Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Mexican Protest Site Censored by GoDaddy -- with the U.S. Embassy's Help

from https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/03/mexican-protest-site-censored-godaddy-us-embassys-help

The Mexican website 1dmx.org (mirror here), was set up in the wake of a set of controversial December 1st 2012 protests against the inauguration of the new President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto. For a year, the site served as a source of information, news, discussion and commentary from the point of view of the protestors. As the anniversary of the protests approached, the site grew to include organized campaign against proposed laws to criminalize protest in the country, as well as preparations to document the results of a memorial protest, planned for December 1, 2013.

On December 2nd, 2013, the site disappeared offline. The United States host, GoDaddy, suspended the domain with no prior notice. GoDaddy told its owners that the site was taken down "as part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation." The office in charge of this investigation was listed as "Special Agent Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Embassy, Mexico City." (The contact email pointed to "ice.dhs.gov," implying that this agent was working as part of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement wing, who have been involved in curious domain name takedowns in the past.)

Email received by 1dmx.org owners from GoDaddy, showing request came from US embassyEmail received by 1dmx.org owners from GoDaddy.

Luis Fernando García, 1dmx.org lawyer for the protestors, suspected that the call to bring down the site came from further afield than the U.S. embassy, and is suing several authorities in the Mexican courts to discover exactly which government agency passed on the order to the U.S. Embassy. Their court case, announced today, will continue to pursue the Mexican authorities to find the source of the demand, which the case contends violates Mexico's legal protections for freedom of expression.




rest at https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/03/mexican-protest-site-censored-godaddy-us-embassys-help

No comments:

Post a Comment