[Infowarrior] - GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com

[Richard Forno]

GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com
By Kevin Poulsen EmailMarch 11, 2008 | 8:42:42 PMCategories: Censorship,
Cover-Ups  

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/godaddy-silence.html

Ratemycop_2 A new web service that lets users rate and comment on the
uniformed police officers in their community is scrambling to restore
service Tuesday, after hosting company GoDaddy unceremonious pulled-the-plug
on the site in the wake of outrage from criticism-leery cops.

Visitors to RateMyCop.com on Tuesday were redirected to a GoDaddy page
reading, "Oops!!!", which urged the site owner to contact GoDaddy to find
out why the company pulled the plug.

RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto says he was given no notice of the suspension.
When he called GoDaddy, the company told him that he'd been shut down for
"suspicious activity."

When Sesto got a supervisor on the phone, the company changed its story and
claimed the site had surpassed its 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, a claim that
Sesto says is nonsense. "How can it be overloaded when it only had 80,00
page views today, and 400,000 yesterday?"

Police departments became uneasy about RateMyCop's plans to watch the
watchers in January, when the Culver City, California, startup began issuing
public information requests for lists of uniformed officers.

Then the site went live on February 28th. It stores the names and, in some
cases, badge numbers of over 140,000 cops in as many as 500 police
departments, and allows users to post comments about police they've
interacted with, and rate them. The site garnered media interest this week
as cops around the country complained that they'd be put at risk if their
names were on the internet.

"Having a website like that puts a lot of law enforcement, in my eyes, in
danger because it exposes us out there," Officer Hector Basurto, vice
president of the Latino Police Officers Association, told ABC television
affiliate KGO.

Since undercover officers aren't in the database, and the site has no
personal information like home addresses, that fear seems unfounded. Chief
Jerry Dyer, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, voices
what sounds like a more honest concern: that officers will face  "unfair
maligning" by the citizens they serve.

Sesto says police can post comments as well, and a future version of the
site will allow them to authenticate themselves to post rebuttals more
prominently.  Chief Dyer wants to get legislation passed that would make
RateMyCop.com illegal, which, of course, wouldn't pass constitutional muster
in any court in America.

Unfortunately for the startup, the company it chose for hosting is known to
be quick to censor its customers. In January of last year, GoDaddy took down
entire computer security website -- delisting it from DNS -- to get a
single, archived mailing list post off the web.

On that occasion, at least, it gave the site's owner 60 seconds notice.
GoDaddy notified Seto by posting its "Oops!" message to his public website.

"You put on my website for me to call you, when you have my phone number?,"
says Sesto.

A GoDaddy spokeswoman says the company can't comment on the RateMyCop
takedown due to its privacy policy. Sesto says he's already arranged hosting
elsewhere, and hopes to have the site online Tuesday night.