U.S. Government's ICE Office Mistakenly Freezes 84,000 Websites
U.S. Government's ICE Office Mistakenly Freezes 84,000 Websites
Posted 02/17/2011 at 8:28am
| by Paul Lilly
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In an effort to seize domains involved with counterfeit goods and child pornography, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's ICE office and the The Department of Justice managed to shutter 84,000 legitimate websites, TorrentFreak reports. The gaffe occurred when ICE put the clamp on mooo.com, which belongs to FreeDNS, a free DNS provider. Mooo.com is the largest shared domain at afraid.org.
ICE's blunder put several site owners in an embarrassing position, who were left having to explain to visitors why there was a government placed banner on their site saying the domain had been seized, along with laying out the penalties for child pornography.
"You can rest assured that I have not and would never be found to be trafficking in such distasteful and horrific content," one of the affected customers posted. "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."
The DHS and DOJ issued a joint press release announcing the seizure of 10 domain names of illicit websites as part of its "Operation Protect Our Children," but failed to mentioned the above goof-up.
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mseyf
February 17, 2011 at 5:53pm
"Operation Protect Our Children" is code for doing the movie and music studio's dirty work in order to keep the political contributions flowing.
Carlidan
February 17, 2011 at 7:25pm
Agreed. I know how you can protect your children. It's call being a freaking parent. :)
triclops41
February 17, 2011 at 2:46pm
it is only fair to point out that big government isn't limited to the dems. republicans love for gubmint to tell us what to do in plenty of things.
when a private citizen fucks up, they get raped. when the gubmint fucks up, or when one of the gubmint's cronies in big business fuck up, you are lucky to get an "im sorry"
mkhokoana
February 17, 2011 at 2:06pm
Is it me, or am I the only one with a boner?
Because we are about to get FUCK*D by big Government! Go world police, Fuck Yeah!
alabasterdragon
February 17, 2011 at 2:02pm
May I present exhibit #1 in the case against the nanny state. LIberal progessives ekkp telling us we NEED the government to protect us because we are too much like Homer and are unable to do it ourselves. To bad Homer seems to be government employee #1. If this doesn't show you the danger of government running everything, then you should go back to living under your rock, society doesn't need you.
Carlidan
February 17, 2011 at 3:34pm
Don't know what your talking about. But conservatives can sure blame goverment but not corporations which are the ones scamming americans left and right.
mkhokoana
February 17, 2011 at 2:17pm
Go Liberals! get the f**k out of my HOUSE! Geez, pretty soon you gonna tell me how to f**k my wife too... Telling me that I am to aggresive and need to slow it down to suit the needs of the public. Because all of the ugly lifeless souls that roam the earth cant find a parnter to F**K, so Big Government (Liberal) will regulate how many times a day I can F**K the S**T out of my wife tiny little Nani! Christ, I swear what is next! I can go on for ever!!!
Doesn't matter, Government cant' keep up with TECH! They are to busy drink kool-aid and beating their chest on how they can drop a dime on an open dns service with a HTML TAG! F**K big government.
Carlidan
February 17, 2011 at 3:31pm
Go conservatives... go back to the 18th century! Stop crying liberal bias! Yeah I can do the same as you can blame everyone for your misfortunes! Woot.
mkhokoana
February 17, 2011 at 5:25pm
Blah, Blah, Blah - I gonna agree with you about the Gubmint and Obama Money, they both grown out of control over human control... But I think Obama Money is worse than Gubmint! ;)
mkhokoana
February 17, 2011 at 5:25pm
Blah, Blah, Blah - I gonna agree with you about the Gubmint and Obama Money, they both grown out of control over human control... But I think Obama Money is worse than Gubmint! ;)
praetor_alpha
February 17, 2011 at 10:41am
Welcome to the United Corporations of America. Would you kindly bend over?
Carlidan
February 17, 2011 at 7:27pm
It's so sad how much influence corporations have in our government.
madmcfred
February 17, 2011 at 10:28am
i highly doubt they will pay those companies its the US government they dont even pay china and other countries we borrow money from haha
Eoraptor
February 17, 2011 at 10:22am
Great... you know, at least when the Egyptians cut off the internet, it was an act of war in the middle of a political upheaval... but here? We just do it cause RIAA says so.
jonelsorel
February 17, 2011 at 10:02am
"Americaaa, f*&^ yeaaah!!" (Team America - World Police)
I'm wondering - will the govt pay those companies for the lost business and image this move of legendarily idiotic proportions generated?
jlh304
February 17, 2011 at 12:19pm
I doubt they will pay, until a lawsuit is brought against them, and then they loose in court.
Carlidan
February 17, 2011 at 7:29pm
Probably justify it as national secruity. Me must fight terrorism!
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