But they were wrong.
The DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement department has lately claimed for itself the right to seize and shutter domain names without substantial due process. Unsurprisingly, it is now making enormous, crushing errors as it exercises its self-appointed role as domain cop. The latest bungle? Erroneously shutting down 84,000 domains and replacing their content with a warning accusing them and their visitors of trafficking in child porn.No warnings, no warrants, ICE just seized the cyber-property of 84,000 entities. Because it can.
Due process questions aside, would someone please explain just what the fuck gives ICE the power to do that?
ICE's job is to hassle the shit out of brown people at the border, to vacuum the digital devices of everyone who crosses the border, and to go around the country bothering anyone who looks like a brown-skinned foreigner. As far as I know they are not the kiddie pron cops.
What the fuck? Are they going to start running speed traps and handing out parking tickets?
I wonder if that has anythinng to do with a general routing misbehavior I've been observing of late. Sites I can normally get to fast have been unusually slow or flat out unresponsive.
ReplyDeleteI think we have a government spinning out of control.
Eck!
Comrade they are just practicing for the time when the call from Headquarters is real.
ReplyDeleteEB, I don't think you Americans (Including you EB, a lawyer)realize how much freedom you have given up in the name of security. That Freedom act of yours looks like it came out of some banana dictatorships "How to be An Autocratic, Totalitarian Regime" handbook.
ReplyDeleteYour pre Patriot Act laws covered everything concerning terrorism. But now you guys can fuck yourselves over with impunity. Do you think the powers that be, and I include both parties here, will give up these powers? Not in your lifetime.
Your constitution is the most beautifully crafted document this world has ever seen and you are using it as toilet paper. Re-read it as a refresher, let its perfection flow over and through you, then weep at what it has become.
Fight to get it back.....Allan
EB, may I have permission to link to you in my blog?....Allan
ReplyDeleteAllan, link away, no permission required. (This blog is public.)
ReplyDeleteI must take exception to your first comment: I believe that a number of us are all too well aware of what freedoms and liberties have been lost, first in the War on Drugs and now in the Quest for Perfect Security.
The cops can trash the Constitution, do illegal searches, hold people indefinitely without access to counsel, without judicial review, hold them in appalling circumstances for years and nothing is done. Nobody is held accountable for it.
Americans have crossed the line from "citizens" to "subjects" and that line was crossed years before Obama became president. He has done little to reverse it. The national security goons keep wailing that they need the power to violate the Constitution whenever they feel the urge and he just goes along with it.
I hope you realize my first comment wasn't an attack on you personally, but an observation in general. I am also your followers are more astute than normal, yet token protests seem to be the norm.
ReplyDeleteThat is not to say Canada is perfect...not even close. We have always had very little rights, even with our Charter of Rights which replaced the old British North america Act.