UK Police To Get Major New Powers To Seize Domains 161
Stoobalou writes "British Police forces could soon have the power to seize any domain associated with criminal activity, under new proposals published today by UK domain registrar Nominet. At present, Nominet has no clear legal obligation to ensure that .uk domains are not used for criminal activities. That situation may soon change, if proposals from the Serious and Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) are accepted."
It has started already (Score:5, Informative)
They've already done it without legal backing. The US-hosted, UK-centric police monitoring site FitWatch was closed by the British police, by simply asking the US host to remove it. The police officially objected to a single article, so requested that the whole site be closed for 12 months. The host complied.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/16/student-anti-police-website-closed [guardian.co.uk]
Re:Laughable (Score:3, Informative)
This shows how well prepared is the british police to deal with matters regarding the internet: I reckon they never heard of the hosts file or, for an URL only, favorites. Such simple minds... life for them must be a permanent bliss.
They're simple minds eh? Do you know what irony [websitegear.com] is [webopedia.com]?
Many, many rogues sites don't have a fixed IP.
Re:A big deal (Score:3, Informative)
There were armed rebellions in a number of colonies, and peaceful ones (most notably under Gandhi in India) in others. Most of Ireland got independence in 1920 following centuries of strife; and after WWII the political will to hold Empire at all costs was no longer there; the vast majority of the colonies became independent in the late 50s or early 60s.
Re:Laughable (Score:4, Informative)
I reckon they never heard of the hosts file or, for an URL only, favorites.
Nor have most ordinary users either. Suspending a domain name is a pretty effective way of barring access to a site. Links from other sites and search engines will also fail to work until they update. Google does not seem to be very fond of sites hosting on IP addresses with no associated domain name so it will undoubtable affect the site's ranking too.
Hopefully this will end up in court and the police will be forced to stop pulling this kind of bullshit. I'm not holding my breath though.
Re:Police State (Score:5, Informative)
soon you'll lose your right to trial by jury, be logged on some huge data base, sections of the population will be segregated, forced to move from the desirable areas into slums then the trains to the gas/torture chambers will start.......
Are you being ironic? Because as it happens, every one of these is the case in the UK except the gas chambers.
Right to trial by jury - 28 day detention/recent use of this power [bbc.co.uk]/"Kettling" of students as young as 15 on demonstrations for 12+ hours at a time - did you know this particular policing technique originated in Nazi Poland to force Jews to the gas chamber? :/
Logged on some huge database - Police DNA database (they take a sample if merely questioning you and will lie about removing the data - EU has to get involved and force them), TV licensing, DVLA, Council Tax, Electoral register, etc, etc - in most of these cases the operating body also sells an edited version of the database to private companies for targeted mailing or other purposes.
Sections of the population segregated - Largely propaganda driven in the media against certain groups/ethnicities; in particular the Muslim population has been targeted for example [bbc.co.uk] by CCTV
Forced to move into slums - The new government is stripping out housing benefit and cutting down the length of time you can 'own' social housing to two years minimum (previously they were owned for life) and if your earning power increases above an arbitrary threshold they'll toss you out; the Conservative mayor of London even finds this unpalatable [independent.co.uk]) and predicts that it will lead to the cities becoming the preserve of the rich and white.
So yeah, no gas chambers just yet, but I'm sure some bright spark will suggest it as a way to cut down on the money spent in fuel subsidies for pensioners or whatever soon enough.
Posting AC because I really don't have any faith in this country any more.
Re:Laughable (Score:3, Informative)
Or alternate root DNS servers?
You know, that used to sound like a really stupid idea. Now I am not so sure.
Others [opennicproject.org] are sure of the contrary.
We'd not be offended (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think many people in the UK would be offended if you asked about our past and wanted to find out more about it. Our ancestors did some good things, and bad things. Most people won't be offended because most of us are less than 100 years old so it's just history to us as well, we didn't personally take part in it or make any of the decisions.
But I think we'd all be happy for you to take an interest and read up rather than making random generalisations. Wikipedia actually has some pretty reasonable articles, start on the British Empire [wikipedia.org] . Good on you for being up for learning more.
Indeed we have libel laws, they'll likely be different in England from Scotland as there as two different legal systems.
Why did we 'lose' the Empire: worth reading up - mixture of social change, political change, and economy. Some places people forced their freedom, other places it was more by agreement. Now we're pretty broke, the first and second world wars changed the world political scene: I believe it's only been in the last five years of so we finally paid back the loans we borrowed from the USA in the 1940s to pay for the second world war, we were pretty much in hock to the USA post-war so the USA could set the conditions to an awful lot of our international involvements (look up "Suez Crisis" [wikipedia.org] for example).
Re:It has started already (Score:3, Informative)
That's not quite correct. It was the UK host which complied with the police request. The site is now hosted in the USA [thinq.co.uk] for precisely the reason that the British police can't touch it.
Re:A big deal (Score:2, Informative)
I think your view of history might be a little over simplified. The american revolution wasn't like hollywood, it was essentially one group of mainly british and irish people fighting another group of british and irish people. The colonists were fighting for their rights as englishmen, and many people in the british isles supported them in their struggle, at least until they invaded canada.
Parts of the empire that were settled by colonists (New Zealand, Austrailia, Canada) were gradually encouraged to become more and more independent by britain. Developed areas gradually conquered by the british such as india and egypt (or more accurately, by indians with a few british and irish commanders) were exploited and post war nationalist movements got them to leave. Undeveloped unsettled areas such as the afican colonies britain was eager to get rid of in the 1960's as they spent far more money developing infrastructure than they ever extracted. Most of the colonial wars they fought they won (Malaysia, Kenya) but they didn't want to hold on to the colony, they usually just wanted to stop it being communist after they left. Ireland was partitioned after a successful war of indenpendence after WWI as it was effectively half settled (North Ireland) and half exploited.
Singing... (Score:2, Informative)
Do dah do dah
The po-lice state is coming
Oh do dah day.
Oh do dah day
It's on its merry way
The po-lice state is coming
Oh do dah day.
Re:Laughable (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Disappointing (Score:3, Informative)
Paypal EU is a bank, has been for years.
Re:Laughable (Score:1, Informative)
That would be true if the people taking down that domain ever dealt with murdered children, mob control, terrorism, or any other of the myriad issues a modern police officer has to deal with... If they don't know that removing a domain name doesn't remove the site completely, they should hire at least *one* person who does. If they don't have anyone on staff (a staff of *thousands*), then they obviously aren't prepared to deal with matters regarding the internet...
Also, I'd reckon most policemen never have to deal with murdered children, mob control, or terrorism. That's why they generally have special teams devoted to those things. Most (UK) policemen don't get a gun either, they aren't allowed to join in pursuits, etc, because they have special teams that train specifically for those jobs. If we expect those teams to be experts at those jobs that don't ever deal with those myriad issues, why can't we similarly expect their internet team to be experts at matters dealing with the internet without ever dealing with those myriad issues?
That you jump in, begin throwing around scary words (murdered children! terrorism! the boogeyman!) and insulting the poster without adding any sort of actual argument and without showing any sort of knowledge of how police forces work, is pretty infantile.
And how the hell did you get moderated "Insightful"?