
70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement - dwynings
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/70000_blogs_shut_down_by_us_law_enforcement.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
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joshwa
If the hosting company says that they can't name the agency and can't say
anything about the nature of the claim, that immediately makes me think of a
National Security Letter:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter>

"[A National Security Letter] is a demand letter issued to a particular entity
or organization to turn over various record and data pertaining to
individuals. They require no probable cause or judicial oversight. They also
contain a gag order, preventing the recipient of the letter from disclosing
that the letter was ever issued."

~~~
DavidSJ
derwiki replied to this comment by saying:

 _"The gag order was ruled unconstitutional as an infringement of free speech,
in the Doe v. Ashcroft case." (same article)_

For some reason, his reply is dead, but it seems like a valuable comment so
I'm reproducing it.

~~~
fmora
Thank god for the separation of powers. It is incredible how many rights the
Bush presidency attempted to take away from its citizens all in the name of
national security. The more I read stuff like this the more it seems that we
were heading to a totalitarian government.

Edit: In case anybody wonders why I threw in Bush's name in there is because
the Patriot Act, created during his presidency, greatly extended the NSL
powers. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Letter>

~~~
fmora
If you are going to down vote me at least explain why.

~~~
Yzupnick
Maybe it is because you pick on a single president what every president has
done. (From all parties.) Did Bush do things that where a violation of rights?
Probably, but so did every president including but not limited to Obama,
Clinton, Bush (senior), and Reagan. I would venture to guess it is impossible
to name a president that did not infringe on the rights of citizens. Second,
it was the current government that did this, not Bush.

~~~
jeromec
_I would venture to guess it is impossible to name a president that did not
infringe on the rights of citizens._

The degree to which any perceived infringement occurs is what is significant.
Bush pushed for and succeeded in suspending habeas corpus, a Constitutional
protection by which people can challenge their imprisonment. This was only
done twice in history, once by Bush and once by Lincoln at the start of the
Civil War. By contrast, President Obama opposed the suspension of habeas
corpus since he was a senator.

~~~
Yzupnick
And yet is continued by the current administration:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21obama.text.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21obama.text.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

And Obama authorized the assassination of a US citizen; something even Bush
never did:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html)

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
The speech you point to does not support your point. My reading is that he is
trying to cleaning up the toxic legal spill that the previous administration
left behind (while trying not to give his Republic critics ammunition).

Re. the assassination of a US citizen, that hardly seems notable given that
the guy is very actively involved in putting together terrorist attacks.
Surely any president would make the same decision.

~~~
Yzupnick
It seems the origigonal post was deleted I guess... Now it seems I'm like I'm
talking to myself.

1) Among all his rhetoric about not continuing the policy he slips in

"there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, in
some cases because evidence may be tainted, but who nonetheless pose a threat
to the security of the United States...must be prevented from attacking us
again "

His policy stays the same, he is just better at hiding it from the public.

2) Thats the same rhetoric people used to defend Bush. Innocent till proven
guilty in a court of Law I say.

~~~
jeromec
You should have listed more of that quote. Directly above that President Obama
said:

 _Now, finally, there remains the question of detainees at Guantanamo who
cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people. And I
have to be honest here -- this is the toughest single issue that we will face.
We're going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at
Guantanamo who pose a danger to our country. But even when this process is
complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past
crimes, in some cases because evidence may be tainted, but who nonetheless
pose a threat to the security of the United States. Examples of that threat
include people who've received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda
training camps, or commanded Taliban troops in battle, or expressed their
allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to
kill Americans. These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United
States._

The ease/danger of a transition from a democracy to a totalitarian regime was
something of which the Founders were aware. Our freedoms are protected
precisely by a Constitutional framework which provides safeguards, like habeas
corpus. President Obama is a Constitutional scholar, and acknowledges our
bindings to it. Compare that with Bush who was rumored to say it's "just a
piece of paper". There may be case by case issues which are difficult as well
as debatable for any president to decide, but altering the legal framework in
ways which diminish civil liberties and protections is dangerous, and can too
easily lead a public that is not paying attention to a place they realize too
late they don't want to be.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmc60JmaLbE>

~~~
anamax
> Directly above that President Obama said:

It doesn't matter what he says in a speech. What matters is what he says via
executive orders, policy, and executive branch action.

> President Obama is a Constitutional scholar, and acknowledges our bindings
> to it.

Oh really? Feel free to cite any of his scholarly writings.

> Compare that with Bush who was rumored to say it's "just a piece of paper".

By someone who had an axe to grind. What has that person said about Obama's
continuation and expansion of the same policies? (To be fair, some folks who
criticized Bush for doing certain things have criticized Obama for continuing
and expanding, but they're a marginalized minority. The "good people" have
largely fallen into line.)

Of course, if you want to play "was rumored to say", there are some doozies
attributed to Obama.

Double-standard much?

~~~
jeromec
_It doesn't matter what he says in a speech._

I disagree. Words have both immediate and historical significance and impact,
whether by a dictator like Hitler or a president like John F. Kennedy.

 _What matters is what he says via executive orders, policy, and executive
branch action._

I agree.

 _Oh really? Feel free to cite any of his scholarly writings._

"Mar 28, 2008 ... Barack Obama is correct in saying he is a constitutional law
professor." source: FactCheck.org
([http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/was_barack_obama_reall...](http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/was_barack_obama_really_a_constitutional_law.html))

 _Of course, if you want to play "was rumored to say", there are some doozies
attributed to Obama._

I will retract the rumor text. I almost didn't put it in, but I wanted to give
some context for G. W. Bush's apparent disregard for Constitutional law. But I
don't need to. Just watch the 6 minute YouTube video with a noted
Constitutional law professor I included. Here it is again:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmc60JmaLbE>

~~~
anamax
>> Oh really? Feel free to cite any of his scholarly writings.

> "Mar 28, 2008 ... Barack Obama is correct in saying he is a constitutional
> law professor." source: FactCheck.org
> (<http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/was_barack_obama_reall...>)

The claim was that he was a constitutional law scholar, not that he was a
professor. While there are overlaps between the two groups, neither one is a
subset of the other.

I'll ask again - if Obama is a constitutional law scholar, where is his
scholarly output?

~~~
jeromec
_The claim was that he was a constitutional law scholar, not that he was a
professor. While there are overlaps between the two groups, neither one is a
subset of the other._

You're kidding, right? Him being a scholar is an even easier proof than him
being a questionable professor -- which the link I listed at FactCheck.org
also asserts is true.

Oxford Dictionary (First Definition):

scholar (schol·ar): a specialist in a particular branch of study, _especially
the humanities_ ; a distinguished academic

From the UC Law School statement at FactCheck.org:

"Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and
are _regarded as professors_ , although not full-time or tenure-track ... Like
Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers have high-demand careers in
politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times
during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to
join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined."

~~~
anamax
>>The claim was that he was a constitutional law scholar, not that he was a
professor. While there are overlaps between the two groups, neither one is a
subset of the other.

>You're kidding, right?

Not at all. I have reasonably high standards for scholars.

For example, even though the degree is "Juris Doctor", I don't call lawyers
"Dr.". (However, I will call them "Esquire".)

Meanwhile, you'd call a 6th grade history teacher a "scholar" if they teach
some constitution....

~~~
jeromec
_Not at all. I have reasonably high standards for scholars._

This is not about you. It's about the definition in the dictionary. It has as
a primary entry for scholar "a distinguished academic".

The definition for "professor" from Wikipedia:

 _The meaning of the word professor (Latin: professor, person who professes to
be an expert in some art or science, teacher of high rank[1]) varies by
country. In most English-speaking countries it refers to a senior academic who
holds a departmental chair_ ... etc.

I don't know how you equate "Senior Lecturers regarded as professors" by a
university to a 6th grade history teacher who may also be the school gym
teacher filling in. That's stretching things a bit.

~~~
anamax
> In most English-speaking countries it refers to a senior academic who holds
> a departmental chair

Which Obama didn't....

In general, real professors have publications. Heck, so do real academic
doctors. Honorary and "we're giving him an appointment to curry favor" ones
don't.

~~~
jeromec
Bottom line:

Point 1: You had a problem with me referring to President Obama as a scholar.
Regardless of your semantic arguments, dictionaries also define scholar as
simply a student or learned person.

Point 2: The university statement clarifies how and why Obama was regarded as
a professor -- and not just an "honorary" one.

Point 3: Most academic doctors or professors with publications do not go on to
become the President of the United States. Have you ever stopped to think
maybe he was busy in service of the public as well as his family?

Honestly, the original point was about the contrast in perspective, as far as
the Constitution is concerned, between Obama and Bush. I really don't see what
you are challenging.

~~~
anamax
> Most academic doctors or professors with publications do not go on to become
> the President of the United States.

Irrelevant. Becoming president doesn't imply that he's anything else.

Or, do you want to argue that he's an astronaut too? He didn't ever go into
space, but that's just because he had better things to do.

> Have you ever stopped to think maybe he was busy in service of the public as
> well as his family?

It doesn't matter why he doesn't have scholarly output. If he doesn't....

FWIW, almost every other editor of the Harvard Law Review managed to crank out
a paper or two during their tenure.

> Honestly, the original point was about the contrast in perspective, as far
> as the Constitution is concerned, between Obama and Bush. I really don't see
> what you are challenging.

You seem to think that teaching a class tells us something important. Without
scholarly output, we know nothing about what he did. (I'm a lecturer at a
major university....)

~~~
jeromec
_You seem to think that teaching a class tells us something important._

Correct. In the context of a presidency, along with his words, I believe we
can infer a regard for the Constitution. And Obama made essentially this
point. Take a look at an excerpt from a speech by President Obama on national
security:

 _We are building new partnerships around the world to disrupt, dismantle, and
defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates. And we have renewed American diplomacy so
that we once again have the strength and standing to truly lead the world.
These steps are all critical to keeping America secure. But I believe with
every fiber of my being that in the long run we also cannot keep this country
safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values. The documents
that we hold in this very hall - the Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution, the Bill of Rights -are not simply words written into aging
parchment. They are the foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and
a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality and dignity
in the world._

I challenge you to find _any_ reference Bush made to any of the above
documents at any time while on the subject of national security where he is
clearly expressing a regard for the document(s) as a guide.

------
DanBlake
I am skeptical - The host, <https://www.burst.net/> Looks like a template
monster design with a reseller system, no traffic rank and a nearly empty
forum- From a outsider looking in, it looks like a host that is barely in
business and likely ran by one guy from his apartment.

Maybe they are over-exaggerating for press? Maybe the server crashed, and they
dont want the bad press so did a bogus excuse? Stranger things have happened.
But I highly doubt this has even remotely anything to do with "operation in
your sites" and is likely related to some issue at burstnet. I wouldnt be
surprised if law enforcement isnt even involved.

~~~
zaidf
Trust me, burstnet is far from a small host. They went through a rebranding I
believe as part of their clean up effort from their last brand which had a
reputation for attracting high bandwidth questionable sites.

------
datawalke
BurstNET is located very close to where I am. About a year and a half ago I
toured their facilities for a colocation project. Upon walking in I was
horrified. They rows of tower based servers with their cases ripped off on the
wire-frame racks you would find in a home improvement store. After seeing that
and hearing they lacked any fire suppression system I respectfully walked away
from their bid.

------
MadWombat
Well, there is a link to a thread on a webhostingtalk.com, where some people
are discussing the issue. After reading the original posting by the blog
service provider and some of the replies, here are some basic lessons to be
learned from this.

1\. A lot of people have no clue as to the legal process

2\. It pays REALLY well to have external backups

3\. It might be a good idea to use encrypted volumes to store sensitive data,
so if authorities are involved, they have to serve you with papers to get your
decryption keys. This way you stay more informed.

4\. Your hosting provider probably has a clause in their ToS that more or less
says "we can terminate your service whenever, the hell, we want and there is
nothing you can do about it". Deal with it.

5\. This story still sucks.

6\. Seems like this guy was simply small enough to just serve a court order
and shut down his service. I don't think anyone would shutdown Google for
questionable content on a blogger account or google web pages.

7\. I am pretty sure, that there is no legal way for a law enforcement agency
to remain anonymous while doing something like this. Either I am wrong about
it or something is amiss.

~~~
adamc
Your hosting provider probably does have such a clause, but after exercising
it they should expect to go out of business.

~~~
MadWombat
Not if they only do it to a small percentage of clients and within common
sense. Generally the clause is there, so that they have a legal ground to shut
you down without waiting for legal process to catch up (i.e. if legal
authorities ask them without providing a warrant, if they get complaints about
some questionable content etc.)

------
jacquesm
A blogging service works on a per-account basis, for them to shut down the
whole server instead of just taking down the offending account(s) seems to be
pretty excessive, no matter what those accounts have 'done'.

There is some chance they found themselves the unwitting participant in a
child pornography distribution network, and that they don't know which
accounts are 'the ones', and they've taken everything off-line until they've
verified which accounts are bad and which are good.

~~~
j_baker
Why keep it a secret if it's just kiddie porn?

~~~
jacquesm
Brand damage.

------
gphil
If this isn't just sensationalist reporting, then this is pretty bad. I wonder
if it's related to the piracy crackdown that was recently announced by the
White House.

~~~
derwiki
The spokesperson said it wasn't a copyright thing; it sounds a little extreme
for that anyway. I'd rather not speculate on what it is though until we get
more details.

~~~
gphil
Sorry, I missed that the first time I read through the article.

------
kwamenum86
From BurstNET:

"We cannot give him his data nor can we provide any other details"

I guess this is one of the dangers of hosting a user-generated content site-
law enforcement may confiscate your server. This seems highly unusual even for
something like child pornography. Usually they ask (politely then forcefully)
the server owner for cooperation. It's possible that the owner of Blogerty is
a suspect.

------
known
Instead of closing down the blogs why not impose fine on print & electronic
media, if they publish a lie.

------
deanerimerman
Yeah! joshwa's got a point there! Law enforcement agents concerned with not
publicly identifying themselves might also likely be concerned with:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act>

~~~
j_baker
That only applies if this was done by the _military_ though.

------
Spoutingshite
A phrase with the words sledgehammer and nut comes to mind.

Obviously somebody was a naughty boy, but what about the other users of the
server?

------
logic
More details from BurstNet's CTO:
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20010923-261.html>

------
pinksoda
This is why I don't trust the government with an internet kill switch.

------
Ardit20
That is a bit Kafkaesque.

Everyone has the right to know why their right is being denied or what they
are being charged with. If it was a privet firm then fine, but the government
can't just go around closing websites without saying if not in detail then in
general what the charges are. How, if the website owner is wronged, is he able
to challenge the decision if he does not even know what the allegations are
against him.

~~~
Roboprog
What you say was more or less true in 2000. Things have changed a bit since
then. The fact that many recent laws and programs obviously defy the first ten
amendments to the US Constitution have gone "unnoticed" by the SCOTUS, and
both major brands (D & R) seem content with how things have developed the last
decade.

"We the rabble" are likely in for a 10 year slog to fix things, if we are
lucky: paper ballots; some kind of coalition or runoff voting rule changes to
take down the "two" party system; reestablishment of the rule of law.

~~~
Ardit20
I am sorry. I can not quite agree with that. I do not know about the united
states, but here in the united kingdom we have a very independent judiciary
which has ruled against the government time and time again.

I do agree in a way, just before Tony Blair left, which I think was 2008 or
2007 things seemed to be going in a very dark direction, but frankly, it is
the peoples fault.

We are so lucky as to be able to change government without bloodshed and in
the UK for what I know we are so lucky as to not go down without a very real
power struggle between the executive and the judiciary.

Take them to court I say. That is what they are for.

------
ndimopoulos
I am thinking that the subject might be child pornography, espionage or cyber
terrorism. Should some of those blogs had some sort of method of communicating
information with terrorists I do not see why the NSA would not shut the whole
thing down.

I hate to be in the shoes of those 70000 people but from the article and
evidence available right now this is a really serious matter.

~~~
danek
maybe the fbi thinks terrorists were communicating via blog comments, in a
secret code designed to look like spam? as far as 'movie-plot terrorism' goes,
i don't think it's too far fetched.

~~~
naturalized
Does it mean that any site can be shut down if it's used by terrorists? Which
one is next: facebook, because terrorists can create a group there and send
messages, twitter, because a terrorist cell can use it to coordinate attacks,
or perhaps wordpress? Which service will be shut down next?

