Mystery of the disappearing blogs

July 20, 2010 3:28 PM

More details are surfacing about why Blogetery.com, a blogging platform that claimed to service more than 70,000 blogs, was mysteriously booted from the Internet by its Web-hosting company.

Politics Daily: Did feds shut down 73,000 blogs, and why?

ZeroPaid: Al-Qaeda activities, not piracy, reason for shutdown of 73,000 blogs.

CNET: Why webhost shut down 73,000 blogs a mystery

TorrentFreak (who broke the story): ‘Operation In Our Sites‘ targeted several sites including TVShack.net, Movies-Links.TV, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org, ZML.com, NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net. In almost unprecedented action, the domain names of 7 sites were seized and indications are that others – The Pirate Bay and MegaUpload – narrowly avoided the same fate.

posted by thescientificmethhead (25 comments total)

This story is just so weird that I'm inclined to think it's part of a counterintelligence program.
posted by rhizome at 3:38 PM on July 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

A source with knowledge of the investigation said that the material allegedly found on Blogetery's server is connected to an online magazine called "Inspire," which debuted recently. Numerous news outlets reported over the past weekend that "Inspire" is designed to help recruit new members to al-Qaeda and is edited by Samir Khan, a 24-year-old North Carolina man who moved to Yemen last October. According to Fox News, the title of one article was "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom."

That's not just according to Fox News. It was reported widely when Inspire was uploaded, by sources including Rachel Maddow and The Atlantic. (link includes screenshots of the magazine)
posted by hippybear at 3:43 PM on July 20, 2010

This story is just so weird that I'm inclined to think it's part of an MPAA program.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:44 PM on July 20, 2010

Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom
posted by roll truck roll at 3:44 PM on July 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

I was so happy when newzbin came back that this doesn't bother me. If megaupload goes I'll be screwed though, I didn't realise it was under pressure. Have to think of somewhere else to store 50 gigs of sci-fi dweebery for my friends.

Blogetery’s Web host, late on July 9 that links to al-Qaeda materials were found on Blogetery’s servers,

So what, isn't that mostly just bored teenagers, the kind that upload videos of beheadings and pretend they're all cool and shit? I doubt blogetery was a hotbed of recruiting anyone except people who are like so going to get grounded if their mums find out.
posted by shinybaum at 3:47 PM on July 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

We had to take your blog down because CYBERWAR!
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:47 PM on July 20, 2010 [3 favorites]

Set it up the bomb your in kitchen mom. All Your base are belong to us!
posted by white_devil at 3:49 PM on July 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm still trying to figure out how to pronounce "blogetery." Definitely a domain name that fails on both aesthetic and practical grounds.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 3:52 PM on July 20, 2010

Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom

Gonzo porn, surely, and really rather icky...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 4:06 PM on July 20, 2010

So the FBI contacts the webhost, and tells them about a few blogetery sites that are associated with Al Qaeda, then the webhost overreacts by shutting down the whole domain? Surely all seventy thousand blogs weren't being used to recruit terrorists.
posted by Kevin Street at 4:08 PM on July 20, 2010

A dreaded sunny day,
So I'll meet you at the blogetery gates,
Bombs and moms are on your side,
While the FBI is on mine
posted by "Elbows" O'Donoghue at 4:13 PM on July 20, 2010 [7 favorites]

In other news, books encourage theft and music encourages violence against authority figures.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 4:13 PM on July 20, 2010

That's such a catchy phrase, I can't stop singing it!

♪ Make a BOMB / in the kitchen-of-your MOM ♫
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:13 PM on July 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

'Blogetery' makes me think 'cemetary', so makes some sense that it's dead, I guess.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:14 PM on July 20, 2010

There really is nothing weird about this and it is actually fairly well explained in the links if you filter out the conspiracy and suppositions by the authors and look at the facts. The US government has discovered that it is very difficult to bring enforcement actions against web site operators because they are located around the world. So they can use civil proceedings to go after the owners and take ownership of the domain names and the ip addresses assigned. Upon winning a summary judgement they can take the domain name and redirect it elsewhere. Since ICANN is the ultimate authority over names and ip addresses and it is a US corporation enforcement of the judgement is easy.
Furthermore it would seem that they've identified a number of virtual private server and hosting providers who seem to be facilitating criminal activities such as botnet control, spam, malware distribution and copyright piracy.

The anti-terrorist / intelligence agency side of things could be a quick conclusion reached because some of the enforcement agencies are part of homeland security. Of course it is also possible that the intel community is involved more
directly to shut down blogs or sites that provide material support to terrorists.

The scary bit is that if you've been reading the Washington Post series on the post 9-11 security apparatus, it is clear that the potential for Kafka-esq nightmares for legitimate site operators, political disidents is high. I'm very concerned that we will end up with some mid level operative shutting down a place like mefi because of a random fpp that they didn't like.
posted by humanfont at 4:23 PM on July 20, 2010

This story is just so weird that I'm inclined to think it's part of a counterintelligence program.
...
This story is just so weird that I'm inclined to think it's part of an MPAA program.
...
We had to take your blog down because CYBERWAR!

I can't wait until these are all the same reason.
posted by DU at 4:39 PM on July 20, 2010 [2 favorites]

It looks like the blogetery thing is totally separate from the, imo, extremely dubious legality and disturbing implications of Operation In Our Sites. (Copyright imperialism?) There's only a connection because the blog story was broken by TorrentFreak during its reporting on the copyright stuff.
posted by Kevin Street at 4:42 PM on July 20, 2010

That's such a catchy phrase, I can't stop singing it!

♪ Make a BOMB / in the kitchen-of-your MOM ♫

Tell me about it..
posted by cortex at 4:58 PM on July 20, 2010 [5 favorites]

Tell me about it..

I don't know whether to be scared or impressed.
Maybe a little of both.
Scaressed?
No.
Impared?
posted by Floydd at 5:09 PM on July 20, 2010

I'm very concerned that we will end up with some mid level operative shutting down a place like mefi because of a random fpp that they didn't like.

Repeated for emphasis.

Despite Torrent Freak's early, accidental redirection toward the issue of piracy, we are still looking at a platform of 73,000 blogs shut down and access denied to their creators because of the irresponsible or malicious conduct of how many? We don't know, but it's easy to assume 99%+ of the bloggers are not guilty of the bad conduct.

The lesson to this is: Back up everything you write online OFFline.

And even at the risk of angering the Google Gods, if you're not hosting your own site, you should be mirroring it at more than one place. If you think you're ever going to write something with the slightest chance it'll anger The Powers That Be, don't put all your words in one basket.

The potential good news: if that's the way the Homeland Security Stasi is doing things now, I'd expect it's just a matter of time until they shut down 4chan. And maybe we should hold back on the outrage until AFTER they do.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:30 PM on July 20, 2010

If they shut down 4chan how would Ralph Nader, Amy Goodwin and NPR collaborate with the CIA and NSA to secretly control Eve Online. 4chan has nothing to fear.
posted by humanfont at 6:53 PM on July 20, 2010

For some general information: I posted photos of that specific site on my blog but also noted that I would not post the directions (a video) on how to make a bomb in the kitchen. I stated that one ought not make bombs in mother's kitchen. But I got the information and the entire thing off the net where it had appeared before the site was taken down, if indeed it has been. I got it via another source.
posted by Postroad at 7:10 PM on July 20, 2010

I totally thought they were talking about using your mom as bomb-making ingredients.

Step 1: Have a heart-to-heart with your Mom.
...
Step 28: After reducing Mom's flesh to a slurry base, SLOWLY hydrate with a solution of Nitric Acid.

Makes: 1 Mom Bomb. Limit 1 bomb per person.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:11 PM on July 20, 2010

I stated that one ought not make bombs in mother's kitchen.

Of course not. That's what the garden shed is for.
posted by DreamerFi at 11:35 PM on July 20, 2010

I can't wait until these are all the same reason.

Wait no longer.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:22 AM on July 21, 2010