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End the Abuse: No More Website Seizures

Imagine waking up one day to find that your favorite website -- or even your own website -- has been "seized": taken by the government without any trial or even a warning.  That's exactly what Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been doing:  They used to seize illegal goods at the ports, but now they seize whole websites.

But as you might guess, ICE isn't very good at patrolling cyberspace.  In the past few months, they've seized innocent blogs and search engines and even managed to shut down 84,000 sites completely by accident.

Now people are asking why customs officials should be seizing websites at all and ICE is in full damage-control mode, trying desperately to explain why letting the government nab entire websites without trial isn't a blatant violation of people's First Amendment rights.  Now's our chance: It's time to call on ICE to put an end to these abusive domain name seizures.

TEXT OF PETITION TO JOHN MORTON, DIRECTOR OF IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT:  Seizing an entire website isn't like seizing a criminal's car.  ICE's mistakes make it clear why there needs to be due process before the government can shut down a site.  ICE should not have the power of life and death over the Internet: You need to stop these domain name seizures immediately.