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I mean, this is why we have due process and a trial, right? At which you can present evidence that you didn't purchase the domain. Probably it wouldn't even get

I mean, this is why we have due process and a trial, right? At which you can present evidence that you didn't purchase the domain. Probably it wouldn't even get that far.

akersten 4y ago
The point the author is making is that that "due process" happens after your hypothetical front door is kicked down and dog shot, unfortunately.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  I mean, that may well be true. But is so that's a problem with law enforcement and the justice system in general, not with the domain registrar. I believe for example, that it is extremely rare to have your door knocked down here in the UK. The police will generally politely knock and or ring the doorbell, and only knock your door down if you refuse to let them in.
  - Shank 4y ago
    > The police will generally politely knock and or ring the doorbell, and only knock your door down if you refuse to let them in. I highly doubt that this is going to be the case if the warrant says that you’re wanted for child abuse imagery or human trafficking. I’m sure they’re lovely for small infractions, though.
    - bckygldstn 4y ago
      That’s a surprising pair of crimes to equate, as to me they warrant very different police responses. Police violence ought to be a last-resort tool to e.g. prevent further crime or injury to innocents. Not as a punishment that scales with the abhorrence (or moral panic) of the crime. There’s no need to send the swat team for a non-violent non-organised criminal, monster though they may be. > I highly doubt At least on paper UK police aim to take a more evidence-based light-touch community-building approach to policing, so I'd be curious what reasons you have to doubt this claim? The assumption that US morality and culture applies globally is tiring and misses out on an opportunity for learning through comparison.
  - cgriswald 4y ago
    > I mean, that may well be true. But is so that's a problem with law enforcement and the justice system in general, not with the domain registrar. It is a problem with the justice system. It is also a problem with the registrar. The registrar operates in this environment and is seemingly breaking official ICANN rules.
- njovin 4y ago
  And after you possibly have assets seized, which you may not even get back even if charges are never filed (in the US).
dmd 4y ago
Is this a joke? You don't get due process and a trial in this kind of situation - you've already been shot dead by the SWAT team.
inetsee 4y ago
Yeah, but that might involve lawyers and that could get expensive fast.
cgriswald 4y ago
Unless the LEA or the judge are savvy enough, a warrant might be issued allowing police to raid your house and seize all your computer equipment. If that happens, you'll get arrested in front of at least some of your neighbors, who might also find out why you were arrested. (Even some of the local cops might think you're just getting away on a technicality.) Eventually being found innocent or not charged may not matter to some of them. You will be in jail, at least for a while. You now have an arrest record. When people ask, "Have you ever been arrested," the answer will be "Yes." You might lose your job. Your computer equipment will be seized and police will go through it. It'll be used against you in and out of court—even things that are legal—if they think it makes you look bad or will get you to talk. Getting that equipment back after charges are dropped or you are found innocent in court may or may not be slow and byzantine. You will need to pay a lawyer, both to defend yourself, and to help you get your equipment back. ...
- ansible 4y ago
  I wish I could upvote this comment more. Yes, this is all fixable... if you are not poor and not rather unlucky. But it will take time and money. Even if you don't lose your job, I'd estimate that it would cost you $20K on the low end for legal fees. Also, if you've done anything else even slightly illegal, and the LEA finds evidence of that when searching your stuff, even though you've been careful and haven't had cause to attract their attention previously... well... that's another whole bunch of trouble.
  - teakettle42 4y ago
    The justice system in the US is so infuriatingly bad, I don’t even know where to start when it comes to fixing it. The class issues are enormous; if you’re wealthy enough to be able to defend yourself, you’ll still only be treated with something only loosely approximating fairness at absolutely best. However, if you can’t afford tens of thousands for an attorney, experts, etc, you’re pretty much fucked. We need to seriously rethink how we treat the accused in this country, from automatic sanctions that are applied to any accused, to how much leeway the police and justice system have to destroy people’s lives before there’s even been any evidence presented of an actual crime.
ygjb 4y ago
Well sure, if you are sufficiently privileged to warrant getting a polite knock on the door rather than an amped up heavily armed borderline hit squad kicking your door in. It's also worth noting that the author specifically called out in the article that the concern here is SWATing which has become such a notorious problem in some circles that the concept has made it into mainstream TV shows covering the practice. Due process only counts when it's uniformly available, and there is ample evidence in the United States, and other countries that have similar policy, that the effectiveness of civil rights protections varies widely by economic status and ethnicity.
teakettle42 4y ago
> due process and a trial Good luck with that. Even on completely spurious charges, you’ll spend time in jail, spend tens of thousands on legal fees, and spend months of your life sweating bullets. Afterwards, you won’t even be able to sue the police thanks to qualified immunity.
- rurban 4y ago
  - teakettle42 4y ago
    > a very risky third-world country Ridiculousness of your general sentiment aside, your use of “third-world” is itself quite … confused: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World
usefulcat 4y ago
The point of swatting isn't to get someone convicted, it's to get the police to harass someone. Have you ever seen a no-knock raid? It happened to a house 5 houses down from where I live. They broke down the door and threw a couple of flash-bangs inside. Even from 5 houses away with all doors and windows closed, I could have sworn someone just fired off a cannon. Pretty sure they won't be fixing or paying for any damages either.
- corrral 4y ago
  > Pretty sure they won't be fixing or paying for any damages either. There was a somewhat-well-publicized incident a couple years(?) back when IIRC a shoplifting suspect (who was armed, I think) was chased by the cops, hid in a stranger's house, the police wrecked the house getting the guy out, and then didn't pay a dime to fix it, let alone anything to compensate for the significant inconvenience of having a messed-up house and having to have a lot of work done to repair it. Can't recall whether there were any successful lawsuits after, but the default was definitely, "nope, that's entirely your problem, we just break stuff, we don't fix it". And that's for someone who wasn't even any kind of target for the police, but an innocent bystander.

I mean, this is why we have due process and a trial, right? At which you can present evidence that you didn't purchase the domain. Probably it wouldn't even get that far.

akersten 4y ago

The point the author is making is that that "due process" happens after your hypothetical front door is kicked down and dog shot, unfortunately.

nicoburns 4y ago
I mean, that may well be true. But is so that's a problem with law enforcement and the justice system in general, not with the domain registrar. I believe for example, that it is extremely rare to have your door knocked down here in the UK. The police will generally politely knock and or ring the doorbell, and only knock your door down if you refuse to let them in.
- Shank 4y ago
  > The police will generally politely knock and or ring the doorbell, and only knock your door down if you refuse to let them in. I highly doubt that this is going to be the case if the warrant says that you’re wanted for child abuse imagery or human trafficking. I’m sure they’re lovely for small infractions, though.
  - bckygldstn 4y ago
    That’s a surprising pair of crimes to equate, as to me they warrant very different police responses. Police violence ought to be a last-resort tool to e.g. prevent further crime or injury to innocents. Not as a punishment that scales with the abhorrence (or moral panic) of the crime. There’s no need to send the swat team for a non-violent non-organised criminal, monster though they may be. > I highly doubt At least on paper UK police aim to take a more evidence-based light-touch community-building approach to policing, so I'd be curious what reasons you have to doubt this claim? The assumption that US morality and culture applies globally is tiring and misses out on an opportunity for learning through comparison.
- cgriswald 4y ago
  > I mean, that may well be true. But is so that's a problem with law enforcement and the justice system in general, not with the domain registrar. It is a problem with the justice system. It is also a problem with the registrar. The registrar operates in this environment and is seemingly breaking official ICANN rules.
njovin 4y ago
And after you possibly have assets seized, which you may not even get back even if charges are never filed (in the US).

dmd 4y ago

Is this a joke? You don't get due process and a trial in this kind of situation - you've already been shot dead by the SWAT team.

inetsee 4y ago

Yeah, but that might involve lawyers and that could get expensive fast.

cgriswald 4y ago

Unless the LEA or the judge are savvy enough, a warrant might be issued allowing police to raid your house and seize all your computer equipment. If that happens, you'll get arrested in front of at least some of your neighbors, who might also find out why you were arrested. (Even some of the local cops might think you're just getting away on a technicality.) Eventually being found innocent or not charged may not matter to some of them. You will be in jail, at least for a while. You now have an arrest record. When people ask, "Have you ever been arrested," the answer will be "Yes." You might lose your job. Your computer equipment will be seized and police will go through it. It'll be used against you in and out of court—even things that are legal—if they think it makes you look bad or will get you to talk. Getting that equipment back after charges are dropped or you are found innocent in court may or may not be slow and byzantine. You will need to pay a lawyer, both to defend yourself, and to help you get your equipment back. ...

ansible 4y ago
I wish I could upvote this comment more. Yes, this is all fixable... if you are not poor and not rather unlucky. But it will take time and money. Even if you don't lose your job, I'd estimate that it would cost you $20K on the low end for legal fees. Also, if you've done anything else even slightly illegal, and the LEA finds evidence of that when searching your stuff, even though you've been careful and haven't had cause to attract their attention previously... well... that's another whole bunch of trouble.
- teakettle42 4y ago
  The justice system in the US is so infuriatingly bad, I don’t even know where to start when it comes to fixing it. The class issues are enormous; if you’re wealthy enough to be able to defend yourself, you’ll still only be treated with something only loosely approximating fairness at absolutely best. However, if you can’t afford tens of thousands for an attorney, experts, etc, you’re pretty much fucked. We need to seriously rethink how we treat the accused in this country, from automatic sanctions that are applied to any accused, to how much leeway the police and justice system have to destroy people’s lives before there’s even been any evidence presented of an actual crime.

ygjb 4y ago

Well sure, if you are sufficiently privileged to warrant getting a polite knock on the door rather than an amped up heavily armed borderline hit squad kicking your door in. It's also worth noting that the author specifically called out in the article that the concern here is SWATing which has become such a notorious problem in some circles that the concept has made it into mainstream TV shows covering the practice. Due process only counts when it's uniformly available, and there is ample evidence in the United States, and other countries that have similar policy, that the effectiveness of civil rights protections varies widely by economic status and ethnicity.

teakettle42 4y ago

> due process and a trial Good luck with that. Even on completely spurious charges, you’ll spend time in jail, spend tens of thousands on legal fees, and spend months of your life sweating bullets. Afterwards, you won’t even be able to sue the police thanks to qualified immunity.

rurban 4y ago
- teakettle42 4y ago
  > a very risky third-world country Ridiculousness of your general sentiment aside, your use of “third-world” is itself quite … confused: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

usefulcat 4y ago

The point of swatting isn't to get someone convicted, it's to get the police to harass someone. Have you ever seen a no-knock raid? It happened to a house 5 houses down from where I live. They broke down the door and threw a couple of flash-bangs inside. Even from 5 houses away with all doors and windows closed, I could have sworn someone just fired off a cannon. Pretty sure they won't be fixing or paying for any damages either.

corrral 4y ago
> Pretty sure they won't be fixing or paying for any damages either. There was a somewhat-well-publicized incident a couple years(?) back when IIRC a shoplifting suspect (who was armed, I think) was chased by the cops, hid in a stranger's house, the police wrecked the house getting the guy out, and then didn't pay a dime to fix it, let alone anything to compensate for the significant inconvenience of having a messed-up house and having to have a lot of work done to repair it. Can't recall whether there were any successful lawsuits after, but the default was definitely, "nope, that's entirely your problem, we just break stuff, we don't fix it". And that's for someone who wasn't even any kind of target for the police, but an innocent bystander.