If I were a defense attorney, it's possible I could find myself having to represent someone on trial for that kind of crime. In fact, I have spent quite a bit of time thinking over that very issue in the last year, and the complex ethical responsibilities involved. Although I expect it would be a very unpleasant task, I would have to be prepared to do it as best I could, because that's what 'the right to an attorney' boils down to.

But I really don't think there needs to be any legal protection for the continued operation of a child porn website. The people abused during the creation of such material have rights too, which I think are a lot more important than the porn distributor's property right in a domain name.

Of course there isn't and shouldn't be protection for the continued operation of a child porn website, but shouldn't it be found to be one first? You seem to be saying "yes," but that the evidence should be given to I don't know...a dude at Comcast or wherever? I'm fuzzy on this last part.

Yes, examining the evidence is a judge's job. And it is the judges who issue the warrants (or not) after conducting a thorough review of the evidence provided. That's what is supposed to happen, and that's what almost always does happen, and that's due process in action.

When I referred to the likelihood of a technical error by a network administrator, that would be the person implementing the DNS changes under ICE supervision AFTER being presented with the warrant authorizing the domain seizure. The warrant which the ICE staffers got from a judge, who had first examined the evidence thoroughly.

One more time, in chronological order:

Someone in the DoJ/ICE finds a child porn website, and begins collecting evidence by making screenshots or downloading content or whatever methodology they use.

Everything known about the website is written up in an affidavit (ie a statement), and along with the evidence it is taken to the local District Court.

A judge reads the affidavit and examines the evidence - maybe as collected, maybe by going to the website directly to verify the statements made by the DoJ agent.

If the judge is satisfied that it is the real deal, then she issues a warrant authorizing the seizure.

The warrant is taken to ICANN or InterNIC or wherever it is easiest and fastest to patch the DNS, and is shown to the staff there as proof of legal authority. This is called executing the warrant.

A technician then redirects the domain name of the porn site(s) to point at an ICE server. On this occasion, mooo.com was accidentally redirected as well, which should never have happened. Exactly who screwed up and how is still a mystery.

You're noting that the large web site shutdown was probably a mistake but are using that argument to defend the basic mechanism. Seems like a reversal of the principle "better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished" into "better a thousand innocents get hit with accidental collateral damage than one guilty man get away with having something really dangerous on the Internet".

Yes, it was probably a mistake. The point is when it gets easy for repressive measures to happen, they get sloppy and hurt innocents. And when a cop has the luxury not having to have a trial, things will be easy whether there's a judge involved or not.

Constitutional guarantees really do exist to "make the cops job hard". The urge for the good citizen to agree with the cops is too great.

And also, these action were carried out as "civil forfeiture" (in this case "virtual property") so my comments on this seem entirely justified - indeed, I don't think anything I said was specific to physical as oppose to "virtual" property.

Edit: It's not really the judge's "job to interpret evidence" fairly. There really aren't ANY uncorruptable experts on fairness. The ONLY, ONLY, ONLY thing that keeps the justice system honest is the public, adversarial institution of the trial itself (it's kind of like the market that regard - two would-be monopolists can be very honest with enough daylight on them). The trial system hasn't done a terribly good job lately but if it is entirely absent, you get really bad things.

I'm sorry that I have done such a bad job of explaining it.

Well that's the most concrete point you've made so far, but I fear you've chosen brevity at just the wrong time. In addition, I think slaps on the wrist like some guy being forced to resign is effectively the same as immunity, since we're talking about legal repercussions here, and escaping the merest suggestion of criminality creates no deterrent.

But none of them relate to your example.

Statutes exist to allow people to take emergency action when a crime is in the process of being committed - but they have no relation to civil forfeiture, which isn't about stopping an action but to remove peripheral resources permanently.

Shutting down hott_kiddie_porn_pix_4_free.com is quite different from impounding someone's car or putting a lien on a bank account. Please stop arguing with me about the latter when I have only ever been talking about the former.