleaners. They aren't going to learn their lesson if this is just a court case that exonerates the defendant and I hope the defendants have enough cash to to fight back, or seek help from the EFF.
The frequency of these MPAA/RIAA related stings is really ramping up. I hope ICE and IPR aren't turning out to be directional attack dogs for corporations. The numbers on these things seem a tad bit inflated but haven't they always been?
My work here is dung.
AND they're in charge of Capital Punishment (where allowed) and other judiciary jobs... (And now I'm reminded of that German citizen who was arrested in Germany and sent to an Afghanistan prison, merely by having the same name as the actual target of the operation).
Sometimes "Oops" just doesn't cut it.
Perhaps Due Process needs to be revised to include more than what it currently does. And there needs to be a way to enforce it on the people in charge...
Sorry. I mistyped. DHS, not FBI.
What are you blind? It's all over the affidavit document. Andrew T. Reynolds swears that it's all true. First line of the document.
My work here is dung.
It appears they forgot the whole 'checks and balances' thing when enacting a powerful censorship law. I'm not even sure what the 'Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement' has to do with copyright enforcement.
But hey, already found a scapegoat, a 'fresh college graduate' who'll be labeled as over-zealous while those actually in charge zip by.
And Health and Human Services is going to be any better?
The poster's point was one that people always seem to ignore. The same people who are disgusted with how one side of the government acts seem to want another part of the government to become more and more a part of our lives. It's as if we were talking about two different governments, Homeland Security and the TSA and Defense, who are evil and malicious, while being incompetent and bureaucratic. Then there is the other government which is there to fix our health care and economy which must be run by benevolent geniuses who would never, ever, be like those nasty, brutish law enforcement/defense types.
"due process" originally meant a judge would review a search or arrest warrant, but the politicians have conveniently written the judges out of the loop. Now they (the cops/feds) can write their own warrants and enter your house or shutdown your website at will.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
We are making their jobs difficult by insisting that they don't harm the innocent while trying to gather evidence against the guilty?
I'd say we are keeping them accountable.
Their job is to protect us. Let's not make it anymore difficult.
What the hell is the ICE protecting me from? Bootleg copies of Kanye West?
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Have you listened to that stuff? You should be grateful.
ICE's job includes enforcing laws regarding the immigration and hiring of aliens.
Lets see, Nicky Diaz, former housekeeper to Meg Whitman, admits on national television that she forged documents and is in this country illegally.
Many employers hire illegal aliens.
Millions of illegal aliens in the country.
States, have enacted their own laws because ICE is not doing its job.
But.....ICE can shut down sites that it thinks might be violating copyright law.
Yes, ICE can't do their job, but they can be given more responsibility.
Fight Spammers!
I really hope the Republicans make a civil rights issue out of this. Using Homeland security for copyright enforcement? Forget about the fact that they were incompetent, even if they had gotten this right it was way way out of line.
They'll move him out of DNS management and over into drafting Network Neutrality regulation. What can go wrong?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's rather funny in terms of how it is written. It just isn't true the different agencies do have different personalities. There are huge differences between them. CDC is snobby and elitist but very accurate and open. FBI is technologically incompetent but hires great people. NSA has wicked cool toys but no sense or morality. Bureau of Labor Statistics aims for quality and predictability but is rather scared of congress. CIA is beset with internal infighting.
WAY off topic but.
Actually they are not in charge of health care. It is called regulations. The same kind that they used to have on the banks, before they removed them and it all went to hell. The same kind that used to be on CC and how much they could charge you interest, before they removed that then everyone got to see rates from 20% to 30%.
It is and only will be health insurance regulations. but you just keep on believing that its a take over and its all going to come out bad for you.
Start using your brain and stop living in a world of wordsmiths.
love the taste, hate the texture
Seriously, it's right there on the affidavit. On top of that you can let the court know in a (circa 1993) web form what you think or contact Nagle's Deputy Courtroom Clerk yourself. Case number 10-2822M for your reference since the affidavit seems to be unable to be viewed by some.
You're an American citizen and you have the right to know who these people are that are making these decisions whether it be a judge or special agent. And they shouldn't have any fear of putting their name on these documents if they think it's right. I agree with you though that maybe it's not within their capacity to serve this position should they get something so painfully wrong.
I want countersuits and I want liabilities awarded to the defendants that rival the bullshit astronomical numbers that the court sends out to NASA for computation when the MPAA/RIAA wins. I hate that if the MPAA/RIAA wins it's eighty billion dollars but if the individual is exonerated it's a benjamin tops for having their webserver down. That is bullshit.
My work here is dung.
Are you saying that because some part of government is figuratively speaking stomping its boot on your chest, an other part, with different people, tasked with tending to your wounds, shouldn't even exist?
Even if that has merit, getting rid of the fascist bullies first would make sense to me.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Wait, so you mean that when a punishment was issued without a legal trial, purely at some arbitary person's arbitary decision, things went wrong?!
We should clearly design some system where one has to be tried before one can be punished.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Simple. They don't care.
If you're innocent, pay the thousands in court costs and missing time off, and fight it in court. Otherwise just pay the money and nobody is going to get hurt.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/SLAPP - related.
The US government is a very large organization. It does a lot of different things. Some things it does well, other things it does badly. Some of the people who work for it do their jobs well, others do their jobs badly. Some types of people take some kinds of jobs, others take other types of jobs. There is no one "the government" doing everything the same way. Welcome to the real world.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
> Yeah. The CDC has no political spin in their statements about evil, nasty, gonna destroy the world, flus that are almost as deadly as the normal one.
The word "pandemic" has a precise scientific meaning that appears to have been lost on you.
The flu (yes, that flu), has been known to kill lots of people on occasion. We're lucky that the mortality rate of the last few has been low, because it wasn't always that way. Worse, it was known to kill young & healthy people, it just didn't kill very many of them.
There were good, scientific reasons to be alarmed and to get people vaccinated and such, but I don't remember widespread panic. But maybe you watch more hysterical news services than I do.
Ok yes I know Immigrations and Customs enforcement. This is a job for the FBI and/or state police etc. From the ICE website "Immigration and Customs Enforcement is the principal investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)". How the hell did this get to be a national security issue? Yes I understand they are the second largest investigative organization in the US government but before 9/11 they were primarily concerned with illegal immigrants. They don't need to be involved in the investigation (spying) of US citizens and their suspected criminal activities. That's the FBI's job.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
I never understand that, people talk about the U.S. government as if it is this monolithic entity of pure intent and clear direction.
That isn't the government, it is not some implacable entity. It is a collection of various agencies and persons doing a variety of tasks for various reasons. By saying the government is evil, you include the department of Transportation (hint: maintaining the roads and signage), the post office, the FDA, FAA, CDC, and so on. Tell me how each is evil and/or powerhungry, please.
Quit with the knee-jerk reactions and learn about what you're defaming.
No, you can't sue the DHS, or the government in general, because of a most pernicious doctrine called "sovereign immunity." Since the government created the courts and endows them with legitimacy, you can't use its own courts against it, except in very limited circumstances. (It's like dividing by zero, sort of.)
However, if an agent of the government uses his/her position to commit a crime, you can sue the agent him/herself, but not their employer. (Of course, that's no guarantee that the suit won't get tossed, only that you can, in fact, proceed with it.) Also, if they use the apparatus of the government for purposes of racial discrimination, they can also be sued. But generally, no, you can't sue.
WIkipedia explains it in more detail: linky
And even if it were true, there are ways for the government to provide universal health care that do not involve the government controlling that care. For example, the government provided power for millions in the Tennessee Valley, but does not run TVA. They just paid the bill for getting the organization started. There's nothing preventing the government from similarly creating a nonprofit corporation for health care and leaving management in the hands of their board.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The law allowing gun carry in national parks.
The "they" that removed credit card interest rate limits was the supreme court.
Not exactly. What they did in 1978 was to make it permissible for the laws of the state where the lender was chartered to apply instead of those of the state the customer resides in.
Where they are:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/more/map.html
General info:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/eight/
Beware of credit of the last resort
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Card_(The_New_Twilight_Zone)
My wife successfully sued a part of the DHS for failing to process her background check within the time period required by law. There was no discrimination or anything else like that, just a paperwork backlog. I agree that in the present circumstance a lawsuit would be unlikely to be successful, but I think "You can't sue the DHS....except in very limited circumstances" might be misleading as a generalization.
Interesting, I would have thought the ONE country that would allow the people to sue the government would be the US. You know land of the free and all that... Suing the government happens here in Australia and the UK all the time. In fact there is a great movie about it, The Castle.
Beats me, but this still is far more likely to fall under customs than immigration, which are still separate groups.
However, if an agent of the government uses his/her position to commit a crime, you can sue the agent him/herself, but not their employer.
Even then, there are broad exclusions that protect certain federal employee classifications from lawsuits provided the harm was not caused by the employee's gross negligence. For instance, air traffic controllers (FAA employees) cannot be sued for their actions (for instance, here's an article about an air traffic controller that confused two aircraft and ended up killing 34 people...no gross negligence, no lawsuit). Many other government positions fall under similar exemptions.
Sometimes "Oops" just doesn't cut it.
You just have to resort to "9-11".
Or "think of the children", whichever seems more appropriate.
You can't take the sky from me...
I wonder if it is just a different as you would imagine it to be. Certainly, other departments will have different cultures, and some of those may well be much more amenable to benevolence and competence, but simply by being in "the government" they can and do share certain characteristics with every other department.
Let's take the most obvious item: politics. No group in the government can avoid it, even if they are supposed to be "independent" in principle. It's not inconceivable that a reasonable health care system could come out of the political system, but it will remain a political football evermore. Its budget will depend on the government's budget. The pro-lifers and the pro-choicers will each have their own agendas. There will be some sort of call for some sort of restriction that will create enormous bureaucracy. Then some reformer will decry the enormous bureaucracy, and slash the budget, or worse, because it will likely be untouchable in the budget, will do something like create absurd new "efficiency" regulations that destroy the quality of the system without removing it.
If they somehow do manage to make it an independent entity in more than just name, everyone is just going to assume the government will bail it out if it looks like it will fail.
And in the end, isn't that the point? People don't seem to care about getting the *best* of anything from the government. They just want it guaranteed to them so they feel better about it. Only after they allow it to come into existence do people seem to realize that its not particularly well run or that it has fatal flaws. In that way, its basically just like the army or TSA. Everyone demands that we have it, but once we do, we wonder how it is possible that it could possibly be used or run in such a manner as to produce the undesired effects that they see in the news.
And of course, one way or the other, no matter how bad the program gets, no matter how bloated or in need of reform, it will never, ever go away, or even be allowed to change by the iron triangles formed by the constituencies that come to rely on it. Just like the military and security budgets.
So yeah, maybe there is some generalization in the "one size fits all argument", but there is a lot to be said for it. Government health care may be the best way to go, but you would think with everyone seeing climate change becoming a political football, and the issues with the management of the war, there would be a bit more consideration of how the government units are similar just as much as they are different.
MPAA was instrumental in 'guiding' ICE's rookie agent in going after these sites, as that appeared to be the only outside expertise relied on in determining if these sites should be seized
A private police force with public funding...quite a racket they've got going there.
just like them (a died in the wool, brain-dead Republican,) but the TSA was created by Bush so they'll give it a pass. (After all, private jets or charters from small private airports aren't subject to searches.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
>>>you can't use its own courts against it
Nonsense. Lots of people sue the United States government, which is why you'll see Bob Smith v. United States or Massachusetts v. United States in the Supreme Court's rolls. Sometimes states even sue each other, such as Delaware v. New Jersey.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The agent lists the basis for the forfeiture on page 66 of the affidavit. U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2323 allows the U.S. government to seize "Any property used, or intended to be used, in any manner or part to commit or facilitate the commission of [the following offenses]:" 506 of title 17, or section 2318, 2319, 2319A, 2319B, or 2320, or chapter 90 section 2318, 2319, 2319A, 2319B, or 2320.
I found the affidavit to be pretty sound, and the evidence was fairly damming. I don't think this will ultimately stop the pirates, however, as a close study of the affidavit will give you all the ideas you need to run a pirate site that obeys the letter of the law, but not the spirit.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday