Slashdot Mirror
.UK Registrar Offers To Let Police Close Domain
judgecorp writes "The .uk registrar, Nominet, has proposed rules that would give the police powers to demand Internet domains be shut down without a court order, in certain circumstances. The powers were requested by the Serious and Organized Crime Agency and have aroused concern that legitimate sites might be closed on suspicion of wrongdoing. Nominet's suggested implementation is online for public consultation."
"The policy would cover cases in which a site is involved in crimes covered under the Serious Crimes Act 2007, including fraud, prostitution, money laundering, blackmail and copyright infringement."
Always copyright infringement. Is it really a "serious crime"? And will this rule really have any effect?
The proposed policy looks like the typical fudge - 'we don't want to start acting as judge and jury but if the evidence is strong then we are going to start acting as judge and jury' seems to sum it up.
Korma: Good
There's a name for this sort of thing: extrajudicial punishment.
I hear in civilized parts of the world, it's highly frowned upon.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
The problem with all these sorts of powers (including the Justice Department shutting down sites it deems to have violated copyright) is that there's no judicial procedure.
Why is it that they don't understand the idea of having to prove wrongdoing by a website owner instead of merely asserting it?
In the new world, is enough to merely be accused of being a "pirate" to be shunted into a place where you have no rights? And no compulsory process for redress, and confronting your accusers?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
But just before you go ahead, Nominet, could you be a love and identify, oh let's say three examples of where a .uk domain has - ever - caused "serious and immediate consumer harm" before due process resulted in a court order shutting it down?
That's all I'd want to see. Three clear examples of harm, actual harm, not theoretical, and that ended in a court order. An actual court order, that was upheld, of course.
Nothing sub judice about that, court proceedings are public, so of course it won't be a problem to provide those three examples. Will it?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The problem is that when someone has a website that exposes corruption (say in the Met Police), the site is usually shutdown preety quickly or the owner intimidated into removing the hosting services.
This is not action against illegal acts, this is action by the police to protect each other from being foudn to have broken the law.
Wait, I'm having problems parsing that. Is that the Agency dealing with Serious and Organized Crime, or the Crime Agency that is Serious and Organized? Because frankly, the latter sounds just one door down from the Ministry of Funny Walks.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Yeah cos the .com domain has no takedown issues like the proposed system for the .uk domain...
nope, none at all.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
why the alarm? back in 2002, slashdotters were ranting and raving about the new airport security measures, as though somehow it would eventually lead to the physical inspection of babies. here we are in 2011, and the only 'inspection' of babies has been a simple, reasonable pat-down.
Right now this is at the very early discussion stage - "how would we do this, should we be the last resort rather than the first resort, what sort of judicial oversight should there be etc etc?"
Now is the time for action - the time to write to Nominet and say "I don't want you doing anything without a court order". Because you can guarantee that the police will be writing to Nominet to say "Of course we won't abuse the system! Just let us shut down anything we want. Even better, save us the trouble of having to contact a human being and give us a web portal we can log into to suspend .uk domain names. Judicial oversight? Pah, unnecessary."
Every time someone writes on of these condescending "Hello people of ...", I can't help but roll my eyes.
The internet is truly global, and you need to keep in mind all the time. Authorities all over the world are diligently chipping away at digital rights, and it's everyone’s problem.
Having stuck my oar in during a previous consultation, I was emailed a copy of the draft recommendations and asked for feedback. Here's the response I sent to Nominet.
Dear ______,
Thank you for circulating this draft. I'm disappointed to find that Nominet is still considering adopting a policy that effectively grants the police new powers. In a democratic society, the only acceptable way for police powers to be extended is through legislation. If there is a genuine need for the police to be able to take down websites without judicial supervision, Parliament should grant the police that power. If Parliament does not do so, no other organisation should arrogate the right to do so - particularly when, as the draft notes, the Government is currently considering such legislation.
It may be inconvenient for the police, and perhaps even "harmful to consumers", that judicial oversight sometimes imposes delays on police work. Nevertheless, that oversight exists for good reasons, and attempts by the police to circumvent it are misguided and dangerous.
Court orders are available at very short notice for other kinds of urgent police work; if the courts have not seen fit to make orders for taking down websites available to the police as quickly as the police would like then it is worth asking why not. Nominet should not allow itself to be manipulated by the police into short-circuiting the judicial process.
As a piece of quasi-legislation, the draft is seriously lacking. It does not define key terms such as "consumer harm" or "UK law enforcement agencies with which Nominet has a trusted relationship". No process is defined for deciding which cases "involve disputes between private parties, freedom of expression or political speech", or for challenging such decisions.
The vague language in the final paragraph about an "appeal mechanism" and an "independent panel" makes no concrete commitments to meaningful oversight. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how it could do so, since Nominet does not have any legal powers to punish wrong decisions or make reparations. The courts do - they are the proper venue for such decisions.
Best regards,
______
You're right. There are likely no perfect solutions. There will probably always be corruption and abuse. However, I still think that we should try to minimize these abuses of power. One of the ways we can do this is with something like judicial oversight. That is the oversight which you speak of.
I don't think that anything they do is okay merely because they could use it correctly.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
GREEK ALERT!
FGD 135