It's pretty much that.

A shadowy bureaucracy with the name "Homeland" in it, seizes goods under "morally imperative" pretensions pretty much arbitrarily, doesn't care what anyone says or whether anyone is inconvenienced, casts a general chill along the lines of "we are watching you" and will it do it again in a heartbeat?

Yeah, no fascism here, move along. On second thoughts, show me your papers.

[And a "class action suit"? Defended by taxpayer money of course. Suckers.]

[And it's not like child rape is not state sanctioned anyway. Yes, they stopped a Lynndie England.]

Actually, they're not

Its just an expensive and long winded process. But 84,000 affected people constitute a good sized class so there's enough room to go after them.

Out of control Federal officials are a big problem in the US. The Feds do feel they're above the law with the result that confidence in the Federal government as anything except "the enemy" is currently at a low level (which is exploited by anti-government populist groups like the Tea Parties which, ironically, are stooges for even bigger and more oppressive government!).

Right now it looks like we need to P2P the routing domain and routing information, get it out of the area where our "little Hitlers" can screw with it.

"what all of you Europeans have actually been living under"

Your lack of insight would prompt moderation were I, a "European" to reply bluntly, so I'll sugar-coat it with a vague reference to a suspect education rather than cite some politically incorrect statement ending in 'hic'.

On topic, what is of greater concern is the inherent hypocracy behind this action - it is oft stated, at IGF and other forums, albeit under Chatham House Rules (u can google this term), that China and other custodians of net censorship use the evil of child pornography as a pretext to justify their draconian measures that extend far beyond the issue itself... and this seems to be exactly what the US are doing here. 84000 child porn sites? really?

The real question is were the FBI shooting from the hip on orders from an ignorant figure in departmental/judicial authority, or was this part of a wider strategy under a politically convenient banner?

Sorry, wrong application of Godwin's law.

Look up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Galen#Protests_against_euthanasia.2C_Gestapo_terror.2C_forced_sterilizations_and_concentration_camps

to see an example of real fascists retreating in the middle of a real war.

Thus your argument doesn't cut it. Try another one.

No Nazis-

No Godwins'.

Wow! indeed

Incorrect citation of Godwin's Law, on the first reply, my hat is off to you.

From the Wiki:

"Godwin's law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies) As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

There was no mention of Nazis in OP's post. You're sort-of right though, it isn't fascism until 84,000 domains are seized for criticizing the Coca Cola Company.

I'm glad they f'd it up this badly

...maybe this will finally get enough attention on this behavior to get them to stop.

Lets not bicker about details

The point is that the action was wrong, I think a small percentage margin of error can be forgiven.

ANY nunber of sites taken down (or effectivly inaccessible) is wrong.

RE G2

To quote the article

with all due respect: 'fuck off'

The number of sites is NOT the issue here. The issue is the method employed to do this by a government agency that thinks it is above the law

Actually...

... the number of sites *is* the issue here. If ICE had taken down one domain, or a dozen, or even a few hundred, then that would be acceptable insofar as they had narrowed the range of investigation before acting. What is unacceptable - and unconstitutional - is ICE's blanket squashing of every site associated with mooo.com to look for a handful of criminals who they didn't even know for certain were there.

Flawed logic

So according to you it would be ok for them to completely ignore the correct procedures as laid down in law, which have been upheld in court many times as long as it only affected a small number of domains.

1 or many the law still applies

The other way around

I think we'd all prefer a world that is slightly more dangerous and much more free than one that is slightly more free and much more dangerous.

Yeah, yeah... I'm going...

+1

mind you i dont think i would Ever use American hosting UK all the way baby !!!!

I eat British Beef and Use UK Providers (made in taiwan :/ cant have everything)

I do, already

"vote with your feet. dont use anything hosted in america. Plenty of other providers out there."

Try and have a properly run horse racing rating site hosted in the Land of the Free. Ha!

No, the UK for me all the way. Whilst the Monarch of the Realm owns a few horses, has a few punts then we're going to be safe for a while from fascist nannyisms.

titletitletitle

You think that hosting, dns + domain registrar outside the US protects you from this? The USG holds all the cards. If they want your site down they'll get an order to have your (or your provider's) domain delisted and you got even bigger problems because you don't have ACLU/EFF et al types jumping up and down on Obama's head to get the service back up. You're instead relying on the company - say they're British - hiring lawyers in the US to make this somehow work, and the US consititution doesn't actually apply because you're not a US company/citizen.

Now you're instead trying to get the WTO or something to try to get the US govt to fix this, all your customers are freaking out and going elsewhere, the British govt can't do anything and probably wouldn't even if they could. Hell the FBI probably told them you like pictures of children by now anyways so you've got other concerns.

What it actually needs is for the domain and IP system to be decentralised from the US - but the problem with that is it gives them power to wield so obviously it'll be over their cold, dead bodies.

As an American

I can only say "If it were only that simple..."

Fuk Pitchforks, The Bill Of Rights...

*

...was written "in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added"

This might have set a record for most rights trampled in a single action.

First Amendment: Not Just speech, but peaceful assembly. This is why dictatorships want a kill switch.

Third amendment: By a tiny stretch, linking a government webpage is like quartering a soldier.

Fourth Amendment: Yep.

Fifth Amendment: Flipping a switch, or worse, bullying someone else into flipping it is hardly due process.

Sixth Amendment: Jury Schmury.

Seventh Amendment: We don't need no stinking civil law, we are the government.

Eighth Amendment: IF it were MY website down, the angst and hours listening to on hold music would be cruel and unusual.

Ninth Amendment: This was the poster child for mission creep.

Tenth Amendment: We know we can't do this, but think of the children.

So, with a little help from legal acrobatics, we can demonstrate that Certain agencies of our Government have managed to activate all our Bill of Rights protections except the Second... Oh, wait... Pitchfork Upgrades.

*When Magaphones are outlawed, only outlaws will have megaphones.

Pitchforks?

I thought *this sort of thing* was the reason, the only reason, above all else, so help me Jeebus, for every man and his dog, to own a fucking gun.

Pitchforks.

Perhaps that is all the 'citizens' can handle now? **

Sad.

*Down with this sort of thing!

**Careful now.

I'm off, before I cause offence...

When megaphones and keyboards are banned…

…they can pry mine out of my cold, dead fingers. Though I expect they'll more likely use black Suburbans than black helicopters.

Waddya mean, "oficially [sic] now as bad"?

Where have YOU been the last decade?!?

They thought of that one...

Fortunately the US Constitution supports the right to bear arms precisely so that people can take them up in revolution against an unjust government...

And yet...

...they will continue to sleepwalk into a dictatorship, just so long as the government doesn't touch their right to bear arms.