[discuss] discuss Digest, Vol 3, Issue 67

Fri Feb 21 22:14:34 UTC 2014

Jefsey,

I worked on an online case for the first time in 1994 (online service, not
Internet). A lot more investigators, lawyers, and judges understand system
operations than back then, but still not nearly enough. To paraphrase you
in a note today to Milton, we have to deal with the reality of what is,
not what theoretically should be.

I¹m not sure what technical question will be solved by explaining how ICE
could try to take a foreign-based site down. It¹s a matter of how
jurisdiction is interpreted. In Rojadirecta, which is the only instance
that I can think of concerning a non-US site, ICE argued and a judge
agreed that a US-based registrar for the domain was sufficient. That was a
very bad case for many reasons in my opinion and what has been lost for
the most part is that the government ultimately dropped it.

Censorship is too loaded a term for me to get into. I have no problem with
LE actions that remove harmful or illegal content from the Internet. Of
course, my definition of those terms might differ from others¹.

FWIW, I am on the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee and was
a member of the work party that wrote SAC 056, SSAC Advisory on Impacts of
Content Blocking via the Domain Name System,
http://www.icann.org/en/groups/ssac/documents/sac-056-en.pdf. Yep, a
lawyer and a geek. :)

Dpn 

On 2/21/14, 1:14 PM, "Jefsey" <jefsey at jefsey.com> wrote:

>Don,
>
>you said that things did not happen in a certain technical way. You
>will accept that beliefs are not the way computer works, and Judges
>should know the way the things they judge does work. The technical
>question will be entirely solved if you can explain how an US Judge
>can order, and how is performed, the seizure of site hosted outside
>of the USA.
>
>If your forte is, as it seems, in the legal field, would you have
>considered (or someone else) how such a seizure (which consists in
>replacing an authoritatively published text) compars with censoring.
>
>Thank you!
>jefsey
>