#DHS preparing for domestic war?

The US Department of Homeland Security and the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Office have placed a massive order for ammunition. The two departments are asking for 450 million rounds of bullets to be delivered in a time-frame of five years. The contractor, Alliant Techsystems, was awarded the contract and will produce .40 caliber high-performance bullets to the agencies. The order has many wondering why would DHS and ICE need so many bullets. David Seaman, journalist and host of the DL Show, helps us answer why the order was placed.

Remember!: http://ht.ly/a49Zk

U.S. Government Starts New Round of ‘Pirate’ Domain Seizures

US authorities have resumed “Operation In Our Sites” and have seized several domain names associated with copyright infringement or counterfeit related crimes. Among the new targets are two sites that linked to copyrighted films hosted on third party streaming sites such as megavideo.com and veoh.com. Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has yet to officially announce the new operation.

domain seizureOver the past several months a series of domain name seizures by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made headlines across the Internet.

Under the flag of “Operation In Our Sites” the authorities shut down a dozen file-sharing and streaming sites and many more accused of selling counterfeit goods.

Today ICE continued the operation with a 4th round, and the first one since February this year. Although the authorities are yet to give an official comment on the new seizures, TorrentFreak was able to confirm the following targets:

* Re1ease.net
* Watchnewfilms.com
* Dvdcollectionsale.com
* Dvdscollection.com
* Dvdsetsonline.com
* Newstylerolex.com

The first two domains are accused of copyright-related offenses, but did not host any copyrighted films themselves. Both Re1ease.net and Watchnewfilms.com linked to popular movie streaming sites such as Veoh.com and Megavideo.com. The rest of the domains appear to be connected to sales of counterfeit goods.

The new targets were most likely put forward to ICE by movie industry groups. In April of this year ICE director John Morton admitted that his organization was acting based on “tips from industry representatives,” among others.

The authorities are also aware of the fact that the domain seizures themselves are not really an effective tool. As pointed out before, more than half of the piracy-related domains that were seized by Operation In Our Sites simply continued under a different name.

Morton replied to this critique by emphasizing that the seizures also act as “public education about pirating.”

To quash allegedly copyright infringing sites more effectively U.S. lawmakers introduced the PROTECT IP Act last week. Aside from domain seizures, the new bill will also make it possible to block sites on an ISP level, to censor search engines, and to cut funding of allegedly copyright-infringing websites.

TorrentFreak is closely monitoring developments in Operation in Our Sites 4 and if any additional domains are seized we will update this report accordingly.

Activist Post: Breaking: Newly Obtained Homeland Security Documents Reveal Radical Shift In Internet Policy #MIC

Internet user arrested for linking to other websites.


Demand Progress
Brian McCarthy ran a website, channelsurfing.net, that linked to various sites where you could watch online streams of TV shows and sports networks. A couple months ago, the government seized his domain name and on Friday they arrested him and charged him with criminal copyright infringement — punishable by five years in prison.  
We just obtained a copy of the complaint (below) that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made against him — and they don’t even allege that he made a copy of anything!  Just that he ran what they call a “linking website” which linked to various sites with copyrighted material. Under that sort of thinking, everyone who’s sent around a link to a copyrighted YouTube video is a criminal.  
This is another shocking overreach by DHS and ICE — a steamship-era department that’s proving once again that it doesn’t understand the Internet. We need to push back — and fast — before they try to lock up more Americans.
PETITION TO JANET NAPOLITANO, DIRECTOR OF HOMELAND SECURITY, AND JOHN MORTON, DIRECTOR OF IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT:  There’s nothing wrong or illegal about posting a link to a website.  This is another shocking overreach by ICE:  You need to drop the charges against Brian McCarthy right away.

SIGN THE PETITION HERE: we’ll deliver the petition to DHS and ICE later this month.

Feds Ignore Spanish Sovereignty, Seize Legal Streaming Site » ZeroPaid.com

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement seizes Spain-based stream linking site even though courts in that country have repeatedly ruled the site is legal in that country.

The US’ Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is proving that everybody’s fears could come true if the controversial Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) is passed into law.

The downsides of the measure, which would give the Department of Justice an “expedited process” for seizing sites in order to “prevent the importation into the United States of goods and services offered by an Internet site dedicated to infringing activities,” is already on full display with news that ICE has seized a foreign site with no US ties, and that has already been ruled legal by courts in that country.

Rojadirecta.org, a popular site (ranked #70 in the world) hosting links to streams of a variety of sporting events, was seized by ICE earlier today as part of its ongoing “Operation In our Sites” which it has previously said is necessary to get rid of sites that “threaten economic opportunities and financial stability” and “suppress innovation and destroy jobs.”

The only problem this time around is that Spanish courts have already ruled on more than one occasion that the site is abiding by Spanish law.

“A very long judicial process (more than 3 years) where have worked the Spanish police, the Spanish Attorney General’s Office and the Spanish justice, ALL of them defending or deciding the legality of the site,” reads a message greeting visitors on a redirected Rojadirecta.com.

“By closing rojadirecta.org this way, the domain dot org number 70 more visited in the world, show to any country in the World the lack of control over the generic domain names (.com, .org, .net, etc.) which are controlled by American companies and which the US authorities are censoring from the last months as they want without a legal process with the chance to defense yourself,” it continues. “Obviously we are already seeking legal advice and we will do the same in the US at the beginning of the day.”

Rojadirecta appears to have regained control over the homepage of the .org version of the site, but site content and streaming link pages have now been switched over to Rojadirecta.com, Rojadirecta.me, Rojadirecta.es, and Rojadirecta.in.

Now ICE might think it’s doing the right thing by seizing sites it’s convinced are harming copyright holders, but what does it think would happen if foreign countries began seizing the domain names of legal US-based sites? Take, for example, if Tunisia had tried to seize Twitter for “inciting revolution” or Thailand had tried to seize YouTube for hosting videos that insult the King?

This news ought to be a wake up call for anybody that hasn’t yet heard about the COICA.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

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