Federal Agents Order Shutdown of Blogs
Some 73,000 blogs were shut down this past week, reportedly based on an order by US federal agents.
The Blogetary.com website and all the blogs that came with it were shut down by hosting company BurstNet.
A message appears when you enter the Blogetary.com URL.
“After being BurstNet customer for 7 months our server was terminated without any notification or explanation.”
BurstNet would not initially disclose which US law enforcement agency ordered it to shut down the blog network, but later revealed this was a federal matter.
BurstNet management told CNet they had little choice but to suspend the service:
"Please note that this was not a typical case in which suspension and notification would be the norm," BurstNet wrote to Blogetery's operator. "This was a critical matter brought to our attention by law enforcement officials. We had to immediately remove the server."
Information later surfaced that the blogs were shut down due to “terrorist links” and tips on making bombs. Names of American citizens targeted for assassination by al-Qaeda were also found on the server.
The disappearance of the sites has prompted users of each service to complain about the closures and speculate about possible reasons.
BurstNet later backpedaled, claiming that an employee erred in saying that federal agents ordered the shutdown. Instead, they claim the hosting company did so on its own.
The specific site in question was Inspire.com, which is alleged to have recruited new members to al-Qaeda.
That site was alleged to have been maintained by Samir Khan, a 24-year-old North Carolina man who moved to Yemen last October.” The title of one article was “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”
The problem: Inspire.com was just one of 73,000 blogs shut down and it is widely believed that the other 72,999 were “legitimate” and “not a threat to national security”.
Not everybody is up in arms over the sudden termination of service to these blogs.
Latoicha Givens of BlackWeb20.com had this to say:
“Although many legitimate blogs lost service, Burst.net absolutely did the right thing in immediately terminating Blogetery’s service. Blogetery.com may have avoided termination if they were monitoring their sites for Terms of Service Agreement violations and immediately removed the blog, Inspire.com from its platform. As I advise my clients and frequently advocate, all web sites should have a dedicated web monitoring program to ensure users are not violating their Terms of Service and any laws. A dedicated site monitoring program can effectively protect a site from legal liability.”
Of course there are questions as to how far government entities might go.
Gambling911.com readers will recall how the state of Kentucky attempted to seize some 140 online gambling domains and were briefly successful nearly two years ago until a lengthy legal effort by the grassroots agency Interactive Media Entertainment And Gaming Associationand other industry representatives resulted in a reversed decision on appeal.
Demands by law enforcement to shut down websites and filtering proposals have been front and center of news in countries such as Israel and Australia in recent months as well.
Alejandro Botticelli, Gambling911.com
