Feds seize 1700 Online Domains last three years, without due process

Back in February of 2011 I posted ICE shuts down 84,000 websites…again! Why do I revisit this again? Because in a little reported story this week that really is a big deal, the DHS, without due process, continues to shutter any website it chooses. Now we know the extent of their activity. Feds Seized 1,700 Online Domains in 3 Years. Guilty as charged. This is the precedent that can be used to shut down any website. Hang on to your blog with both hands! Website owners being treated similar to Drug kingpins.

The figures were buried in the White House’s 2013 “Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement,” (.pdf) and they represent about 50 seizures a month following the operation’s adoption three years ago.

Earlier in 2011: Senator Wants Answers from DHS Over Domain Name Seizures

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) said Friday he would demand answers from the Department of Homeland Security about its domain seizure program known as Operation in Our Sites after it was revealed that the government kept a hip-hop music review site’s name for a year without affording the owner a chance to challenge the seizure.

Wyden also wants to know why there was no court record of the case, other than the initial seizure filing a year ago.

Under the program, implemented by the nation’s first and only IP czar Victoria Espinel, federal authorities are taking .com, .org, and .net domains under the same civil-seizure law the government invokes to seize brick-and-mortar drug houses, bank accounts, and other property tied to alleged illegal activity. The feds are able to seize the domains because VeriSign — which controls the .net and .com names, and the Public Interest Registry, which runs .org — are U.S.-based organizations. Under U.S. civil forfeiture laws, the person losing the property has to prove that the items were not used to commit crimes.

One of those sites caught in that crackdown (.pdf) was dajaz1.com. Operation in Our Sites, run by the Department of Homeland Security, accused the site of allowing its users to download pre-release music. But as it turns out, some of that music was sent to the popular blog by the artists or labels.

Most of the subdomains in question are personal sites and sites of small businesses. A search on Bing still shows how innocent sites were claimed to promote child pornography. A rather damaging accusation, which scared and upset many of the site’s owners.

The US Government has yet again shuttered several domain names this week. The Department of Justice and Homeland Security’s ICE office proudly announced that they had seized domains related to counterfeit goods and child pornography. What they failed to mention, however, is that one of the targeted domains belongs to a free DNS provider, and that 84,000 websites were wrongfully accused of links to child pornography crimes.

As part of “Operation Save Our Children” ICE’s Cyber Crimes Center has again seized several domain names, but not without making a huge error. Last Friday, thousands of site owners were surprised by a rather worrying banner that was placed on their domain.

The domain in question is mooo.com, which belongs to the DNS provider FreeDNS. It is the most popular shared domain at afraid.org and as a result of the authorities’ actions a massive 84,000 subdomains were wrongfully seized as well. All sites were redirected to the banner below.

Federal authorities said today that, since June 2010, they have seized more than 1,700 domains that allegedly breached intellectual property rights.

H/T:Wired

Filed under: Government Tagged: Dept. Homeland Security, DHS, ICE, Internet, Janet Napolitano, Politics, technology