Homeland Security Won't Even Admit Whether Or Not It Seized Mooo.com, Taking Down 84,000 Innocent Sites
from the transparency-in-government dept
Yesterday, I wrote about how there were many reports, starting over the weekend, claiming that Homeland Security's inept Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) group had once again screwed up the process of seizing domains. However, this time, the mistake appeared to be on a much larger scale. While some other sites have simply assumed that Homeland Security seized the entire mooo.com domain, thereby publicly accusing 84,000 sites (nearly all of which were perfectly legitimate) of trafficking in child porn, we were at least willing to give Homeland Security the benefit of the doubt and question whether it was really involved.Given that no one seemed to confirm that Homeland Security was involved, I figured I might as well ask. I sent off a quick email to a press contact at Homeland Security, asking a simple question: did Homeland Security seize -- and then unseize -- the mooo.com domain? It seemed like a simple yes or no question, and given that Homeland Security is a part of the Obama administration, which has promised the utmost transparency, I figured the least it could do was provide that simple answer. Instead, the response I got was:
"I need to refer you to DOJ for a response to your question."This, of course, is not true. The actions were taken by Homeland Security's ICE group. It was Homeland Security that put out the bragging press release about seizing more domains and putting up their "this site trafficked in child porn" graphics. But it can't even answer a simple yes or no question about a specific domain? That's not transparency. It also seems to suggest quite strongly that DHS and ICE did, in fact, screw up royally here.
I responded to the press contact, and pointed out that there is simply no reason that Homeland Security cannot answer this question, and repeated the question, but I have not heard back. I also sent an email to the Justice Department, and have also received no response.
Lots of folks are pointing out the incredibly serious First Amendment concerns brought out by such a seizure. Of course, we've pointed out such concerns with all of the previous domains seized, and people said they were overblown concerns. I'm somewhat stunned that we still had people defending such seizures without any due process, when 84,000 legitimate sites might have taken down, as a result.
And, once again, if there were actual due process, involving an actual adversarial hearing, moves like this would be avoided. On top of that, if Homeland Security wanted to actually go after child pornographers by tracking them down and arresting them, rather than just seizing domains, mistakes like this would be avoided. Of course, that would involve doing real work. And that's something that Homeland Security apparently isn't interested in, from the special agents who have failed massively in their investigations on these various takedowns all the way to the press spokespeople who can't even be straight with the American public when they make a massive First Amendment-violating mistake.
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Filed Under: domain names, free speech, homeland security, ice, mooo.com, prior restraint, seizures, transparency
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Hold on, let's go to the airport first....
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Go ahead and be stunned. Actually they took down 1 site. That site had 84,000 subsites, but that isn't really relevant. By that logic, all torrent site owners would need to do is create a bunch of third level entries for blogs talking about flowers or something, attribute them to "anonymous" users, and somehow their sites would be all legal and peachy. Would it be different if it was a single site with 84,000 pages?
As for Homeland Security, who is responsible for them? DoJ.
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Uh, no they aren't. Completely separate branches of the hierarchy....
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Are you talking about the Department of Homeland Security? Because Janet Napolitano is responsible for them. And then President Obama is responsible for her.
But then, the people of this country are responsible for him, so I guess the collective 'we' are responsible for them?
I think in the end, you are responsible for the Department of Homeland Security.
If you are not talking about DHS, please be more specific so I can help you with that answer.
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Umm, yea it is. If the owner of a office park is laundering money, you don't get to close the doors of every business in the office park without due process for each business therein.
That's kind of the whole fucking point. Due process wasn't followed.
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Thanks for playing.
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The feds wouldn't seize the entire complex because there "might be" a connection. The leases would continue until a court order.
Keep playing.
-CF
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> they are proceeds from crime, the leases on
> them wouldn't be valid anymore
Actually, the leases would still be valid. Go learn some basic landlord/tenant property law and come back when you can discuss this intelligently.
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Yes, because it's absolutely impossible for DHS to figure out how to just target the illegal sites, huh?
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Well, I know you are a smart guy. I know you understand how third level domains work. I know you can understand why this might be a little difficult to accomplish, especially when people tend to use dynamic dns techniques to move from computer to computer, often outside of the country.
But you are smart, you know all that.
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If it IS so easy just to move the sites around, then why isn't homeland doing something that might actually work instead of damaging the reputation of 83,999 websites by accident?
Fun fact, even when you target the right site and only the right site, it's still just as easy to slip out from the domain grab.
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If they're policing the internet it's their job to overcome that difficulty. Being given orders by their superiors not to talk to the domain owners and ISPs hinders their investigation. Then adding a seizure notice on the wrong sites causes a liability.
They could have called/emailed/located the owner of mooo.com via WHOIS information and had him assist with investigation. Just taking down the domain name won't stop the child pornographers from moving to another domain name. The strategy of not communicating with anyone besides Verisign has failed on so many levels.
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Speaking of Verisign
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Yeah, it's *****so***** difficult to go to the free DNS provider and say "shut off this subdomain." I mean, it's impossible compared to going to the registrar and saying "shut off this domain." Oh wait, no, it's the same damn thing.
But, even more to the point, DHS would have avoided all of this if it simply filed a lawsuit like it should have in the first place.
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Well, you see, there you are wrong, it isn't the same thing at all.
What happens if the "freeDNS" provider happens to be actually in the business of selling child porn, or perhaps one of their key staffers is doing it? Before you start laughing, remember EstDomains, EstHost, and all that load of crap? All of that was set up specifically so that they could receive the sort of request you are suggesting and appear to answer it, while isolating their illegal activities from actual law enforcement action.
I do not imply anything for moooo.com or any of it's workers, staff, owners, or anything like that. It's just that we have already seen how the be nice system can be convoluted by people who want to take advantage of it.
It might have been nice to contact them, but it also might have been meaningless.
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People are not guilty until proven innocent.
"It might have been nice to contact them, but it also might have been meaningless."
How could they know until they at least contacted them first. It's their job to investigate this stuff first before just randomly taking sites down. Shoot first, ask questions later is dumb.
They could have contacted them first, told them to take down the specific sites in question, subpoenaed the required information, contacted them and asked them for that information, got the information, and continued on with their investigation. If they contact them and the host isn't cooperative is when they should take further action against the host. But don't just assume they won't be cooperative without at least making some effort to contact them.
I understand they're lazy and don't want to do their jobs, because they are very aversive to work, but this is ridiculous. They're getting paid, by taxpayers, to do work and I don't think it's asking too much for us to require of them at least a minimal amount of effort.
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Not saying that. I am saying the COULD have been contacted before, they MAY have been contacted before, but is there any reason to contact people commiting crimes ahead of time to see if they can just stop for a while?
What if moo didn't think the sites should be taken down because they thought they weren't violating any laws. Due process is in order
See, your problem is you are replacing the courts with Mooo's judgement. Ice doesn't do the work without a court order, so you are looking at enough probably cause for the judge to sign the warrant. Due process has already started before the takedown occurs.
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First it has to be "a preponderance of evidence" not "probable cause".
So you are really trying to spin this as "a judge had a preponderance of evidence to shutdown 84,000 sites"?
Really?
How much time was spent looking at all of those 84,000 sites? Seems to me it would take a pretty long time to even look at the landing pages for 84,000 sites.
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No, I didn't say that at all. Do you insist on putting words in other people's mouths?
They shut down (for a short period of time) a single domain. There was apparently infringing material on that domain. There may be non-infringing material as well, but the domain was showing infringing material. There was (as you say) a preponderance of evidence of something on that one and single unique domain, mooo.com
I don't think anyone really cared if there was 84,000 "sites" or 84,000 "pages" or 84,000 "blog entries". There is only one domain. The rest is "content".
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Is those laws only for people who can't defend themselves, not for big companies and important people?
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And when people say the enforcement agencies and justice are incompetent to judge technology people say they are over reacting.
That right there just proves their incompetency and the risks involved with such strong measures on the internet.
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Telling, TAM.
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A: Just because someone that the site hosts maybe committing crimes does not mean that they are committing crimes.
B: Yes, they have a right to face their accuser and to defend themselves in court, which requires them to be contacted.
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B. Yes, I agree - but that doesn't stop the seizures. They can still have a day in court, but there is no reason to tolerate and permit clearly illegal activity to continue without stopping. Otherwise, all those people sitting in jail waiting for trials should all be released. They haven't had a day in court yet.
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Brilliant TAM logic, as always.
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Damn one could just post pedo material on Youtube using steganography or one could use and automated tool to create a series of posts in every forum(i.e. Twitter, Flickr, Gov domains and so forth) to use special characters to encode image data in plain text and use a mapping archive to retrieve that data, voila you have child pornography in plain sight.
Basically by shining light at them and doing nothing is as good as looking to the other way, that works well when you don't really want to do any work or don't know how to deal with something, but really doesn't do anything for the abused children and it almost guarantee that it will be harder in the future to find those people.
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Heh, and so now you're just making crap up. There's no indication that mooo was doing any of that. Typical copyright supporter: If the facts don't support your position, just make some up!
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Governments are too blunt an instrument to stop crime. Having the government stop crime is like trying to carve out one of Michelangelo's sculptures with a wrecking ball. Not only will it not accomplish the intended task, it will destroy everything else in its path.
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Finally, we can agree on something!
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a) It alerted those predators that someone was looking at them, which will make them scramble to more secure locations.
b) Made the appearance of doing something be more important then doing something, just looking away why those children are still being forced into sex is like preaching about how bad it is while you turn your face to another place and don't look at it happening right at your side.
I can understand they seizing such a site after they have identified and apprehended those people, then they would have done a great job, not shooting light just to see the creatures scatter in every direction.
Also this pedo thing needs strong controls and more transparency, many people are being accused of pedo behavior when they should not and it is being used like some sort of magic wand to pass legislation that erodes civil liberties that cost blood to gain.
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No, they just need to get mooo.com to modify x.mooo.com in their mooo.com DNS servers. And mooo wasn't hosting the sites, either.
rather than asking Verisign to modify mooo.com in their .com servers.
They could have done the exact same thing with mooo.
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I made this point yesterday. If this had been a drug bust in an apartment building, they had a target of one or two apartments. To get that target, they arrested everyone in the building - posted notices on their doors, answering machines, and voicemails that they had been arrested, and then released everyone except the drug dealers (actually, they may have let the dealers go too) several days later. The damage they have done to innocent people and businesses is probably pretty bad.
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So? The police can't know for sure who's innocent and who's guilty beforehand. That's what trials are for. What you describe is just the way the system works.
The damage they have done to innocent people and businesses is probably pretty bad.
That's just the price you pay for a safe society. Too boo-hoo bad.
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After disrupting 84,000 websites I doubt they know anything or are doing their job with due diligence.
This is not a small mistake.
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Yes, apparently he's pleased that it failed to stop a single pedophile and failed to protect a single child.
Now why would you be glad about that?
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So you'd have no problem if ICE seized the hotmail.com domain taking down your anonymousCoward@hotmail.com account because someone, somewhere was using hotmail to send files covered by copyright?
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If you believe this is the right way to go about things, why don't you try setting a vacation message like that on your email account now? It couldn't do any harm to you right? There's no such thing as vigilantes right? Right???
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Every web host, every email provider, every ISP, every search engine is guilty by association (based on your "control" statement).
There is no ability to "control" how users use an open system. There is no safe place on the Internet.
What you're saying is that you're okay with dismantling the Internet because bad people use it.
If that is the case, and you are okay with having your email/Internet cut off until it can be made safe and crime-free, then in all honestly you should, based on your stated principle, give it up.
-CF
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Emails in and of themselves aren't going to get anyone shut down, now are they?
If I started to see hotmail providing dynamic dns and freebie third level domains with instant activation and no checking of sites, I would very likely not use it for email, because it would be risky.
What you (and the original poster) are doing is trying to set up a situation that is not permitted under law. If you can come with with an example that would pass legal muster, we can discuss. But wandering off on a parade of bizarre absolutes and impossible circumstances isn't going to go very far.
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Because if you don't, one could just go there and recreate that account and start using it as it was you.
Is your secret question made up of a sixteen or larger string of characters, because if it is not people may get in there, is your secondary email account active? Can I recreate that account and ask another password with it?
Lets hack your email and start using it to do bad things and see you go down for it, shall we?
That is how I know you are full of s.
Security experts recently got hacked and if even they couldn't fallow security simple rules, I doubt you can and will be a easier target.
Do your company have a website? does it have a public space?
I can use that to do illegal stuff, I just need to encode hardcore pr0n into text or whitespaces and keep posting that data there and each peace will point to the next and it would be invisible to most people but your company will be part of a crime in no time.
And you want hardcore laws to deal with that?
LoL
You will receive in no time the right punishment, this will come back and bite you in the ass.
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Only because the legal system is broken.
"What you (and the original poster) are doing is trying to set up a situation that is not permitted under law."
No, "providing dynamic dns and freebie third level domains with instant activation and no checking of sites" is permitted by law. and it should be.
Your argument is like saying that because people can use the mail delivery system for illegal purposes, the USPS should open up and inspect all packages before delivering. Ridiculous.
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Really? Why not?
If I started to see hotmail providing dynamic dns and freebie third level domains with instant activation and no checking of sites, I would very likely not use it for email, because it would be risky.
So what does your personal ignorance have to do with anything?
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Some blogs are how people make money today, in effect the government has taken away their bank accounts and means to make a living.
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> that sort of thing going on.
Well, that's the difference between you and rational people. We don't much care for having our businesses and lives disrupted merely because of a civil dispute between people we don't know and couldn't care less about.
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Hotmail IS unable to control it's users. (And has often been used for illegal purposes). In fact, the whole internet in general has been used for illegal purposes. I suspect the internet itself is what you would really like to see shut down.
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Why are you being duplicitous about this by pretending to care while actively supporting and defending actions that are designed not to stop pedophiles, but to actuall hide them better?
When you defend pedophiles raping children because it helps you defend copyright then you are a sick and warped individual that needs to be taken out of society.
How twisted can you get?
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Weren't you one of the people saying that this latest batch of seizures is a new operation about child pornography and not simply a renaming of the old operation to make it more difficult for people to criticize?
When did torrent sites end up part of this discussion? I though they were going after child pornography sites.
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You are truly so far bent that the air probably comes out crooked when you breathe.
You should really seek professional help, soon.
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> for them? DoJ.
Wrong. Homeland Security is an entirely separate, independent, and co-equal cabinet-level department. It does not fall under DoJ.
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Google, Yahoo, Baidu, Bing, Facebook, Amazon, Craiglist and so forth because they all are material to providing some kind of support for illegal activities :)
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In that case then, "mooo" is really just a "subsite" off "com". So, what they really should have done is shut down the "com" domain, eh?
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Homeland Security..
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Damned if you do, ...
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Re: Damned if you do, ...
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Wildcard setup is the smoking gun
74.81.170.110 reallyfakehostname111.com
74.81.170.110 mooo.com
See the difference?
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Re: Wildcard setup is the smoking gun
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You are in big trouble now...
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Re: You are in big trouble now...
They just pay TAM to talk bollocks instead.
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Mike ... File an FOIA ...
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Heck, they should also seize some cities, no, wait, some countries. I know for sure there are some bad people out there doing some bad things to children...
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Well, yeah, but do they have oil?
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What's wrong with you DH?
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I'll be useless when our toasters rise up against us....
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Except . . . they should be more green. Are they simply discarding those snake husks after extracting the oil for use as lubrication on our children? They could be making condoms out them, (also to use on our children)!
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A disfunctional cycle
1. Gov't engages in potentially corrupt, tyrannical, or unconstitutional activity.
2. Gov't lies, denies, obfuscates and delays any details of their involvement.
3. Gov't employee gets tired of working inept liars, and potential tyrants, leaks details of gov't involvment in the activity.
4. Gov't arrests employee. Promises reforms to inept activities, and better "protections" for whistleblowers.
5. Gov't argues that the activity was done, and the employee arrested to protect the integrity of the law, and the gov't right to keep secrets for: Artists and Inventors/National Security/The Children.
6. If there is continued disatisfaction from rightfully concerned citizens, the activity is sent to a Blue Ribbon Panel, where reccomendations will be made, but no action taken, unless it increases gov't power. This panel will include memebers of both parties, who despite any past rhetoric, realizes and benefits from "gov't in our lives".
7. All is quiet until the next activity.
If I weren't so cynical, this would be a cycle worthy of grief and mourning. Instead it gets a sad name, like "politics as usual", in order to numb our wounded souls.
What makes it worse IMO, is that this is a road to Perdition built one pebble at a time by people with mostly good intentions.
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8. The tinfoil hatters make up 7 point lists to try to explain every government action and inaction as an affront to their personal freedoms.
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government action and inaction is typically an affront to personal freedoms.
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Actually, I'm pretty consistent there. I find government inaction as beneficial to personal freedoms. It means that some actual thought or debate might be occuring.
The past 10 years are a good example that most restrictions to freedom, whether they succeed or not, are rapid responses to moral panics (Terrorism! Pirates! Violent Video Games!), not careful, thoughtful reactions, where options are seen in the light of real risks, or possible alternatives.
Some actions, like the PATRIOT Act I even understood in the beginning, if for nothing other than this response was to a real event. But it's been 10 years now, and not only is it likely to be renewed dispite no real insight into its effectiveness, the original rationale has become a moral panic, essentially a springboard for more intrusions, like the TSA's "detailed scan or grope" process at airports. At the time nobody thought about the implications, and at this point they still aren't, and that creates an inertia that's poisonous to the liberties the US aspired to build itself on.
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Inaction is good for personal freedoms as long as the inaction doesn't lead to others infringing into your personal freedoms. Inaction is a sign of tolerance, tolerance tends to lead to people pushing the boundries, and when the pushback happens, it is usually appears strong and is often resented.
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This is also a true first emendement issue, as they took down a lot of protected speech.
So you keep up with your FUD and drinking that kool-aid.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A disfunctional cycle
If you are going to pull out the "first emendement", you may want to understand all of it's legal implications (and heck, learn to spell it).
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Show us where in the constitution it says those are not protected.
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http://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230
Why is First Amendment being violated?
Why is the law being selectively applied?
Why are we warning predators to the presence of law enforcement in the vicinities of their operations?
Why is the police not seizing the criminals first and letting them escape? and consequently teaching them to be better criminals.
And there are more questions, keep up the f'cking FUD because your rhetoric is only that FUD to confuse those issues, because no reasonable human being would make snark remarks about that or consider them something lesser.
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> speech) is outside the scope of the 1st amendment
So you're saying unprotected speech is not protected?
Brilliant!
What you failed to note is that only obscenity and incitement to imminent violence falls outside the scope of the 1st Amendment, neither of which apply to copyright infringement.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A disfunctional cycle
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To point out " ccording to you, the government can simply pass a law declaring a type of speech illegal.:"
Look up George Carlin 7 dirty words and tell us its not happening already.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A disfunctional cycle
X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*
I hope you are using Windows with some antivirus because that string right there will just make them go nutts LoL
I hope nobody ever Metasploit your ass and put a lot of kiddy pr0n in there and then call the popos to take you down.
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Call FreeDNS/Socketfire
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mooo
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Exactly, seizing a bunch of arbitrarily unrelated domains isn't going to do anything to stop them whatsoever. Go after them, prosecute them, and put them in jail. IOW, do your job you lazy retards.
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Now that was just mean.
All of them exhibited energy levels exponentially higher than what is normally observed in government workers. Associating retards with Homeland Security is just being mean to retards.
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Re: Now that was just mean.
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That is the best early warning system for criminals ever devised LoL
Those people have all the incentives in the world to be tech savy and adopt ever more complex systems to evade the law.
This ad show what they are doing it was done for Europe but it is valid for the U.S. too.
Cleanternet - for a cleaner and safer Internet - cleanternet.org
The government basically is using the prove and tested practice of ignoring the problem and looking away.
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Sickening.
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Intentional?
It's not like this was just a typo, this went through multiple individuals.
It's also a year before elections. Now is great time to step up activities so someone can run next year for senate/congress or sit in front of a congressional hearing for an appointment and say "we made a huge effort that you all saw".
Same way DA's all over the country start going after high school students with a tiny age difference and charge them as child molesters so that they can say they were "cracking down".
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CALL YOUR CONGRESSMEN!!!!!
Your elected representatives can get answers out of DoJ when you can't.
Ask your Congressman if DoJ is covering up a big mistake!
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DHS
over reach is all I can say.
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... or that someone should probably do a little investigation first. What a mess.
using "we're protecting children" is how the DOJ is going to shove ridiculous stuff like this at us... it's vile
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A hundred class action lawyers pants just suddenly got tighter.
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Indeed... the sad part is - who pays for it in the end?
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One bad apple spoils the bunch
You'd think everyone, including Mike Masnick, would be glad that a child pornography site was taken down...
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Re: One bad apple spoils the bunch
You might be singing a different tune if you were the one at risk of being held responsible for your users actions. Can you imagine if the same standard were applied to, say, Gmail whenever somebody used Gmail to break the law?
PS - You're an idiot.
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Re: One bad apple spoils the bunch
Way to miss the point of the safe harbors. The whole point is the fault goes exactly where it should go, the person committing the crime.
Then again, as has been mentioned here already, nowadays shutting up the free and innocent speech of tens-of thousands, is seen as a lot easier than actually seeking out the guilty party. And of course those innocent people were just asking for it, right?
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Re: One bad apple spoils the bunch
Way to play the emotional card from the bottom of the deck, there - props.
But, even though child pornography is disgusting and needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent - it STILL needs to be done within the boundaries of the law. Period. No exceptions.
Just because DHS/ICE is targeting child porn (or anything for that matter) does not give them a free pass to side step the restraints placed on them. Those restraints are there for good reasons.
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Re: One bad apple spoils the bunch
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Besides, I think AJ is still too butt-hurt from the reaming he received over the last few days in the comments.
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Re: One bad apple spoils the bunch
Almost sounds like we have an ICE agent in our midst.
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Re: One bad apple spoils the bunch
Disgusting. New levels of depravity here.
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Dust off those Cheetos fingers, Mike. You sure complain a big game, but I don't see you doing anything to stop the problem their attacking. Who cares if they screwed up? Shit happens all the time, technology is not perfect - you out of anyone should understand that fact. But sit back in your ivory tower blog and cast judgments down on your subjects - god knows this community can't stand a dissenting opinion.
OMG the gov't screwed up - is that news for you?
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Truth be told its sad and all, but I don't think everyone can solve every problem. This is a site about IP, techno foul ups, the content industry. If you want to find an audience that cares about this subject go to one of the "help the exploited children" sites.
If you are looking to SEO this site up with k1dd!e pr0n searches feel free to keep commenting.
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> the problem their attacking.
WTF?!?! Since when did Masnick become a law enforcement officer who even has the *ability* to do anything to stop the problem of child porn?
You make zero sense.
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I care when law enforcement screws up.
Understandable mistakes are one thing, purposefully ignoring the checks and balances built into our system to prevent abuse and then fucking up royally is entirely different.
If you don't give a shit about abuse of power and ignoring due process, you should move to a country that agrees with you, like Russia. "Shit happens" over there all the time.
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"From China's 3rd century BC Qin Dynasty to the present day, the burning of books has a long history as a tool wielded by authorities both secular and religious, in efforts to suppress dissenting or heretical views that are perceived as posing a threat to the prevailing order."
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http://larrydownes.com/domain-name-seizures-and-the-limits-of-civil-forfeiture/
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Re : Dysfunctional Cycle
I recall the Bu$h/Cheney maladministration well. A favourite and comprehensive tactic was installing as administrators people with a religious agenda who persecuted whistleblowers and systematically destroyed any remnant of functioning bureaucracy by overloading staff with futile and contradictory makework and legislation : especially as in regards to environmental protection and infrastructure maintenance...and 'Security'. That's the catchword for Operation Clusterfuck...Father...oops...Homeland Insecurity.
Check out Levees.org, born of outrage over the treatment of people in NOLA by denying access to a navy hospital ship, shootings by private contractors, defective water pumps and neglected levees...which require constant maintenance as they sink in mud...dredging of the ship channel which had gone on for decades.
Crediting people with good intentions is just as silly as saying GWB - survivor of flying a widowmaker jet fighter - is stupid, 128 IQ and all.
These are'facts not in evidence' : excuses promoting malice as stupidity. 'Great job, Brownie !'
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IS it wrong...
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