Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) one of the legs of the Department of Homeland Security has seized over 70 domain names in the past few days. Right now they're looking for sites that sell illegal goods, copyrighted music, etc and are replacing the site with the image on your left.
I actually don't have a problem with the government stepping in and seizing these domains IF the site was actually serving illegal content. I do feel slightly uncomfortable about the owners not being contacted first before their domain names were seized. I also believe that the owners of these domains have the right to defend themselves and their actions in the court of law. Or in most cases probably disappear and create a new site.
If these sites were selling or performing illegal actions that were against the law I'm proud of the DHS for taking the step towards cleaning the internet. I don't think its going to be very successful since they'll just switch domain names but its the thought that counts right?
Now when ICE starts taking down sites that they deem "inappropriate" we have an issue. Its always a fine line giving the government any type of power. They normally end up abusing it.
Lets see if ICE can show some self constraint, because we all know its little brother the TSA obviously can not.