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Cloudflare Under Fire For Allegedly Providing DDoS Protection For Terrorist Websites
Cloudflare is facing accusations that it's providing cybersecurity protection for at least seven terrorist organizations. "On Friday, HuffPost reported that it has reviewed numerous websites run by terrorist organizations and confirmed with four national security and counter-extremism experts that the sites are under the protection of Cloudflare's cybersecurity services," reports Gizmodo.
"Among Cloudflare's millions of customers are several groups that are on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations, including al-Shabab, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, al-Quds Brigades, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and Hamas -- as well as the Taliban, which, like the other groups, is sanctioned by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)," reports HuffPost.
"In the United States, it's a crime to knowingly provide tangible or intangible 'material support -- including communications equipment -- to a designated foreign terrorist organization or to provide service to an OFAC-sanctioned entity without special permission," the report continues. "Cloudflare, which is not authorized by the OFAC to do business with such organizations, has been informed on multiple occasions, dating back to at least 2012, that it is shielding terrorist groups behind its network, and it continues to do so." Gizmodo reports: The issue that HuffPost raises is whether Cloudflare is providing "material support" to sanctioned organizations. Some attorneys told HuffPost that it may be in violation of the law. Others, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argue that "material support" can and has been abused to silence speech. Cloudflare's general counsel, Doug Kramer, told Gizmodo over the phone that the company works closely with the U.S. government to ensure that it meets all of its legal obligations. He said that it is "proactive to screen for sanctioned groups and reactive to respond when its made aware of a sanctioned group" to which it may be providing services. HuffPost spoke with representatives from the Counter Extremism Project, who expressed frustration that they've sent four letters to Cloudflare over the last two years identifying seven terrorist-operated sites without receiving a reply. Kramer would not address any specific customers or situations when speaking with Gizmodo. He said that's simply company policy for reasons of protecting privacy.
"Among Cloudflare's millions of customers are several groups that are on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations, including al-Shabab, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, al-Quds Brigades, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and Hamas -- as well as the Taliban, which, like the other groups, is sanctioned by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)," reports HuffPost.
"In the United States, it's a crime to knowingly provide tangible or intangible 'material support -- including communications equipment -- to a designated foreign terrorist organization or to provide service to an OFAC-sanctioned entity without special permission," the report continues. "Cloudflare, which is not authorized by the OFAC to do business with such organizations, has been informed on multiple occasions, dating back to at least 2012, that it is shielding terrorist groups behind its network, and it continues to do so." Gizmodo reports: The issue that HuffPost raises is whether Cloudflare is providing "material support" to sanctioned organizations. Some attorneys told HuffPost that it may be in violation of the law. Others, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argue that "material support" can and has been abused to silence speech. Cloudflare's general counsel, Doug Kramer, told Gizmodo over the phone that the company works closely with the U.S. government to ensure that it meets all of its legal obligations. He said that it is "proactive to screen for sanctioned groups and reactive to respond when its made aware of a sanctioned group" to which it may be providing services. HuffPost spoke with representatives from the Counter Extremism Project, who expressed frustration that they've sent four letters to Cloudflare over the last two years identifying seven terrorist-operated sites without receiving a reply. Kramer would not address any specific customers or situations when speaking with Gizmodo. He said that's simply company policy for reasons of protecting privacy.
They are under fire for not cooperating with the big brother
Can you confirm it's the terrorist organization running those websites, or some guy who gets his kicks running a website for them?
>The issue that HuffPost raises
Lmao.
What a retarded clickbait non-story.
I think I would prefer steps being taken to protect me from groups like the "Counter Extremism Project" than any of the groups on that list (as awful as some of them are).
Just providing website services for these groups would be material support. The DDOS issue is practically moot.
Damned tired of their crusades against imaginary foes. Murrica's lieberalism is worse than the fucking creationalism.
I know something of OFAC. They are not nice, friendly, people. If they actually had a solid case they would be coming down on Cloudflare like a ton of bricks. The fact that they are whining in letters and not prosecuting means they have no case.
It's not just providing material support, just doing business with anyone on OFAC's list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) is a felony. The way the law is written, if anyone sells anything to a person who's on the SDN list, as much as a sandwich or a bottle of water, that's "doing business" and therefore a felony.
OFAC actually has the fantasy that all businesses in the US will check the ID of every customer and then check the SDN database against the customer's name before doing business with them. Nevermind that there are plenty of people in the world with the same names. And nevermind that it would take 15 minutes to buy a sandwich.
The CIA, the government of Saudi Arabia, Exxon-Mobile, PepsiCo, TrumpCo, the Canadian Mounties, and Linux.
...and I sell them falafels and hummus during lunch? Would I be prosecuted?
Where does this end exactly ?
Cloudflare
The ISP that gets them online
The guy who sold the computer
The one who made the website
Electricity provider to power it all
Canâ(TM)t go after the one without going after them all . . . .
Besides, the USG basically defines terrorist as anyone who they donâ(TM)t see eye to eye with. That list changes on a daily basis depending on who they are bombing on amy given day.
Seriously. When I saw it in the news awhile back they were praising how much better it is to work without any men.
https://www.aim.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/liz-heron-huffpo-feminism-pic.png
" if anyone sells anything to a person who's on the SDN list, as much as a sandwich or a bottle of water, that's "doing business" and therefore a felony. " - False, as written. You could be accused though. Were you?
Stop making up stories. If you want to tell a true one people might listen, but you're off to a bad start.
Cloudflare has shown before that they pick and chose which sites they provide services to. They cannot claim ignorance or neutrality.
The bleeding lot of them!
Typical leftist advocating for censorship of non-compliant groups.
It only promotes feminist, anti-men articles. The editors and writes Misandrist articles. They discriminate against employing men.
Warning! Warning! Your tax dollars are paying for highways and clean drinking water that terrorists might be using. Also, some terrorists might be shopping at Walmart. Oh, noes!
So domestic terrorists, such as anti-fa, are acceptable.
I'm assuming this doesn't include cash transactions. There's already plenty of Id.-checking over firearms, pharmaceuticals, aviation, finance and travel. Requiring a business to police every transaction is push-button policing and vigilante-ism. Anyway, I hope the coffee-shop outside OFAC asks for Id.
A nation state that cant cover the banDNWIDTH?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
for collecting info?
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
... again.
They should just change their name to "Cloudflare Under Fire."
Donkey goats.
The People's Front of Judea.
Am I a terrorist supporter?
I read some idiotic answers here, am i an idiot?
(Sure, I am).
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Without commenting on the people of OFAC, taking Noam Chomsky's explanation of standing for freedom of speech precisely for views one doesn't like (seen in context in the movie Manufacturing Consent where Chomsky defends Robert Faurrison's freedom of speech while not supporting his thesis—the segment begins around 2h24m21s and Chomsky's concise response about freedom of speech to a questioner is at 2h10m52s), I'm reminded that Cloudflare is the organization that also switched from a position that was content-neutral to picking and choosing whom to do business with based on what Cloudflare was caching. Torrentfreak.com covered this in an article concerning Cloudflare "kicking off" the Daily Stormer from their service according to Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince: "I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet." he claimed. This was a radical shift in policy from what Prince claimed about Cloudflare just a few weeks prior, "Even if it were able to, Cloudflare does not monitor, evaluate, judge or store content appearing on a third party website" and "We're the plumbers of the internet. We make the pipes work but it's not right for us to inspect what is or isn't going through the pipes". So apparently Cloudflare was able do precisely what he said it could not do, and Cloudflare did in fact make such evaluations even while Prince apparently misrepresented these facts to the public.
Digital Citizen
It's HuffPo. Therefore SJW-sympathetic. So we can reliably conclude, especially given one of the links has a URL saying "don't call us Nazis just because we take their money" that this is really about building public support for making Cloudflare drop anyone who says things that are politically incorrect. Just another bait and switch.
Irony is that most of the people contributing to the content in TFS probably support those groups because they're anti-Israel.
My money is on Cloudflare keeping those sites up because someone in the SIGINT community sent them a notice informing them and saying "please keep them up and send us logs, k thx."
Becausr HuffPo would cry islamophobia and racism if Cloudflare discriminated against those parties.
than cloudflare.
Around 2005, Myanmar only had 35Mbps connectivity to the internet for the entire country. That was a single DS3. My home connection today could flood that country off the internet in 2005.
As bandwidth around the world has increased for homes and businesses, many nations haven't kept up with similar rates of increases.
What if someone dug deep enough and found that McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell, Chick-Filla and Wendys all sell food to members of known terrorist groups?
Cloudflair has traditionally done a lousy job of vetting its customers. My network has been attacked a number of times by individuals behind their services.
Section 805 makes it a crime to offer "expert advice and assistance" to any foreign organization that the Secretary of State has designated as "terrorist."
Now how do I get the Secretary of State to add the entire country of Israel to that list?
Which terrorists groups are OK, and which aren't is entirely political. The IRA was certainly a terrorist group in the 80s, but it was an open secret that they were partially funded by bar owners in Boston by "Passing around the hat" to fund them.
Patreon often blocks even moderate conservatives from using their service.
But Patreon proudly allows the funding for violent leftist groups.
>>
WHAT?! Antifa Groups Are Using Patreon To Fund Violent ‘Insurrection’ Against America
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/what-antifa-groups-using-patreon-to-fund-violent-insurrection-against-america/
In an update to the story both the HuffPost and Gizmodo have both found themselves under investigation by OFAC for bringing the publics attention to these terrorist organizations and their websites.
Cloudflare has been informed on multiple occasions
So if I send an email to huffpost saying their editor is a bogeyman, "they were informed" and need to take down all his/her content, regardless of the authenticity of my informing.
If "regardless" is wrong, I'd like to know what measures of regard are required before a rando's email is established as proof of intent.
Required and ignored, in huffpost's accusation.