US goverment Shuts down 84,000 Websites "By Mistake" - Polidicks

[URL="http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-shuts-down-84000-websites-by-mistake-110216/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29"]http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-shuts-down-84000-websites-by-mistake-110216/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29[/URL] [quote] 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 “[URL="http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1297804574965.shtm"]Operation Save Our Children[/URL]” 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. “Advertisement, distribution, transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography constitute federal crimes that carry penalties for first time offenders of up to 30 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution,” was the worrying message they read on their websites. As with previous seizures, ICE convinced a District Court judge to sign a seizure warrant, and then contacted the domain registries to point the domains in question to a server that hosts the warning message. However, somewhere in this process a mistake was made and as a result the domain of a large DNS service provider was seized. The domain in question is mooo.com, which belongs to the DNS provider [URL="http://freedns.afraid.org/"]FreeDNS[/URL]. 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. The FreeDNS owner was taken by surprise and quickly released the following [URL="http://freedns.afraid.org/news/"]statement[/URL] on their website. “Freedns.afraid.org has never allowed this type of abuse of its DNS service. We are working to get the issue sorted as quickly as possible.” Eventually, on Sunday the domain seizure was reverted and the subdomains slowly started to point to the old sites again instead of the accusatory banner. However, since the DNS entries have to propagate, it took another 3 days before the images disappeared completely. Most of the subdomains in question are personal sites and sites of small businesses. A [URL="http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22this+domain+name+has+been+seized%22+mooo.com&go=&form=QBRE&filt=all"]search[/URL] 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. One of the customers quickly went out to assure visitors that his site was [URL="http://stop-error.xanga.com/741136585/from-the-blithering-idiots-department/"]not involved[/URL] in any of the alleged crimes. “You can rest assured that I have not and would never be found to be trafficking in such distasteful and horrific content. A little sleuthing shows that the whole of the mooo.com TLD is impacted. At first, the legitimacy of the alerts seems to be questionable — after all, what reputable agency would display their warning in a fancily formatted image referenced by the underlying HTML? I wouldn’t expect to see that.” Even at the time of writing people can still replicate the effect by adding “74.81.170.110 mooo.com” to their hosts file as the authorities have not dropped the domain pointer yet. Although it is not clear where this massive error was made, and who’s responsible for it, the Department of Homeland security is conveniently sweeping it under the rug. In a press release that went out a few hours ago the authorities were clearly proud of themselves for taking down 10 domain names. However, DHS conveniently failed to mention that 84,000 websites were wrongfully taken down in the process, shaming thousands of people in the process. “Each year, far too many children fall prey to sexual predators and all too often, these heinous acts are recorded in photos and on video and released on the Internet,” Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano commented. “DHS is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to shut down websites that promote child pornography to protect these children from further victimization,” she added. A noble initiative, but one that went wrong, badly. The above failure again shows that the seizure process is a flawed one, as has been shown several times before in earlier copyright infringement sweeps. If the Government would only allow for due process to take place, this and other mistakes wouldn’t have been made.[/quote] [I]Suuuurreeee[/I]

Oh that's the big button on the President's desk beside the nukes one, right?

Incoming lawsuit

So they shut down a DNS that was linked to CP, and it caused a lot of innocent sites to go down? You do realize that, with how interconnected and complicated the internet is, that shit like this was bound to happen, right? Not everything is goddamned government conspiracy. I'll say this again: My country is not run by fucking Cobra Commander.

[QUOTE=Dalndox;28091085]So they shut down a DNS that was linked to CP, and it caused a lot of innocent sites to go down? You do realize that, with how interconnected and complicated the internet is, that shit like this was bound to happen, right? Not everything is goddamned government conspiracy. I'll say this again: My country is not run by fucking Cobra Commander.[/QUOTE] You'd expect someone in charge of that to understand what a subdomain is. [editline].[/editline] That's like someone starting a 10Gb/s DDoS on a government site and then claiming they meant to attack their own box instead.

[QUOTE=Dalndox;28091085]Not everything is goddamned government conspiracy. I'll say this again: My country is not run by fucking Cobra Commander.[/QUOTE] It's not run by Cobra Commander, it's run by left-wing liberal Jewish media controlling faggots. I would know. I'm Jewish. [editline]16th February 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=|FlapJack|;28091107]You'd expect someone in charge of that to understand what a subdomain is.[/QUOTE] Not particularly. A lot of people in politics are old farts who probably think the internet is in the glowy box thingy on their desk.

[QUOTE=Lebowski;28091108] Not particularly. A lot of people in politics are old farts who probably think the internet is in the glowy box thingy on their desk.[/QUOTE] Which means they have 0 right to any position of power.

Oh come on. They killed the whole DNS? Who's in charge of these seizures, probably some obscure guy who has absolutely no idea about the way the internet works. Just wait until they hit a domain which is on an even more popular network. People are going to be pissed. I support child protection but only if the people doing this are experts in the field. Whoever's got the kill switch is misusing it grossly right now.

Such is life in the land of the free I guess

"Operation Save Our Children" :frog: Might aswell label it "Operation Shut Down Shit We Don't Like In The Name Of Protecting Children". Same old same old. Government oppression is easy when it appeals to moral values.

[QUOTE=Raiskauskone V2;28091222]Such is life in the land of the free I guess[/QUOTE] you mean the land of do what you want but just make sure the door is close- oh shit who left the door open?

[QUOTE=JerryK;28091273]you mean the land of do what you want but just make sure the door is close- oh shit who left the door open?[/QUOTE] The doors still have those tiny little hotel/apartment peek holes looking in. Just gotta hope they aren't.

Good job you old geezers :downsbravo: [QUOTE]Operation Save Our Children[/QUOTE] Oh you gotta be kidding me, couldn't they pick a slight better name for it, like "Operation Purity" or something. That current name just screams Soccermoms and retards to me.

I'll be honest. In the realm of the internet, 84,000 sites is nothing. So in the act of accidentally shutting down one DNS server, in addition to shutting down thousands of child pornography sites, the US government should not seize any domain names at all?

[QUOTE=Raiskauskone V2;28091222]Such is life in the land of the free I guess[/QUOTE] You people act like accidents don't fucking happen. The people in charge of this probably have little knowledge of how the internet works. Just because a plan went awry didn't mean it was actually a government oppression conspiracy. Seriously, people. The chances of there being a sinister motive behind this are so small it could barely be considered a margin of error.

[QUOTE=Raiskauskone V2;28091222]Such is life in the land of the free I guess[/QUOTE] What is the land of the free?

[QUOTE=Raiskauskone V2;28091222]Such is life in the land of the free I guess[/QUOTE] ughh~ i wish i could live in japan.....

[QUOTE=demoguy08;28091254]"Operation Save Our Children" :frog: Might aswell label it "Operation Shut Down Shit We Don't Like In The Name Of Protecting Children". Same old same old. Government oppression is easy when it appeals to moral values.[/QUOTE] It was a fucking accident.

[QUOTE=Dalndox;28091085]So they shut down a DNS that was linked to CP, and it caused a lot of innocent sites to go down?[/QUOTE] Who says it was linked to CP? FreeDNS is huge, they likely have extensive policies in place for reporting sites hosting CP to shut them down and report them to the feds cleanly. Government was way out of line here, probably destroyed the reputation of hundreds of people and destroyed even more small businesses. I foresee many lawsuits.

Meh innocent people will always be fucked, like when the us ordered the closure of tpb. Then they even took other peoples servers who had nothing to do with it.

-snip, posted in wrong thread-

[QUOTE=Dalndox;28091085]My country is not run by fucking Cobra Commander.[/QUOTE] You're right. It's run by dumbasses.

[QUOTE=Zeke129;28092374]Are you comparing a website seizure to a bill that legalizes murder[/QUOTE] What bill that legalizes murder, I don't remember that happening? (I'm not trying to start an argument, I'm just asking.)

[QUOTE=makingthatmaker;28091994]ughh~ i wish i could live in japan.....[/QUOTE] No, we are already full. Go to Russia instead

[QUOTE=Nachoman17;28092406]What bill that legalizes murder, I don't remember that happening? (I'm not trying to start an argument, I'm just asking.)[/QUOTE] Haha shit I posted in the wrong thread, disregard. I thought this was the one about the abortion doctor and Brage was saying that it's okay because "innocent people will always be fucked over", and then compared it to the TBP seizure for some reason.

So what websites were temporarily shut down?

oh no that is like a lot because i go on at least 20 different sites a day!

[QUOTE=Mio Akiyama;28092753]So what websites were temporarily shut down?[/QUOTE] And replaced with a big notice implying that they traffic child porn Many of these sites belonged to small businesses, so think of how damaging that could be

[QUOTE=Nachoman17;28092113]It was a fucking accident.[/QUOTE] Alot of dodgy shit gets passed though in the name of such things as fighting child pronography and terrorism. I guess it could be an accident but if there's anything we've learnt from the last few years (and months) it's not to trust the official explanation.

[QUOTE=Dalndox;28091085]Not everything is goddamned government conspiracy. I'll say this again: My country is not run by fucking Cobra Commander.[/QUOTE] I wish Cobra Commander ran my country.