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US Gov't Mistakenly Shuts Down 84,000 Sites
Chaonici writes "Last Friday, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seized ten websites accused of selling counterfeit goods or trafficking in child pornography. However, in the process, about 84,000 unrelated websites were taken offline when the government mistakenly seized the domain of a large DNS provider, FreeDNS. By now, the mistake has been corrected and most of the websites' domains again point to the sites themselves, rather than an intimidating domain seizure image. In a press release, the DHS praised themselves for taking down those ten websites, but completely failed to acknowledge their massive blunder."
Where due process only exists for the highest bidder.
Great Intellect...
Was it really done mistakenly?
Or was it a test of how to shut down large parts of the Internet in case Egypt style revolution starts in USA and the government needs to shut down flow of the information?
You can't handle the truth.
How many people now have friends or family thinking they're pedophiles because of this little 'oops' from the government?
It's ok though, we should totally trust the government with more power over the internet.
I think what disturbs me isn't the intent (which was good), but the incredible screw up.
This was for your own protection fellow Americans, the greater good was served and no harm was done, also think of the children! Any mistakes done in our mission to save you from yourselves is not our faults.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
These people sue the government for loss of access and libel?
Or is it just one of those oopsie moments which will never be resolved?
...the fact that they've done damage to all those websites of businesses...im sure potential customers aren't at all put off seeing that domain seizure image.
Once the big bad government "accidently" shuts down Google, instead of some hapless defenseless sites that can't afford a lawyer, then there will be hell to pay.
Can someone remind me again why this falls under the jurisdiction of ICE/Homeland Security?
Are child pornographers planning on invading the US or something?
So, tell me again how it's a good thing for the FCC to have control?
I'd say that anyone wrongly losing revenue should pursue recourse for that issue. I work with very larger organizations and in many cases a loss of service is a "billable" offense. Obviously the provider in this case was not at fault. I'm not a fan of lawsuits but this is the type of case that should be taken up. It is these big brother activities that lawsuits are good at handling but I'm sure DHS is protected as made men and all that.
DNS TTLs cause a small oops to become a long and painful oops that doesn't readily clear itself up due to DNS servers around not obeying the TTL and flushing on time.
I really don't know why this ticks me off so much but it does.
so they just shut down a big block to get 1 site?
seems like they are going for the Shotgun way of taking sites down.
"Tis far nobler that 84,000 innocent websites be taken down than 10 potential violators go free..."
er wait, that's not the quote... oh well too late for your site!
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
tog et rid of DHS. It's a stupid extra layer of management put there by someone who thinks problems are fixed with more management.
defund them, give the funds to the agencies them selves.
DHS has done nothing but blunder everything it touches.
With every agency I an think of, I can list a HUGE number of success to a very tiny number of failures, but not DHS.
Twads.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... he's liable for the loss of business. I wonder if the DHS will make restitution for its denial of service. Free T-shirts with the DHS logo for all affected!
Working...
... so come out with it immediately, fess up, apologize, and make a vocal effort to prevent such an error from being made in the future... AND THEN brag about your success.
Always admit your failures and shortcomings first that way it doesn't look like you're hiding them. This is A+, #1 advice for PR in the digital world.
and it's free!
We need a decentralized DNS system, like bit torrent but for DNS. Every user of the internet could have a cache of the DNS entry and remove the monopoly of the ICANN
The US Government? As of late, that has become a sort of pipe dream. We have revolutions and protests happening to try and secure more democratic ideals and oust the dictatorships and autocracies in Egypt, Iran, and several other prominent Arab/Muslim countries and states, but here in the US we are seizing innocent people's web sites and then pretending it didn't happen, enacting legislation that singles out groups of people by racial profiling them, have senators and governors trying to repeal health care reform, and are trying to find ways to change our laws and/or constitution to prohibit the free press and make it so they can't leak sensitive information anymore without facing jail time and possible treason charges, while we still have a "secret" government prison open at Guantanamo Bay holding prisoners against their will with no charges or due process, one of which died recently after 9 years of captivity, while we hold Bradley Manning in solitary confinement, possibly torturing him because he saw something wrong and decided it was horrible enough that the PEOPLE needed to know about it.
Where the fuck do I live again?
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
"...the DHS praised themselves for taking down those ten websites, but completely failed to acknowledge their massive blunder."
Well, let's see, we could theorize as to why they failed to acknowledge this, but I think I'm gonna go with my tried and true theory instead:
They could give a flying fuck, because they answer to no one.
Yup, that pretty much sums it up.
Well, if they flubbed up, they should at least have the balls to admit it, and not try to sweep it under the rug. Because the story will get out there anyway. It reminds me of this:
VOICE: Inflamed caller and smooth politician replying, both unidentified. Radio call-in show, New York, July 1979:
What're you saying? He said "I'm sorry, I committed a sin, I made a mistake. I asked (?????) to forgive me... please forgive me." He said "Mea Culpa," can you put it better? "I'm saying I'm sorry, I made a mistake, I made... I committed a sin, I made a mistake. And I'm never gonna do it again, I never did it before and I'm never gonna do it again."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Is anyone else disturbed that the Department of Homeland Security can take down websites? Isn't that outside of their scope? They are supposed to protect us from outside threats like terrorism or attack, not child porn. Thats FBI territory I would think.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
what if it happened to your business? what do you do then?
So what is the point of redirecting to that fear mongering image? Is it to educate people who happen to not know that child pornography is bad? This blunder wouldn't have been nearly as damaging to innocent people if it was just their site being unreachable, but no, instead they are openly accused of being pedophiles.
I would like to see what happens when DHS cast its next take down and happens to snap CHASE.COM or some other big institution.
I hope this caused some synapses to fire.
After this, I figure the only safe assumption when I see someone accused of child molestation or possessing kiddie porn, is that they are innocent.
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Oh so a President can change the way the entire government works overnight? Let's not forget who set up Homeland Security in the first place...
That's so gay.
...by blocking DNS. If you have the website address and a decent DNS cache/mirror, the website is still working. Right now governments think that you shut down a website by removing DNS entries, but on a news for nerds weblog, we should know better than that, shan't we ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
If we have to punish 8400 innocents to get just one alleged criminal, it's all worthwhile. You don't agree? Why are you supporting child molesters (terrorists)?
I mean, what's the alternative, go through the courts? Some of those bastard judges like to see evidence!
Hey, I'm just glad Obama's president and all this stuff has come to an end. No wait...
This violation of due process was brought to you by the Obama Adminstration. He's a DemocRat, in case you've forgotten.
SO how's that Hopey Changey thing workin' for ya?
.
Whats to stop a class action lawsuit after this?
Wow, with all the shit we keep hearing about turning off the internet in Egypt...It seems we are not far behind, this sounds pretty damn close to me, just a typo away. Alright this is DNS, not the internet/IP but how many of us know the IPs of sites or worse how many of the 'others' out there know even know what an IP is, DNS might as well be the internet.
Nice to know there's an online version of "Sorry 'bout shooting your dog/son/daughter, we got the wrong house".
Then again, I don't remember any apologies in real life.
--
pass
84,000 websites! And how many of those websites were actually even remotely popular? How many times did someone *actually* try to navigate to one of these sites and end up with the ICE notice? TFA doesn't mention any specifics...makes me doubt that anyone was seriously affected in this. Yes, I know, this is /. and I'm supposed to hate the USA for messing up again...but I'm just not convinced that this is a big deal.
I'm not particularly litigious, but I'd like to see 84,000 sue for defamation of character. I mean, that's a lot of people to be accused of child pornography.
People may well end up dead because of this if they don't offer up a sincere apology soon. Not everyone reacts with a calm weighing of the evidence when they see that someone local has been accused of child porn.
These clear attempts on censorship got to stop! Tunesia and Egypt might be bad examples of censorship, but this is clearly censorship, clearly executed with impunity. And executed by incompetent people as well.
So when are we going to march? Where do we meet to demonstrate/camp out until this president leaves and the Senat as well with its COICA attempts. Or are Americans willing to see their constitution trampled upon? Where is the tea party when you need it? Michelle Bachman save us!
I was reading the comments and it just hit me: everyone commenting is missing the elephant in the room. Yeah sure, there is some problem with the process making sure the correct sites are taken down, but WHAT THE FUCK IS DHS DOING CHASING CHILD PORN PEDDLERS?
....FUCKING TERRORISTS. You know, the guys with bombs and anthrax who want to kill us in droves. Does DHS have so much free time on their hands that they are chasing common criminals to kill time? (Rhetoric, I think this question has sort of answered itself..)
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't that the FBI's jurisdiction? I was working under some sort of obviously fucked up thinking that DHS was protecting us from, oh I don't know,
If any DHS personel happens to be reading this, please pass this on to the people running your little knitting bee: Hey DHS, you fucking nazi retards....FOCUS ON THE GUYS WITH THE ASSAULT RIFLES WHO WANT TO BUY DIRTY BOMBS.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Someone misread the phrase "Better 10 Guilty Men Go Free than to Convict a Single Innocent Man". Better you are several miles away from the next place they decide that someone is bad around there.
Welcome to hope and change, screwing up more than the last administration...
US Federal Agency
ICE's primary mission is to promote homeland security and public safety through the criminal and civil enforcement of federal laws governing border control, customs, trade, and immigration
Four key priorities for the agency's future:
Prevent terrorism and enhance security
Protect the borders against illicit trade, travel and finance
Protect the borders through smart and tough interior immigration enforcement
Construct an efficient, effective agency
20,000 Employees
Over $5.7 Billion annual budget
take a peak in the about us section: http://www.ice.gov/about/overview/
Those who can, do.
This shouldn't even be POSSIBLE by mistake. They should need a court order for each one.
And sorry about that Chinese Embassy thing as well. Shit happens.
-- The government.
Have gnu, will travel.
This would make an awesome Dukes of Hazzard episode.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
I bet anything that the majority of the web-sites "mistakenly" taken down were in fact "conservative" news-aggregators, or otherwise "pro-American" in their content, slant, or ideology. America is doomed. and has only months left. Hope you've all enjoyed liberty and relative "justice". Soon you'll have to fight for such things on a very personal level....and Susan B. help you if you don't speak spanish.....The only place for you will be a street corner to beg from!
-Oz
They meant to shut down FreePNS.
"There ought to be limits to freedom." -George W. Bush
Your web site was mistakenly slashdotted.
Your government
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
than sorry. Take 'em all down - let God sort 'em out.
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
Is it just me or doesn't anyone else wonder what the hell is a department set up to fight terrorism is doing spending taxpayers money to defend the interests of big corporations?
You are summing up BAD PR. Yes, that is the most common form of PR but it is NOT good or effective PR.
The most simple example is with trains. Delays are pretty much inevitable on a complex network but trying to "hide" this does not work. The public can SEE the errors. If they find them out before you inform them they just get frustrated and feel cheated. So, if a train is running late. Announce it and announce it BEFORE everyone at the station can SEE it is running late. Train coming in at 10:30 getting a update at 10:35 that is late will is NOT good PR.
Admit you screwed up early and you are INFORMING people AND can THEN avoid the extra damage by people imagining the worsed.
But effective PR is costly and takes a lot of effort. You have to be constantly on your toes to make sure YOU are the one pointing out your own mistakes and not somebody else. BUT by YOU being the one pointing it out you at least seem somewhat in control and can limit the random speculation.
The dutch railways didn't use to say what caused delays, now they do. Nobody can fault the train service for a suicide jumper even if it causes hours delay. So people are NOT upset. Strange but true. INFORMED people are far less angry.
Sadly BAD PR has controlled society for so long we are now thinking it is NORMAL for PR to say "no comment". That is not what PR is supposed to be about. It is to INFORM the press of what is going on so the rest of the business can focuss on its own task. It is NOT to be a blackhole for communication.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So how about this - how about each site owner launches a lawsuit similar to the RIAA and charges like $750 for every 3MB of data that either users would have had access to or that would typically be downloaded for the length of time the site was down. With 84,000 users and Gigabytes of data, I'm sure ICE will either reconsider any future takeovers or help show how rediculous the charges that the RIAA is getting from downloaders.
> You may not like this, but a warrant signed by a judge *is* due process.
The warrant is signed without giving the opposing party an opportunity to contest the hearing which, frankly, is ridiculous in this case. Why? Because they're only seizing the domain name; they're not even taking the site offline. There's no "emergency" here. There's no reason they couldn't send a message to the sites and allow them to respond.
An ex parte hearing in which the suspects are publicly accused of committing crimes (which get placed on your own site!) without a verdict having been rendered is a farce, not due process. Merely because a judge is involved in the affair does not mean that it passes constitutional muster. I sincerely wonder if the process will actually survive scrutiny.
In 2011, war was beginning.
And a list of the sites banned?
I'm sure I could configure my own domain server to pull the master file and offer the sites to myself and anyone else that used my domain server. If enough of us did this and offered our DNS servers on a list... You get the idea.... We could do the same thing that Verisign did with non existent domains, but in this case redirect them them to where they belong.
I hate it when ignorant people think they understand how the net works. Alternate DNS is a concept that has been around a long time. An international organization with enough clout could pull off a coup on the United States at any time as far as TLD domains and root servers. And once that genie is out of the bottle every business on the net is going to be screaming at the US government.
so what. if they got what they were looking for then thats good. life after 2010.
>>probable cause
You all need to read the Bill of Rights to etymology, not massaged terms of a contract that bunch two words together to be defined by a misplaced perview.
Whevever the cause-probable to search any of of those sites of evidence in a realm, "probable cause" otherwise than these probable causes gven the character of the accused would necessitate a much more broad definition than what has been limited by the corporation (CIA/FBI/DOJ/BATFEces) persuing this voluntary investment mitigation (investigation) to where is more effective to draw unmetered currencies of a successful prosecution that would supplement their payroll rather than reason the cost to repair the damages suggested of the offenses that necessitated prosecution from their respective "Corpus Delecti."
Maybe one can post comments to the editor?
Nothing changes, the more time goes on, the more it all looks the same.
>In a press release, the DHS praised themselves for taking down those ten websites, but completely failed to acknowledge their massive blunder.
My point exactly, how many times have we heard of plunders associated with different government operations, where they try and state the obvious about the good it does, but forget to mention the lack of proper understanding, and organization could have avoided 84k websites going down, instead they could have just focused more on the problem, but did not want to a) spend more money doing it, easier to take down a whole DNS then a few websites) or b) learning what needs to be known about something before acting....in this case, HOW could we take down a few websites without disrupting others, I am sure there is half we don't care , and the other half we don't know how....scenario to this problem.
Lemme get this straight.... The DHS accused 84,000 people of being child molestors. Do we have that many ankle bracelets?
In the meantime, we have Congressmen sending racy photos to women on Craigslist, we have TSA agents stealing cash from people's luggage (yes, this is real, two guys were just busted for this), and our entire lawmaking body is composed of whiny, childish, incompetent fools who are only there to take money under the table, enriching themselves at the cost of the public.
But in Egypt, they are rioting. We are too busy watching American I-Dull. I'm moving to another country where freedoms are respected. 'Cause it sure ain't here. The USA is over. Romania is looking good right now.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I say take that 'intimidating image' and post it EVERYWHERE. It loses it's meaning if it's on every website from Fark to Google.
We have the power to take power from those that have power.
You can also alter the image to make it funny as well.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I remember an image of a stick figure with circles where "boobs' would be; the caption was "Kiddie Porn".
Given the current environment, I'm hesitant to ask for a link to it.
Would this be kiddie porn in Australia or here, according to DHS?
This is clearly a violation of the First Amendment Rights of those sites caught up in the sweep. Now who at DHS is gonna do time for being un-American?
The government does all this work to stop pederphiles and all you guys can do is question whose jurisdiction it was supposed to be, and obsess over whether anyone's reputation got tarnished??
Can't you see we're fighting for the children here?
You need to learn to trust your government... it can do no wrong. It would never violate it's own constitution...
sigh