At first there was the seizure of a long list of domains selling actual counterfeit goods. Also included was bittorrent meta search engine (a search engine that searches other search engines). The seizure of this site, TorrentFinder, was concerning as it did have and copyrighted files. Rather it linked to sites, which linked to files, which may link to copyrighted files.
These seizures are part of a US government (ICE, DOJ) operation called "Operation In Our Sites" and they target .com domain names.
In another similar operation "“Operation Save Our Children" (btw don't you just love that name? The genius is that no one can oppose it without being branded a child abuser). In this operation domains of sites related to child porn were seized. I'm not too sure why they were seized because I'm sure any reputable DNS provider would drop the domains if they were alerted to the nature of these sites by the Feds. Also, distribution of child porn is a crime. These people aren't going to have public facing websites but rather a darknet comprised of topsites, hidden irc servers, Tor, etc.
But the most concerning thing is that 84,000 domains were seized but these were from a free DNS provider. With these service providers you get a name eg. g-minecraft-server.dyndns.org and point it to an ip of say a private minecraft server. People who use these free dns services are individuals working on a personal websites or very small businesses who want a name for free. Well all these domains were seized and then a banner was placed accusing them of child porn crimes. That is the worst thing that a person in this day and age can be accused of - and this would have scared and shocked the owners and users of these websites.
Why is the government so incompetent with technology?
This is the first I've heard of this. It's kind of scary.
ReplyDeleteno way - I hadn't heard of this, I used to use dyndns all the time to run an apache server from my cable connection - sad times
ReplyDeleteThat's insane, but is it possible that these sites were being used for Child Porn? If not then fuck the government, well fuck them anyway!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this, i havent heard of it before.
ReplyDeletevery informative
ReplyDeleteI hope internet censorship is opposed strongly in the US cause that's where it ever matter when it comes to the internet.
ReplyDeleteoh not good to hear and you make some good points. nice post.
ReplyDeleteThey always have been and will continue to be incompetent with technology. That's why other countries produce awesome tech and we copy them and rebrand it as something innovative. It's the American way
ReplyDeleteblundersfrom6foot2.blogspot.com
well that sucks for the people with them
ReplyDeleteIts all a conspiracy that's why!!!
ReplyDeleteThats crazy!
ReplyDeleteBecause they refuse to seek advice from people who actually know a thing or two about this kind of stuff.
ReplyDeleteIt is scary, and it also impacts these small business owners, when would be customers visit the site and see this, they maybe a lost customer. Lost revenue, and further hurting economy. It is all just levels of incompetence that we will see no apology over. The Feds will merely say they were acting within what they felt was reasonable, like they always do.
ReplyDeleteThere was a recent bill that was trying to be passed in congress to allow ISPs to limit bandwidth on certain connections. It didn't pass, due to many people thinking that it would give telecommunications corporations too much power. Thanks for sharing, your post was very informative!
ReplyDeleteLikely they seize suspected child porn sites and attempt to gather information about the visitors to them. But like you said, most of them probably use Tor, and a variety of anonymizing software. Various governments seem to have a real boner going for getting more control over the internet.
ReplyDeletebecause they are retards!
ReplyDeleteMy blog better not have child porn on it.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it will be a problem for long. Either the government gets seize-happy and seizes the wrong site or everyone will end up going darknet.
ReplyDeleteAs long as it sticks to child porn and such there is no issue I have with it. It's when they branch it off to other things like 'anti government sites' and other forms of free-speech that I have issue.
ReplyDelete