Anyone who attempted to visit one of 84,000 websites affected by this weekend's ICE-led domain seizure was in for a big surprise: a banner declaring not only that site's closure, but a description of the punishment for owning or distributing child pornography. Imagine how the website owners must have felt then, since the allegation was completely false.
TorrentFreak reported on the governmental blunder, which found FreeDNS - a free DNS provider - on the hook for its domain mooo.com and the 84,000 subdomains attached to it.
The mistake was rectified within days, but still did its damage: an unknown number of people were undoubtedly freaked out by the thought they were visiting a child porn breeding ground. Website owners like this one affected by the overly broad seizure scrambled to assure visitors that he was no kiddie pornographer, sharing some strong words about ICE director John Morton in the process.
ICE itself insisted it was in the right and made no mention of the unforeseen consequences of the domain seizures.
In a press release issued yesterday touting its "Operation Protect our Children" campaign, the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano stated, "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."
This isn't the first time a domain seizure was carried out without sensible explanation or independently verifiable information, and it likely won't be the last. Two weeks ago, Senator Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon wrote to John Morton about "Operation in our Sites" - the initiative which closed many domains linked to the illegal distribution of sporting events - including Super Bowl XLV. The senator worried ICE and the DHS were acting outside a proper standard, asking: "How does ICE ensure that seizures target on the true 'bad actors?'"
Child pornography is a vile crime - that much is certain. Falsely linking innocent people and websites to it is an overstepping of boundaries at best. Hopefully in the future we'll see ICE/DHS operate more like a scalpel than a shotgun when it comes to rooting out criminals.
We'll bring you more on this if ICE issues an apology to the innocent sites affected by the seizure or if actual child pornographers are named and charged.
