The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s “Operation in Our Sites” actions which have seized and attempted to shut down tens of thousands of Internet domains throughout the past year are out of line and an abuse of due process, says California Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren.
Lofgren spoke out against the domain seizures last week at a Silicon Valley legal conference, and even suggested that those who owned the 84,000 websites mistakenly accused of harboring child pornography should consider suing the federal government for slander. Those actions were carried out “apparently without any regard to the First Amendment or fair use,” Lofgren told conference attendees.
When an audience member inquired about what could be done to stop the domains seizures, Lofgren admitted that many of her colleagues don’t really know anything about the situation.
“There aren’t very many people who follow this,” she said. “I don’t think many of my colleagues knew about the domain name approach.”
But Lofgren isn’t the only US politician who has voiced concerns about the ICE actions. A month ago, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden also spoke out against the government initiative and sent a long list of concerns about the processes used to seize the domains to ICE director John Morton.
Despite these concerns by state political leaders, Morton recently defended his agency’s actions as an enforcement of copyright laws rather than a means of censorship, and says that due process does not come into play. “We can seize and forfeit them just like we seize and forfeit bank accounts, houses and vehicles that are used in other crimes,” he said. “Any instrument of a crime is subject to our jurisdiction in terms of seizure and forfeit.”
Lofgren also denounced the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) at the conference, and noted that individuals on the technology side of things often aren’t represented as well in Washington politics as their entertainment industry counterparts.
“The FBI, Hollywood, and the recording industry are always present, and the technology world often is not,” Lofgren lamented.
It’s really difficult to understand how state politicians could not know anything about the domain seizures, but of course they are only a tiny part of US government operations. We’ll have to wait and see whether or not any site owners take Lofgren’s suggestion to sue the government in protest of these actions, but one proactive thing that US citizens can do is to write our senators and congressmen to let them know that we will not stand by and support this violation of constitutional rights.
