FROM DAILY TECH

U.S. Government Accidentally Abuses Internet "Kill Switch", Shuts off 84,000 Sites


Government believed the sites contained child pornography, but they did not

In evidence of the dangers of the U.S. government's increasing "kill switch" powers regarding web servers inside the U.S., the Department of Justice and Homeland Security’s ICE last week essentially shut down 84,000 sites in a case of mistaken identity.

The shutdowns targeted mooo.com, the most popular shared domain at free web service provider FreeDNS.  FreeDNS is a free domain service that is immensely popular among file sharers, blogs, small businesses, and other independent operators.  Its homepage is afraid.org.

With the mooo.com shutdown last Friday, the ICE accidentally shut down 84,000 subdomain pages.  The pages were all redirected to a banner that stated "Advertisement, distribution, transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography constitute federal crimes that carry penalties for first time offenders of up to 30 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution."

The court order to shut down and redirect the sites was granted via a seizure warrant from a District Court.  The warrant was executed as part of the DHS ICE team's "Operation Save Our Children".

The key problem is that none of the sites thus identified under the mooo.com superdomain had child porn on them.  They appear to have been the victim of an overzealous government police force with a bit too much power on its hands.

FreeDNS has expressed outrage.  In a statement, they comment, "Freedns.afraid.org has never allowed this type of abuse of its DNS service. We are working to get the issue sorted as quickly as possible."

Over the weekend they managed to begin restoring some of the pages.  Meanwhile small business owners were left to try to reassure customers that they were note engaging in illegal activity [source example].


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FROM AP

Japan may send chatty humanoid tweet-bot to space(AP)

TOKYO (AP) — Lonely astronauts on the International Space Station may soon be getting an android friend from Japan.

And for the folks back home, it will tweet.

Japan's space agency is considering putting a talking humanoid robot on the International Space Station to watch the mission while astronauts are asleep, monitor their health and stress levels and communicate to Earth through the microblogging site Twitter.

Japan's space agency JAXA announced this week that it is looking at a plan to send a humanoid robot to the space station in 2013 that could communicate with the ground through Twitter — primarily feeding photos, rather than original ideas — and provide astronauts with "comfort and companionship."

Following up on NASA's "Robonaut" R-2 program, which is set for launch on the Discovery shuttle next week, the Japanese android would be part of a larger effort to create and refine robots that can be used by the elderly, JAXA said in a statement.

Japan is one of the leading countries in robotics, and has a rapidly aging society with one of the world's longest life-expectancies.

Improving robot communication capabilities could help the elderly on Earth by providing a nonintrusive means of monitoring the robot owner's health and vital signs and sending information to emergency responders if there is an abnormality, JAXA said.

"We are thinking in terms of a very human-like robot that would have facial expressions and be able to converse with the astronauts," said JAXA's Satoshi Sano.

The robot was being developed with the advertising and communications giant Dentsu Inc. and a team at Tokyo University.

The NASA project has human-like head, hands and arms and uses the same tools as station crew members. The "Robonaut" called R-2 — a shout-out to R2-D2 of "Star Wars" fame — is intended to carry out maintenance tasks in the station's Destiny lab.


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