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."

Comments

Re:Welcome to the USA

[ugen]

Quote:
"As with previous seizures, ICE convinced a District Court judge to sign a seizure warrant, and then contacted the domain registries to point the domains in question to a server that hosts the warning message. However, somewhere in this process a mistake was made and as a result the domain of a large DNS service provider was seized."

You may not like this, but a warrant signed by a judge *is* due process.

Re:Why ICE/Homeland Security

[ScentCone]

People who smuggle in and fraudulently sell counterfeit goods are exactly their area of authority. It's true if the scammers sell the goods out the back of a van, and it's true if they sell them using an ad in the back of a magazine, and it's true if they use a web site. Siezing the web site isn't any different than siezing the warehouse where they stack up the counterfeit goods.

The child porn stuff is also their turf if those "services" are being sold from over the border. And of course, most of those operations are based overseas, taking credit cards from domestic (US) customers. If the sites are registered within reach of US law enforcement, those registrations are fair game, just like the warehouse full of fake Nike products.

Re:Welcome to the USA

[nedlohs]

No it's not. Judges sign invalid warrants on occassions, law enforcement does more than the warrant specifies on occassions, law enforcement lies in their applications for a warrant and gets it signed on occassions. All of those involve a warrant signed by a judge, but both are violations of due process.

Re:WHOAH Nelly

[billstewart]

According to a report by ABC News, the National Academy of Science just released a report saying he may not have actually done it.. That's after the Feds had accused a previous scientist who didn't cooperatively kill himself.

Also, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed "Curveball", admits he made up the WMD story so Bush would attack Saddam Hussein, and says he'd do that again (in spite of how well it worked out for everybody..)

Bad enough that I have to watch The Comedy Channel to get TV news, but now I have to read FARK to get the updated stories on the causes of the Iraq war.