14 DAY TRIAL // The domain seizures executed by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has again caused controversy when it resulted in 84,000 websites being falsely accused of harboring child pornography.
The latest operation executed under ICE's banner was called "Operation Save Our Children" and targeted domains linked to abusive material involving minors.
This action affected around ten domain names, which were forcefully redirected by the registries towards a server hosting a fancy notification page.
The message displayed on it, next to the ICE and Department of Justice logos, informs visitors that the domain was seized according to a warrant issued by a court and warns that:
"Advertisement, distribution, transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography constitute federal crimes that carry penalties for first time offenders of up to 30 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution."
However, the list of seized domains included mooo.com, which belongs to a large DNS services provider called freedns.afraid.org.
One of the services allows users to create subdomains on a variety of domain names and point them to their own servers.
Mooo.com is the most popular FreeDNS domain and hosts a number of 84,000 websites whose webmasters had to explain to their users that they are not involved in child pornography.
Some of these sites belong to small mom and pop home businesses, whose reputation has been damaged just because someone at ICE failed to properly research who owns all of the ten domains and what are they being used for.
The Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano issued a statement about the operation saying that "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."
While these actions are certainly welcomed, the ICE, which is part of the DHS, has demonstrated complete disregard for innocent people's businesses so far.
Last month it seized the domain of a Spanish company which earned the right to operate in court on two separate occasions, with no warning.