Third Party & Independents Archives

Just so I understand:

Is this a free speech issue because of the kind of website? Is the result in line with the contract agreed to with the service provider?

Just curious.

Why are you talking about “the owner” and “the owners” of these two websites when you are in fact the owner of both of them and this is an issue you’re having with your hosting service?

While I sympathize with you David, I think you are peeing up a rainspout. In this society the more $$ you have the more freedom, security and comforts and the like. I would suggest to you that if the Dem’s or Rep’s got hacked the web host would act in a far different manner. The situation you are experiencing is not so much different than the plight of the taxpayer/voter. He has one vote and one voice to represent him in government. With laws on the books like ‘corporate personhood’ and ‘money is free speech’ huge amounts of $$ can be used to give the wealthy a boooommming voice and assurance of immense representation in government. So much that it blows your small voice and vote, along with millions of others, away.
It’s a sign of the times I think. We have no usury law, no ‘too big to fail’ law, no border enforcement, ad infinitum. I suggest you will have to spend some $$ if you want your free speech protected.

Otherwise, we have the government we deserve!

There is a freedom of speech problem, but finding out who the violators are is very difficult.

The host provider could resolve the issue, for the right price. That is, there are ways to mitigate (if not almost totally render harmless) DDoS attacks, using defensive firmware/software for routers/host-computers (for example) that automatically (and quickly) identify IP addresses that are potentially participating in a DDoS attack (a simultaneous flood of URL connections) against one domain address, and ban (at least temporarily) those IP Addresses.

Buy heck, for all we know, the host provider could be targeting certain customers themselves to try to get them to buy the more expensive hosting and services? I’m not saying that is what they did, but I wouldn’t put such things past some corporations these days in an era of rampant corpocrisy, and other numerous manifestations of unchecked greed. Sort of like a bait and switch scheme that gets the customers online, and then tells them the solution to their problem will cost more.

It’s also not far-fetched to believe there may be politically motivations behind such DDoS attacks. After all, Democrats and Republicans alike are probably not very fond of any organization questioning the wisdom of repeatedly rewarding irresponsible incumbent politicians with perpetual re-election.

After all, I contacted Maia Hosting (via chat), and the Sales person wrote:

• well the posts they [VOIDnow.org and PoliWatch.org] have may be offensive to some people.

The Sales person also wrote:

• there is one way [i.e. to stop DDoS attacks] but its out of his [VOIDnow.org’s and PoliWatch.org’s] budget.

At any rate, if this sort of problem continues to grow, it won’t be long before all web-host providers are forced to install the anti-DDoS devices. Otherwise, before long, hosting services will become worthless and profitless if they continue to sacrifice some customers under DDoS attacks for other customers hosted on the same computer. Especially as the number of DDoS attacks continue to increase in number.

There is a solution, but once again, it is not cheap, and once again, the problem silences the less wealthy voices in society who may not be able to afford the anti-DDoS devices.

Can’t everything that is done on those web hosting services be done for free with a Wordpress blog instead? It seems like the place where everyone is going.

womanmarine, yes, both were political web sites. I do not know if one or both were attacked, since Maia Host has refused to answer that question or any others regarding the attack.

Since it was ONLY one or both of these sites attacked, it is a safe assumption that whoever attacked the site opposed what was being written on it. Since the sites are ENTIRELY of a political nature, political free speech is VERY MUCH at the heart of the issue and attack.

The Service Provider’s Terms of Service are pretty standard, they reserve the right to discontinue service for any reason they deem fit. In this case, Maia Host has offered a pro-rate refund, which a great many other sites TOS stipulate they won’t.

Loyal Opp, so from you comment is it safe to deduce that you would only come to the defense of political speech which agrees with yours? Rather authoritarian and anti-1st amendment position, don’t you think?

A simple “You don’t care” would have sufficed.

Roy, it is a rather dismal statement upon the state of the union, isn’t it?

ohrealy, no. Movable Type Community software provides technology way beyond Word Press. And both sites were availing the innovations in that software.

Is Word Press hosting free? What are the storage and bandwidth limitations?

Word Press hosts are just as vulnerable to DDOS attacks as any other, therefore, Word Press doesn’t address the issue at all.

d.a.n, quite right. Finding out who the attacker is requires the resources of the federal government. I am told one point of relay of the attack came from China. Doesn’t mean the attacker resides in China, only that they exploited a server or PC in China on the internet. A lot of folks don’t understand this international free accessibility to machines around the globe for hacking and spam and DOS attacks.

Nothing less than the resources of the federal government are capable of effectively addressing cyber attacks and prosecuting those responsible.

Here is some general info on the subject: Excerpt from a press article: “There are three main weapons in use against Indian networks — BOTS, key loggers and mapping of networks. According to sources in the government, Chinese hackers are acknowledged experts in setting up BOTS. A BOT is a parasite program embedded in a network, which hijacks the network and makes other computers act according to its wishes, which, in turn, are controlled by “external” forces.

The controlled computers are known as “zombies” in the colourful language of cyber security, and are a key aspect in cyber warfare. According to official sources, there are close to 50,000 BOTS in India at present — and these are “operational” figures.

What is the danger? Simply put, the danger is that at the appointed time, these “external” controllers of BOTNETS will command the networks, through the zombies, to move them at will.

Exactly a year ago, Indian computer security experts got a glimpse of what could happen when a targeted attack against Estonia shut that country down — it was done by one million computers from different parts of the world — and many of them were from India! That, officials said, was executed by cyber terrorists from Russia, who are deemed to be more deadlier.”

And another press excerpt: “The White House’s computer network was penetrated on several occasions earlier this year by Chinese hackers who downloaded e-mails between government officials, a new report reveals.

A senior US official tells the Financial Times that cyber-security experts believe the attacks were coordinated by the Chinese government, although there is no proof they were the result of an organized assault.”
re is some general info on the subject:

Yes, all systems, regardless of the application software, are vulnerable to DDoS attacks.

Bandwidth is rarely (if ever) the problem.

The problem is hundreds (perhaps thousands) of simultaneous connections to a web-site via various protocols. This (or any web-site) would come to a screeching halt (perhaps crash) if thousands of people all across the nation started submitting a comment simultaneously. In fact, enough users merely connecting simultaneously to read comments could bring down a web-server. When such attacks are coming from only a few places, they can be banned. When the attack is distributed (i.e. a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)) across numerous computers in numerous locations, only a special anti-DDoS device (costing many thousands of dollars) can mitigate (if not render useless) a DDoS attack.

This sort of thing could conceivably become a security threat to commerce. What would be the impact if thousands of large and small online businesses are rendered inoperable by DDoS attacks?

That is perhaps why Homeland Security should be a bit more interested? Or do we have to wait for another meltdown and learn the hard way again.

d.a.n, you hit on a very crucial point along with Roy.

That cyber terrorists are being treated the way al-Queda was treated before 9/11. A criminal nuisance. But, like al-Queda, there is every evidence that these criminals are getting more organized, more sophisticated, and interconnected in their endeavors.

Do we all say, it didn’t happen to me, so I don’t care? That of course will lead to an event that does affect every single one of us, and very negatively. The stock market or NASA or even our own political partisans silencing opposition party partisans on the internet as a routine way of breeding a whole generation of cyber terrorists.

My call to the FBI continues unanswered.

David R. Remer-
I think what Loyal Opposition was speaking about was the fact that these two sites were your own, so therefore there’s a bit of a conflict of interest in talking about them as if they were somebody else’s. It makes it seem a little self-serving.

Which is a pity, since I think you have a good point. I don’t think you should be held responsible for somebody else’s bad behavior. This is a case where I think there should be a regulatory ground floor on hosting.

Full disclosure prevents one’s message from getting complicated by side issues.

Loyal Opp, so from you comment is it safe to deduce that you would only come to the defense of political speech which agrees with yours? Rather authoritarian and anti-1st amendment position, don’t you think?

David, I sympathize with your irritation with this company and its policies, but this is very far from a First Amendment issue. This may be a case where you take your business elsewhere—to a hosting service with policies more to your liking.

A company which gives bad service, insufficient service, or has policies you don’t agree with is not in violation of your civil rights any more than McDonalds would be violating your civil rights if they served you soggy french fries.

The fact that a hosting service that offers better protection is more expensive is not a violation of your rights either—nobody is responsible for providing us with anything we’re not willing to pay for. If you have a contract with them which they violated, then they may responsible for a breech of contract. If, however, this policy was disclosed to you in the terms of service when you opened your account, it’s another matter. You said yourself that an option is provided for hosting services that protect against DOS attacks, but that you just don’t want to pay for it.

The desire for cheap stuff and/or stuff we haven’t paid for is not a First Amendment issue. Any of us can engage in political speech to our hearts’ content, but nobody else is responsible for subsidizing it with their own dollars or even providing forums for it.

This is a terrific example of a situation in which a free market can address your concerns. Find a better hosting company with more favorable terms of service or shell out the bucks for a plan that has the services your require.

You talk about wanting “more regulations,” but what would these regulations consist of? It sounds to me that the terms of service here were clearly described to you. Requiring more regulations, and opening up hosting services to lawsuits when people don’t like the terms of service of the plans they’ve signed up for is hardly going to make ANY web hosting plans less expensive. To the contrary, the added legal and administrative costs will just make the prices soar.

Loyal Op: You wrote: “nobody is responsible for providing us with anything we’re not willing to pay for.” You describe to a tee the relationship between big business and government. ie. government doesn’t have to provide big business anything unless they are willing to pay for it. That relationship is cemented in place by two laws; Corporate Personhood and Money is Free Speech. Duke the Cunning Ham ( I like that ) had a list to go by to determine pricing for his wares, etc. Most are a little more discret.
Another tact; we taxpayers cannot act as vigilantes. David shouldn’t go punch some Chinaman in the nose. Rightly, he should expect his government to protect him from things like economic invasion and cyber attack by foreign entities, government or otherwise.
Certainly all the three letter agencies are working hard in this area but when the White House is getting hit about 3M times a day it is doubtful David’s taxes are significantly large to get him protection under the law.

We don’t need change, reform is the solution.

Otherwise, we have the government we deserve.

LO-
The trouble with your point is that it presumes that the contract is necessarily enforceable. There are things in a contract that you can agree to that a corporation might not be able to enforce upon you, because the laws and the interpretations of the law prevent that. If, for example, you entered into a licensing contract with somebody who claimed to have the patent on a device, but who didn’t, even though you agreed to that contract, you could not be held to it, because the person would not be legally entitled to licensing fees.

The government has an integral relationship with business. It decides what constitutes a business, what the rights, duties and obligations of a business are, it defines what’s enforceable in a contract, and in turn adjudicates and enforces the contract to the extent it is valid.

In this sense, there is no such thing as a free market. In fact, corporate personhood, the basis of any business’s ability to sue and defend itself in court, is based on an interpretation of the Constitution itself.

It is perfectly legitimate for the government to step in and say that they should not be able to penalize a person for a denial of service attack. Also, in the long run, it makes no economic sense. Conceiveably a competitor of less than stellar scruples could hire somebody to gradually DDOS a bunch of their clients. Security-wise, it is also more sensible to go after the hacker and stop them.

Loyal Opp, I am making this move for the second time, for the same cause. Our service was threatened with termination by our last hosting provider due to a ddos attack.

This attacker is attacking these sites for their content. That IS an abridgement of the 1st Amendment which prevents that speech from being made to any who wish to listen and discuss it and fair market rates.

Again, simply saying you don’t care about other’s speech rights is more succinct. I know however, you would be singing a different tune if the shoe were on the other foot, and your web sites were being forced by a criminal into paying 500 to 5000 percent more in cost to protect your right to speak on your web site.

Your argument leads to the conclusion that criminals should be permitted to create industries who can profit from protecting individuals and organizations from criminals. That is NOT how the Constitution is written. The Government is charged with the responsibility for policing criminals and crime prevention to promote the general welfare.

Vigilantism is not what the founder’s envisioned obviously, as they were very keen on the nation being built upon the observance of the rule of law, and a court system to deal swiftly with those who choose not to observe that rule of law.

DDOS attacks are against the law, just as rape is. It is a gross miscarriage of justice when the person raped or attacked and brought down by a DDOS assault, are made to pay for the crime instead of the perpetrator and violator of the law.

David R. Remer-
First, I think discrimination on First Amendment basis is problematic to prove, as we don’t yet have the person in question in custody to question. Your political view may be irrelevant to them. They may just have a personal beef with you. You’ve run the site for quite some time, made a few decisions some might not agree with.

Their motive really doesn’t matter. It’s kicking you off for being attacked that is unjust. It’s not as if your politics, or the politics on that site are extraordinarily controversial, taken as a whole. It’s not like you were running a neonazi site, or a chapter of NAMBLA complete with links to the child porn sites they haven’t shut down yet. You were running a couple sites not much unlike this one.

Unfortunately, the laws may not be on your side yet. But I’d say they should be. This is no more different here than denying a black man service on the grounds that white ruffians might make trouble about him. The tactic is encouraged by those who give in and kick you off. What sense does that make? What good is a host who can’t or won’t protect their clients from this kind of harm?

David, I hope you can work this out and find a hosting service with different terms of service or one which at least has better customer service. If it were my company, I’d try to accommodate you just for the sake of preventing bad word-of-mouth associations with our services. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not that I think this is “fair” or that I don’t care about your plight.

Having said that, it’s virtually impossible to accuse a company of violating anybody’s First Amendment rights. A company is not the government, and breach of contract is your only realistic angle here. A company is not compelled by the First Amendment to provide you with a forum for your views any more than The New York Times is responsible for publishing an op ed by me.

What’s more, they are not responsible for protecting you from the illegal actions of third parties if you are not willing to pay them more to do so.

You use the analogy of rape. Rape is illegal, but if anyone wants a full time bodyguard to protect them from potential rapists, they’ll have to PAY a security firm for that service. And it won’t be cheap. By the sounds of it, this hosting service is willing to provide your sites with upgraded security for an added fee, but because the attacks on your sites are illegal, you don’t think you should have to pay.

Well, I don’t think I should have had to install a security system on my house either. But I did it anyway. While it would be nice if none of us had to lock our doors when we leave our houses, we do so anyway—and the fact that it’s illegal to break into our houses doesn’t mean that private companies are responsible for guarding our houses around the clock for free or for a nominal fee.

DOS attacks are illegal, just like a lot of things we have to pay extra to protect ourselves from. Many of us pay for credit monitoring to help prevent against fraudulent charges and identity-theft, for example.

Unlike rape, however, DOS attacks of the kind you’re discussing are not major life traumas that cannot be prevented or minimized by shelling out a few extra dollars.

If a company refuses to address such problems, and the problems become wide-spread with the sites they host, then THEY will suffer unless they provide a better service that meets the needs of their customers. Other companies will gladly accept their business.

If you want something that NO company will provide for the price you are willing to pay, however, then you what you want is unrealistic. I’d like to have a ski chalet in Aspen, but that doesn’t mean that either the government or the private sector is responsible for providing it to me.

David, sorry to hear about your problem, but I agree with Loyal Opposition. How recently has it been free to publish a blog? Since blogspot.com, everyone suddenly thinks that free blogging should be a universal right. Good security on your blog is the cost of doing business today.

Freedom of the press does not mean that the govt should pay for your printing press maintainance costs, and $500 a month to run a printing price with unlimited distribution is not a lot of money. If it is going to cost you $12k a year, I would do some homework on DOS attacks yourself and figure out how to defend yourself.

If you need funds, ask your readers to donate and you may get my sympathy and support. But given the relatively small costs of webhosting, asking the government to pay for it or force someone else to pay for it won’t get my sympathy.

That is, $500 a year (not a month).

Stephen D., that is entirely how I see it, as well. Monday, I will notify my Republican representatives, but, given Gandhi’s and Loyal Opp’s positions above, I don’t expect a different response from Cornyn, Smith, or Hutchison.

The next step will be Committee Chairs in the Congress and the White House after Jan. 20, to make them aware of the gross injustice and undermining of the 1st Amendment that is taking place here.

We shall see, if the Dem’s response in government is anymore helpful than the Republicans. I hope so. Otherwise, it is up to me seek justice on my own, and we all know where that leads.

David:

You are the victim of a crime and a bad agreement with your hosting provider. That does not make it a first amendment issue. What happened to you is already against the law. I suspect the only thing you might get to change is not allowing hosting providers to terminate due to DOS attacks. Just my guess.

Loyal Opp, there is a difference between isolated crime which government cannot possibly hope to prevent due to its random and unpredictable nature. It is quite another issue when the entire society’s infrastructure is under attack as the web sites I am associated with have been. This is not isolated as other comments above point out. Our government is under seige by these kinds of attacks, our business communities are also, and of course, individuals and small groups like ours. This is a very grave problem that challenges the efficacy of our government, our economy, and our individual rights.

And those rights, as you should well know, do not Constitutionally depend upon one’s wealth status. We have a right to political free speech, and the government has a constitutional duty to protect that right against criminal acts designed to deprive us of it.

This is not pro-business and profit issue though I understand why conservatives would choose to see it that way. This is a constitutional issue no matter how you cut it. If you and Gandhi can’t or won’t see that, it is understandable as your perspectives are conservative and conservatives view nearly all issues in terms of the potential to profit from them, and if such profits are in the offing, it can’t be a bad thing.

It is definitely a problem that affects someone’s free speech.

The difficulty is determining the guilty party ?

Unfortunately, the proof of the identity of the violator is difficult to acquire.
And even if we could trace it to the infected computers, it may not reveal anything.

However, the larger issue is that these sort of DDoS attacks could conceivably become a national security issue that could cripple online businesses nation-wide.

After doing some research on DDoS, the problem is a growing threat as a weapon not only against free speech, but against commerce and economies of foreign nations. A Google on “DDoS growing” produced 147,000 hits in 0.12 seconds).

The targeting of political web-sites is disturbing too.
What is the true origin of these attacks, and what is the overall impact on the political landscape?

Eventually, as the problem grows worse, web-hosting service providers will probably have to install anti-DDoS devices if they want to avoid losing a majority of customers.

Perhaps the FBI, CIA, and/or Homeland Security should be more interested in this growing threat, but these tombstone agencies (see NOTE # 1 below) can’t even stop airplanes from flying into the Pentagon, buildings, and can’t control tens of millions of illegal aliens flooding across the borders and killing thousands of Americans each year.

NOTE # 1:

• The federal government and the FBI failed to prevent what could have been prevented. Afterall, you’d think over a Trillion dollar$ or more per year for defense and the Pentagon would be enough to stop what many repeatedly warned us about. That is, Rick Rescorla (head of security for Morgan Stanely) and his friend Dan Hill predicted it. They demonstrated, using flight simulator game/software, how easy it would be to fly into the WTC towers, Pentagon, White House, Empire State Building, etc. We were certainly warned many times to secure cockpit doors on our airlines; especially after the previous bombing attacks on the WTC towers in year 1993. The Israelis warned us many times about securing cock-pit doors. The day before 11-SEP-2001, Rumsfeld had received a nebulous warning of Al-Qaeada threat; perhaps another good reason to maybe secure cockpit doors? Rick Rescorla (who died on 11-SEP-2001) even asked Morgan Stanley to move out of the WTC towers. Also, Rick Rescorla predicted the attack on the WTC in 1993. It wasn’t until after the bombing in 1993 that people started taking Rick Rescorla more seriously when he started building evacuation drills. That probably resulted in many saved lives on 11-SEP-2001. Unfortunately, Rick Rescorla was not one of them. 18 of the 19 perpetrators of the WTC attacks on 11-SEP-2001 (some who were illegal aliens and/or had violated several immigration laws), possessed 13 state-issued drivers’ licenses and/or 21 ID cards (source: www.9-11pdp.org/press/2004-12-03_factsheet.pdf), and all 19 hijackers had obtained Social Security numbers (some real, some fake; source: www.cis.org/articles/2002/back1202.html). The terrorists very simply tapped into an enormous market for fraudulent documents that exists because 12-to-20 million illegal aliens have successfully breached our borders and now reside here illegally; anonymously; spawnning widespread document and identity fraud that threatens our ability to distinguish illegal aliens from U.S. citizens and legal foreign residents; and giving rise to the fastest growing crime in America: identity theft.

At any rate, the voters have the government that the voters elect (and re-elect, and re-elect, and re-elect , … , at least until that finally becomes too painful).

womanmarine said: “What happened to you is already against the law.”

The law is meaningless without enforcement. There is no enforcement, nor even investigation of this crime. That is a breach of Constitutional duty.

Sorry you don’t see that. The law gives safe harbor to those who are complicit in bringing down sites like ours, as opposed to requiring such business providers to install protections against such crimes. Our host provider has not even reported this as a crime as far as I know, and refuses to provide us with ANY details of the attack. Which leaves the door wide open to the possibility that a DDOS attack never took place, but, the Host provider themself did not like what they read and shut us down under the lie that it was a DDOS attack.

In other words, the law grants discriminatory power to host providers, with the safe harbor provision against civil suit, which could uncover the facts of the site being shut down and at whose discretion and on what criteria. The law ia aiding and abetting the abridgement of Constitutionally guaranteed rights where host shut down such sites on religious, racial, or political speech discriminatory grounds.

Gandhi said: “David, sorry to hear about your problem, but I agree with Loyal Opposition. How recently has it been free to publish a blog?”

You are confusing two entirely separate issues. Political speech and communication transmission costs. This issue is NOT about our competitive $7 per month rate which we were paying to provide a web site to the public.

It is about the crime of attacking political speech and forcing that political speech to be halted by driving the communication channel costs up for the speaker to the point of unaffordability. That then, becomes a denial of 1st amendment rights by a criminal, the same as taking a life for personal gain or revenge is a denial of right to life and a crime.

If our government does not investigate and seek justice for crimes, and seek protection of rights through the force of law, then this nation ceases to be governed by the rule of law, and quickly becomes a nation governed by criminals and their actions. There is ample evidence we have been increasingly following the latter course. Crime is up, prosecutions are not keeping pace with crime, and law abiding folks are increasingly victims of crime from identity theft to insurance fraud to armed robbery. Add now the crime against everyone with a PC of hijacking their PC for criminal acts and having web sites taken down due to nothing more than someone doesn’t like what someone else said politically on that site.

These are all crimes, and they are increasing. Are we a law abiding nation, or are we a nation of victims who stand idly by as we are forced to spend ever increasing sums of our money for private protection against crime (sometimes to the same people victimizing us) which our taxes are supposed to protect us from or seek justice for after the fact?

David:

I never said nor implied that there was adequate enforcement for this crime. This is just one of the resulting problems of globalization and the tech advances going beyond law and law enforcement capabilities. That’s all.

If as you imply you suspect the DOS did not even happen, you still are under the contract that gave the hosting company to shut you down for no reason. That’s contract law, not first amendment. Proving that it was because they didn’t like what you said, the fact is they still own the “site” you were renting.

womanmarine, your comment hasn’t a clue as to the depth or implications of this story, despite ample attempts above by myself and others to explain it to folks like yourself.

I understand. It is not a simple situation, and folks needing simple concepts won’t grasp it. Th web host owns the servers they lease, they SHOULD not own the right to arbitrarily discriminate against customers based on religious, racial, or political expression grounds, nor should they have the right to shut a web site down because a criminal targeted a law abiding site. Instead they should have the legal obligation to report the event as a crime, insist on investigation and prosecution, and defend their customer who violated no one else’s rights or laws.

The implications of their punishing their customers for a criminal’s actions constitutes a threat upon you, and every other citizen in this country; if criminals can make law abiding citizens yield to their wishes by intimidation and attack. To defend criminal’s ability to do this, as your reply does, lacks a certain degree of courage in standing up to those criminals and denying them that ability.

If you wish to cater to these criminals and insist their victims have no rights but to pay up or shut up, that’s fine. I just don’t see that as a very American or courageous position to take.

And you may not put words in my mouth. You said: “If as you imply you suspect the DOS did not even happen,”

I never implied or indicated that I suspected the DOS did not even happen. Those are your words, not mine. I said something very different:

“Which leaves the door wide open to the possibility that a DDOS attack never took place,”

That is neither a suspicion nor implication. It is a statement of logical fact that it is possible the DOS never took place, since there is no evidence one way or another.

That is quite different from implying that it didn’t take place or even suspecting that it didn’t take place. I suspect and have stated in the article that I think the attack DID take place. But, without evidence provided by the Web Host provider, other possibilities remain open.

David:

Please stop belittling those who don’t completely agree with you. I understand completely and for you to imply I don’t or can’t doesn’t fit well with forum participation rules in my opinion.

I do understand your point, but just like housing and job discriminiation, it’s going to be pretty tough to prove you were discriminated against politically. As for your provider of service not reporting the crime, what can I tell you. I’m not sure it’s a requirement for that type of crime?

So sue me, I should have said you suspect the possibility the DOS MAY not have happened. It was not an attempt to put words in your mouth.

And, for what it’s worth, I totally support you in the fact that law enforcement needs to get on top of this, and reasons for dropping a paying customer need to be specifically spelled out in the contracts.

Okay? :)

womanmarine, I can’t respond to what you are thinking because I don’t know what you are thinking. I can only respond to the words you put on WatchBlog for me to reply to.

I responded to your selection of words and sentences. My reply is not an assessment of your character, personality, abilities or anything else of that nature. My reply was to your comments. Nothing personal intended.

I am encouraged that you and others view this crime as worthy of being dealt with as such. I am also encouraged that you and others regard the Web Host’s action as less than should be expected of them or the laws governing their response.

You get 10 people in a room and this is what happens! How does this world get from one day to the next. It’s pretty common sense that what happened is a violation of one or more laws. It’s also common sense that the level of this crime will probably not move law enforcement to act. Not when the White House is suffering 3M cyber attacks daily. Look at all the unsolved murder/rape cases laying on shelves around the country as there are no resources for conducting DNA.

Roy, it does seem that crime is getting the best of society and humanity through sheer over abundance. This is what happens when crime and unethical behavior infiltrates all levels of government. It sets the example for untold numbers below.

From Sarah Palin’s illegal per diems to Wm. Jeffersons cold cash in the freezer, the example continues to be set for untold others to follow and rationalize their own behaviors.

I could not agree with you more David. For approximately half of Alaska’s voters to vote for Stephens goes to the core of it. Chipping away, chipping away, the old Republic can only take so much. Yahoo and Google helping the Communist Chinese cops round up dissidents in the pursuit of globalization, there is ample facilitation of crime out there. The government refusing to enforce our laws. In a Maryland beltway county about half of the police force retire on disability, FBI checking it out. Don’t get me started, again.

Change NO, Reform YES!

The web host owns the servers they lease, they SHOULD not own the right to arbitrarily discriminate against customers based on religious, racial, or political expression grounds, nor should they have the right to shut a web site down because a criminal targeted a law abiding site.

David, as you know, leasing space on a server is not at all like renting a home or work space—it’s relatively easy to move a website. You still own your domain names. Your websites have not been “closed.” And the way you’ve described the situation, they’re perfectly willing to keep hosting your sites if you pay them more money.

Having dealt with phone companies, landlords, and customer service reps myself, I can sympathize with this type of frustration, but this is hardly some kind of civil rights issue.

I had a friend whose electronics store was burgled repeatedly. It wasn’t his fault, and I’m sure that everybody would agree that the burglars were committing crimes. Nonetheless, his insurance rates went up and up and up. Using the logic of your argument, the insurance company should have just eaten all the losses and kept charging him the same rates.

It may do no good to move the web-site, if it doesn’t have anti-DDoS protection.
The DDoS attackers can simply target it again.
The DDoS problem is growing.
Before long, if any web-host providers want any customers, they have to install anti-DDoS devices for everyone, and spread the cost to everyone, instead of sacrificing a few customers.
Maia Hosting sacrificed VOIDnow.org’s and PoliWatch.org’s business, but what happens when they start having to sacrifice several customers every day? Before long, host providers will have to protect all of their customers. Otherwise, they will be out of business completely.

David: Why don’t you just go and get your own IP address, pay for the bandwith, ect. and put up your own server computers and what ever else is necessary and then you can do as you wish and no one can make or tell you what to do because you are the boss. This is a free country and if you don’t like the service you get, Do something about it. Problem solved.

papioscarw wrote: David: Why don’t you just go and get your own IP address, pay for the bandwith, ect. and put up your own server computers and what ever else is necessary and then you can do as you wish…

Co$t. The anti-DDoS protection can cost a lot per year.

Running servers is not a trivial matter either, and would require anti-DDoS devices/software that increase cost and require certain skills and capabilities to set up and maintain.

For grassroots organizations such as VOIDnow.org and PoliWatch.org, it is very hard on the budget.

However, that may indeed be the only choice other than extinction of VOIDnow.org and PoliWatch.org.

Loyal Opp, if the insurance companies did have to eat the losses, what do you think insurance companies would be lobbying for in Congress? Law Enforcement, which is precisely what we are NOT getting at this moment, nor even investigation.

Thanks for making one of the main points of this article. Our government needs to be actively fighting these crimes, instead of turning a deaf ear to reports of these crimes. Still no call back from the FBI. Cyber crime appears not to be a priority at the citizen level, despite citizens paying their salaries.

Loyal Opp said: “And the way you’ve described the situation, they’re perfectly willing to keep hosting your sites if you pay them more money. “

No. That option was NEVER offered by this or the previous hosting company. They simply refuse to protect their customers from these attacks. And the reason is profit. They can run unsecured servers at lower cost than secured servers. Money after a criminal’s own heart, so to speak. Punish the targeted customer instead of blocking the criminal.

DDoS is growing fast.

If web-host providers want to have any customers, they’d better get their act together, or someone else will come along that provides anti-DDoS protection, and put them out of business.

Obama’s call for universal broadband accessibility will bring with it some answers and funding sources to combat these criminals. All you spammers and hackers out there. Enjoy your malevolence while you can. More of you will be serving time with a gorilla cell mate in the future. And even if that means a tax on internet access, I will vote heartily for it.

The cost of these criminals to every consumer was $50 billion dollars in 2005, and is estimate now at $100 billion dollars for 2007. An internet tax that stops this crime or seriously constrains it, will cost far less in just a couple years.

Your argument leads to the conclusion that criminals should be permitted to create industries who can profit from protecting individuals and organizations from criminals. That is NOT how the Constitution is written. The Government is charged with the responsibility for policing criminals and crime prevention to promote the general welfare.

While the Federal Government is charged with providing a justice system, including some enforcement branch, local crime has been a choice of local government or private enterprise for the entire history of this country. Pirates were a problem for Jefferson largely handled through private means. Pirates whether in Somalia, corporate enterprise, or the intertubes are still a problem.

Protection in the form of insurance, hedge funds,arbitrage, DDoS protected servers, or old fashioned ship boarding with cutlasses, pirating has long been an accepted way of life for many privateers. Welcome to the high seas, matey.

My laptop crashed the other day and before I had installed anti-spyware and antivirus software, I was infected with a virus directing me to install anti-spyware. I simply rebooted and blew the virus to smithereens. Arrrrrrrggghh!

snert erroneously said: “Your argument leads to the conclusion that criminals should be permitted to create industries who can profit from protecting individuals and organizations from criminals.”

Quite the contrary, snert. What you describe is what is happening NOW. What I propose is that our government enforce the laws, seek out these criminals and end their careers, getting rid of both much of the crime and need for private profit oriented security measures which grow in demand proportionately with the rise of the crime.

david

do you think it is likely that over time as these attacks become more frequent, and the demand for servers who don’t penalize for DDoS attacks rises, that more may start to offer them. maybe competition between providers may ultimately solve the problem for you, by lowering the price, and making it standard rather than an expensive option.

dbs,absolutely, at an ever increasing cost to society and individuals however. If we don’t limit the incidents, the costs will continue to increase beyond even economies of scale and competition in the security marketplace.

Without an all out law enforcement effort, the criminals will simply remain one step ahead of the technologies, which is what we have seen take place over the last decade. I can’t help but think the corporate side of security is lobbying against law enforcement against cyber crime, thereby increasing their profit margins and prospective market demand continuously. Another bubble in the making as I see it.

It is absurd on its face for Obama to push for universal broadband access and NOT demand the most of the justice departments in pursuing and reducing the incidents of cyber crime. Anarchy has brought down the mightiest and most authoritarian of societies in the past. You think cyber anarchy would shrivel in a democratic society? Quite the opposite, without due diligence by law enforcement and citizenry alike.

David,

It is important, particularly that political speech was targeted.

I would commend to you another way of looking at this, though. If you were having no real effect no one would care enough to do this to you. From outside the two sites the connection between V.O.I.D. and Poliwatch are non-obvious, so a coodinated attack had to come from someone irritated pretty specifically with YOU.

Note that both Poliwatch and V.O.I.D. are referenced on this site, this site shares posters with the other two, and it apparently was not victimized in the attack. I, for one, find that peculiar.

Lee, or it may simply reflect the complete absence of any guards whatsoever at that particular host.

I have learned however, that it was only the voidnow.org domain involved, not poliwatch. That was revealed by the host’s owner in an email day before yesterday.

At any rate, VOID can now afford a dedicated server with its own protections and controls, and the directors have approved that expenditure. Targeting VOID won’t be so easy in the future.

I appreciate your slant, that what has happened may be a milestone of success to be worn about the neck. But, it’s a milestone which should never weigh so much in the land of “free” political speech. Political speech is not free if the speaker can be targeted for attack upon their person, finances, or well being while the government turns a blind eye. The FBI continues to refuse to return my call regarding the incident. Let alone investigate.

David,

I know there are usually a number of investigations ongoing at any time, and have read a number of articles on the issue of foreign actors in these matters, particularly the prevalence, mentioned earlier, of Russians, Chinese, and Indians in this form of disruptive activity.

The fact of the matter is, though,you are neither a government agency nor a major corporation with the ear of politicians. Your’s is not an unimportant ox when it’s gored, but it’s not the ox they want to help first.

What House committee or subcommittee would be the most help? This is the closest thing to your concern here, I think. See who Gonzales is. he may be from near you. Gene Green is a long-serving Democrat who might be (and also might not, given that introduction) helpful.

David,

You said, “snert erroneously said: “Your argument leads to the conclusion that criminals should be permitted to create industries who can profit from protecting individuals and organizations from criminals.”

Quite the contrary, snert. What you describe is what is happening NOW. What I propose is that our government enforce the laws, seek out these criminals and end their careers, getting rid of both much of the crime and need for private profit oriented security measures which grow in demand proportionately with the rise of the crime. “

Actually that was a quote from your comment #270402 that I failed to tag properly.

I don’t disagree with you, but was expanding it, to point with salty pirate lingo flair (lol), to the long history of slow moving governments and fast moving pirates (read crooks) in all facets of “free markets”. I hereby further disclose that I am a fan of the Pirate Bay, and find Somalia somewhat humerous.

Blame it on block quote pro.

oops

Lee, thank you very much for your feedback and links and suggestions. I will pursue them to see if we can’t get some action or at least acknowledgment of the Constitutional rights issue being compromised.

goo, yes, that history of advancing crime and slow government to respond is undeniable. Like those before me, I with others, will have to make enough noise about this to get government’s attention.