Blogetery.com’s 70,000 Set to Get Their Blogs Back Up

Update to the Blogetery.com shut down by Greg Sandoval of CNET News has written a great article giving the juice:

Apparently the FBI found in some blogs information including names of American citizens that were targeted for assassination.

It wasn’t blogetery that closed the server down, that was a decision taken by burstnet.

However, in the last weekend reports have surfaced that Blogetery was shut down by the federal government – apparently due to copywrite violations. On Sunday, CNET reported that the shutdown had nothing to do with copyright violations and that a similar service, Ipbfree.com, a platform for message boards, was shut down within days of Blogetery. Although it’s still not clear why Ipbfree was cut off.

The disappearance of the sites has prompted users of each service to complain about the closures and speculation has been rife. Some guesses were more wild than others.
“Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom”
–from Al Qaeda Webzine

Many people speculated that the FBI was using the Patriot Act to silence bloggers. Burst.net’s Director, Mr Marr stated that the FBI had never ordered them to stop service to any site it hosts without a court order and that the vast majority of Burst.net’s communication with the federal government has involved agents serving warrants related to terrorist or child porn investigations.

“They have to go through the legal system,” Marr said. “A judge has to issue an order.”

Burst.net received a Voluntary Emergency Disclosure of Information request from the FBI. The letter said that terrorist material, which presented a threat to American lives, was found on a server hosted by Burst.net and specific information was requested about the people involved.

In the FBI’s letter, the agency included a clause that says Web hosts and Internet service providers may voluntarily elect to shut down the sites of customers involved in these kinds of situations. The Burst.net employee who handled the request erroneously believed that the FBI would want to seize the customer’s server and thus the employee cut off service to Blogetery. Marr said the FBI, however, never asked for the server.

Marr said that regardless of the mix-up, Blogetery’s service was terminated because bomb-making tips and a “hit list” are an obvious and absolute violation of its terms of service.

The FBI’s request invoked 18 USC 2702, a portion of federal law that allows providers to voluntarily disclose information to police in some circumstances.

Under this, the FBI has the right to ask that an Internet service provider to turn over information immediately–without being compelled by a court order–when the agency has reason to believe that lives may be threatened. The request also requires that an ISP not to discuss the investigation.

It was reported by numerous news outlets over the past weekend that “Inspire” (a new online magazine) is designed to help recruit new members to al-Qaeda and is edited by Samir Khan, a 24-year-old North Carolina man who moved to Yemen last October. According to Fox News, the title of one article was “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”

Citing intelligence sources, Fox reported that Khan is Web savvy and his magazine represents “al-Qaeda’s most ambitious terrorist recruitment tool to date.”
Journalist Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter @sandoCNET.

Related posts:

1. Blogetery.com Blogs Shut Down Without Notice