Mozilla resists US gov't request to nuke "MafiaaFire" add-on (ars technica)

[Posted May 5, 2011 by jake]

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has asked Mozilla to remove the MafiaaFire Redirector Firefox add-on, ars technica reports. The article is based on a blog posting from Mozilla lawyer Harvey Anderson, where he says that Mozilla has not complied and instead asked the DHS for a legal justification. The add-on is a simple redirector for domains that were seized by the DHS for alleged copyright violations. "As for the developer of the MafiaaFire Redirector, he says that a Chrome version is coming soon and that his work shouldn't be repressed. 'Now, because my idea, which took less than a week to createand the Chrome version 2 daysmakes them walk around with egg on their face after the millions spent (it cost me less than $100), they went running to Mozilla seeking another favor,' he tells Ars. 'They did not even try to contact us. Hats off to Mozilla for sticking up to them, at first we were afraid if Mozilla would even host it due to its controversial nature but they truly backed up their open source supporting words with actions.'"

Mozilla resists US gov't request to nuke "MafiaaFire" add-on (ars technica)

Posted May 6, 2011 1:44 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (6 responses)

Mozilla reacted to this request with the exact treatment that any government request should receive: find out precisely what the request legally obligates you to do, and do precisely that and nothing more, assuming you don't want to raise a legal challenge to that minimum obligation. In this case, Mozilla determined that they had no legal obligation to take any action on this request, and so they properly took no action.

Mozilla resists US gov't request to nuke "MafiaaFire" add-on (ars technica)

Posted May 6, 2011 5:23 UTC (Fri) by gmaxwell (guest, #30048) [Link] (4 responses)

Now now. Not all government requests are bad. If the DHS said "hey, addon X is malware please remove it" and you looked and saw they were right, it would be perfectly reasonable to remove it. Just about everywhere the government does a lot of good things too, even though governments also sometimes do some pretty reprehensible things too.

A request that you would have acted on for anyone else shouldn't be treated with any more hostility because it came from the government, but nor should it be treated with any less.

Mozilla resists US gov't request to nuke "MafiaaFire" add-on (ars technica)

Posted May 6, 2011 5:37 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

Fair enough, and I didn't intend to imply any more than your last statement: that you shouldn't treat a government request any differently from any other form of request. In particular, even though the government potentially has the power to compel you to comply with a request, in the absence of such compulsion you should treat it precisely the same as any other request from any other entity. Many companies and organizations don't do so, so when someone does it seems worth taking the time to applaud their appropriate reaction.

But yes, if you get a request to do something you want to do anyway, by all means go ahead and do it. :)

Mozilla resists US gov't request to nuke "MafiaaFire" add-on (ars technica)

Posted May 6, 2011 12:01 UTC (Fri) by Hausvib6 (guest, #70606) [Link] (1 responses)

Let's download the add-on, no need to install it since it looks insecure (it uses a redirection database hosted on various web sites), just to piss DHS off by increasing the download count.

Mozilla resists US gov't request to nuke "MafiaaFire" add-on (ars technica)

Posted May 6, 2011 15:03 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

The alternative FireICE version mentioned in the comments appears to address most of the security concerns. In particular, the redirect list is built in, and FireICE doesn't redirect every 15th request to its own "help us" page (with potential tracking implications).

Mozilla resists US gov't request to nuke "MafiaaFire" add-on (ars technica)

Posted May 7, 2011 7:45 UTC (Sat) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link]

gmaxwell wrote:

Not all government requests are bad.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If there is a reason beyond political expediency, then Department of Homeland Security can explain their request in the fashion requested. On the evidence so far, "We want you to help us enforce the perceived interests of monied pressure groups, and have no legal or moral authority in this matter' seems to about cover it.

Best Regards,
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

just the legal minimum?

Posted May 8, 2011 9:12 UTC (Sun) by pjm (guest, #2080) [Link]

> Mozilla reacted to this request with the exact treatment [...]: find out precisely what the request legally obligates you to do, and do precisely that and nothing more

If you read the original article, you'll see that that's not what Mozilla has done, and that the article summary is misleading as to what Mozilla has done: they didn't just enquire what they legally had to do, but also enquired whether there are other reasons they should comply even if they aren't legally obliged to. [jake, can you clarify the summary please? I had the same misunderstanding before reading the original article.]

As other commenters have said, life works better if you go beyond the legal minimum to make the world better, and despite the impression the tabloids might give, government agencies have been known to work for good.

Mozilla resists US gov't request to nuke "MafiaaFire" add-on (ars technica)

Posted May 6, 2011 5:04 UTC (Fri) by Hausvib6 (guest, #70606) [Link] (1 responses)

Cool! I didn't know anything about MafiaaFire until I saw this news. Thanks to DHS for pointing out this add-on, thanks to Mozilla for not bowing down to the request, and, of course, thanks to LWN for bringing the good news.

Hopefully this great news will reach more and more people, making the domains seizures useless.

Mozilla resists US gov't request to nuke "MafiaaFire" add-on (ars technica)

Posted May 6, 2011 9:01 UTC (Fri) by giggls (subscriber, #48434) [Link]

Streisand effect :)

DHS and copyright?

Posted May 6, 2011 7:17 UTC (Fri) by ketilmalde (guest, #18719) [Link] (7 responses)

domains that were seized by the DHS for alleged copyright violations

I just have to ask: copyright violations that threaten the "homeland"? Is that what the US has spent more than one trillion dollars on? Or should that be "department of campaign contribution security", perhaps?

DHS and copyright?

Posted May 6, 2011 10:09 UTC (Fri) by Tjebbe (guest, #34055) [Link]

Yes, I have also been wondering what the DHS is doing here, and how protecting the financial interest of a couple of commercial parties is helping to secure the american people (whether this is justified in the first place or not).

Good thing it's not my tax money :)

DHS and copyright?

Posted May 6, 2011 12:43 UTC (Fri) by freebird (guest, #43129) [Link]

I just have to ask: copyright violations that threaten the "homeland"?

This is a long standing problem. Remember the Dmitry Sklyarov affair? [1]

In the months leading up to 9/11 the FBI was busy running errands for Adobe and others as quid-pro-quo for campaign contributions to congress persons (the largest part of which went to Hillary Clinton as I recall.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Sklyarov

DHS and copyright?

Posted May 6, 2011 17:33 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

> I just have to ask: copyright violations that threaten the "homeland"? Is that what the US has spent more than one trillion dollars on? Or should that be "department of campaign contribution security", perhaps?

Are you surprised?

The chances for a person to die in the USA from a terrorist incident in the USA is roughly similar to being struck and killed by a meteor, but we don't spend tens a billion dollars a month maintaining a anti-meteor strike force.

The moral of the story here is that most politicians and bureaucrats in government are self-interested power mongers. They seek to use their positions for personal profit and to push their own ideological agendas.

As far as why are they using DHS like this...

The answer is easy. Major media outlets are owned by the same group of people that own movie studios and significant holdings in music studios. These people depend on government restrictions to reduce competition (FCC) and depend on government for much of their profitability (copyrights). They know it, they understand how the system works. Without government protections their profitability would be massively diminished.

Also:

The politicians handed media outlets a huge amount of power to influence democratic elections through things like campaign finance laws. Individuals and corporations are now heavily restricted in the type and amount of political speech they are allowed to engage in prior to election. However media outlets have no such restrictions. They can talk and bring up points about elections and have editorial freedom on what type of election news and information they care to publish.

So putting two and two together:

The politicians are using DHS funnel hundreds of millions of dollars of tax payer's money to help protect the profitability of major media corporations. In exchange media corporations use their editorial control over the news to make politicians look good.

Simply the old game of "I scratch your back, you scratch mine"

DHS and copyright?

Posted May 6, 2011 18:40 UTC (Fri) by deck (guest, #19755) [Link] (3 responses)

The DHS contains "U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement" and "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement". It was probably under color of one of these agencies that the request was made rather than an anti-terrorism component. Still it was good of Mozilla to question this as without a legal holding a request is just that and can be ignored.

DHS and copyright?

Posted May 7, 2011 8:24 UTC (Sat) by Simbilis (guest, #3394) [Link]

"U.S. Customs and Border Protection" (CBP).

DHS and copyright?

Posted May 9, 2011 9:48 UTC (Mon) by Tjebbe (guest, #34055) [Link] (1 responses)

I'd expect customs to fall under dpt of commerce, not dhs. Perhaps the second one should too; Last time I talked to someone from commerce we were discussing how the ever increasing rules and regulations to visit the US are actively hurting (US) businesses now. But since it's DHS, they apparently cannot do anything about it.

DHS and copyright?

Posted May 12, 2011 10:04 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]

It sure is, and I think it's seriously underestimated, or atleast under-debated by the American public and media.

Several people, especially in security, open source and civil rights, will actively refuse to visit USA as long as the conditions for visiting is, in essence, agreeing to being treated like a criminal.

It's hard to estimate percentages, but I find it likely that for each one that actually flat-out refuse, there's going to be a hundred who dislikes it, enough to probably choose another destination if given a choice. This hurts tourism, for example.

Myself, I'm somewhere in between. I dislike the policies strongly. But I could probably still be persuaded to go, if the arguments in favour of going where strong enough. (but I ain't actually gone even once in the last decade, and I was in USA 4 times in the decade before that and likely would've maintained a similar frequency if NOT for the policy-changes)

Beside the economical impact, USA used to hold freedom and liberty highly. It should be food for thought that people will now actually refrain from visiting USA - because they feel that their freedom, liberty and/or privacy would be violated to an unacceptable degree if they went.