Domain name seizures worry civil libertarians

By Matthew Fordahl
Associated Press

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Federal agents routinely seize property used in crimes, from drug dealer's cars to hackers' computers.

But the government has begun nabbing Internet domain names — a tactic that civil libertarians say threatens online merchants and could enable the feds to spy on unwitting Web surfers.

In one case, the government took over Web sites that it said peddled marijuana paraphernalia. In another, prosecutors acquired a site whose owner was charged with selling chips that let video game systems run pirated games.

But rather than being shut down as in previous raids, the sites remained alive — and now greet visitors with stern warnings from government agencies.

The trend is alarming online civil liberties groups and legal scholars, who say that as electronic commerce becomes more common, the tactic could destroy people's livelihoods. While brick-and-mortar businesses can move, operations in cyberspace depend on their domain name, the Web's equivalent of a sign on a store's front door.

"If you want to take down a Web site but simply confiscate the servers, operators can always buy other servers," said Michael Overly, an attorney specializing in computer law at Foley & Lardner.

"But if they take the domain name away, then they've put the person out of business."

Critics of the Justice Department's raids in recent weeks also say they fear the government could use the new method to spy on Web surfers who visit confiscated sites.

"The government is suddenly in a position of being able to monitor the Web-surfing activities of unwitting individuals who believe they are going to a Web site ... but possibly implicating themselves into some law enforcement investigation," said David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Visitors to pipesforyou.com, for instance, were being greeted with a message informing them that a Pennsylvania federal court has "restrained" the sites at the request of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

"You can spin this out to future situations where there are a lot of classes of individuals the government might like to have a list of," such as visitors to terrorism- or biological weapons-related sites, Sobel said.

The Justice Department did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment on what it plans to do with the sites and their visitor logs.

In announcing the indictment last week of 55 people for allegedly selling drug paraphernalia on the Internet, Attorney General John Ashcroft said that several sites had been redirected to DEA servers and that prosecutors had asked the court to redirect another "15 to 20 sites within the next 30 days."

"The government has done many things over the years," he said, "that ultimately turn out not to be legal."