We've been talking for several weeks about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office of the Department of Homeland Security has launched a new campaign that involves seizing the domains used by websites involved in copyright infringement, the sale of counterfeit goods or child pornography. The problem is that the program has been borderline incompetent, taking legitimate foreign businesses offline, as well as earlier this month causing the outage of 84,000 largely legal websites after seizing the domain of a free DNS service operator. Defending themselves for the first time, ICE boss John Morton talks to Politico and justifies the program in this way:

quote:

---

"Often we get the criticism that we're trying to infringe on free speech, regulate the Internet - nothing can be further from the truth. We have no interest in regulating the Internet. We have no responsibility in doing that; we're a law enforcement agency. We investigate crimes and try to deter criminal activity. We're trying to protect the rights of American consumers, American manufacturers. We can seize and forfeit them just like we seize and forfeit bank accounts, houses and vehicles that are used in other crimes. Any instrument of a crime is subject to our jurisdiction in terms of seizure and forfeit."

---

While that certainly sounds nice, it probably rings a little hollow to the foreign, completely legal company who had its business operations shuttered because of an ICE screw up, or the 84,000 websites that went dark because DHS believes (just like the intelligence community) it doesn't have to adhere to due process. Morton kind of dances over and around these problems, the serious First Amendment questions, and the fact this entire program is likely illegal in and of itself. Despite the fact an agency that claims to be enforcing the law is likely breaking several, Morton informs Politico the concerns about his organization's disregard for the First Amendment and due process are "overblown."