Megaupload now redirects to free porn and maleware, courtesy of the FBI.

[DeviantProtagonist]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/after-fbi-domain-expires-seized-megaupload-com-serves-up-porn/

Something suspicious started happening with Web addresses related to sites seized by the FBI from Megaupload and a number of online gambling sites. Instead of directing browsers to a page with an FBI banner, they started dropping Web surfers onto a malicious feed of Web advertisements—some of them laden with malware.

The hijacking of the Megaupload domains wasn't the result of some sophisticated hack. Based on evidence collected by Ars, it appears someone at the FBI's Cyber Division failed to renew the domain registration for CIRFU.NET, the domain which in turn hosted Web and name servers used to redirect traffic headed to seized domains. As soon as they expired, they were snatched up in a GoDaddy auction by a self-described "black hat SEO marketer," a British ex-pat who calls himself "Earl Grey."

The domain CIRFU.NET—maintained by the FBI's Cyber Initiative and Resources Fusion Unit—was registered through GoDaddy.com in 2009 through Domains By Proxy—the domain registration privacy service owned by GoDaddy. When the domain was renewed in 2011, the registration's privacy was dropped—and the "whois" data for the domain showed that it was registered to the Cyber Division of the FBI. The domain name was used for a series of name servers and websites operated by the FBI related to site seizures. The DNS records show that CIRFU.NET was on a two-year renewal cycle and set to expire on April 1, 2015 after an April 2, 2013 renewal. However, an April 3 retrieval of the Whois record showed that the domain had expired without renewal, and was on lockdown by GoDaddy awaiting either reactivation by the FBI or sale.

Your lovely tax dollars at work people. :3

[Vas]

Thanks, 'Murica.

[MetalPredat0r]

Your lovely tax dollars at work people. :3

Still better than funding pointless construction.

[Vas]

Or blowing up little kids in Pakistan.

Wrong country... js.

[Vas]

Look, you're not wrong in having your own opinion or standpoint on the matter, but myself being someone who holds the military in high regards, am offended at such directly accusational allegations and claims. I'm just gonna say this, and only this, but if I were you, I'd keep my negative viewpoints like that to myself as it is quite offensive and imposing.

[MetalPredat0r]

Whoa, when I made that pointless construction comment, I meant rebuilding sidewalks that inconveniently screws over walking pedestrians or rebuilding roads that causes traffic during the afternoon! Did not expect this to turn into such a dark topic. My bad.

[Setsuna]

Look, you're not wrong in having your own opinion or standpoint on the matter, but myself being someone who holds the military in high regards, am offended at such directly accusational allegations and claims. I'm just gonna say this, and only this, but if I were you, I'd keep my negative viewpoints like that to myself as it is quite offensive and imposing.

I might just step in and point out that the US military (along with just about EVERY other one you could name) do all sorts of things that people don't approve of.

I should know. Being told by a US high command rep that I would be specifically targetted if I did my job for the Associated Press back in 98 is one (I didn't end up going because well, a) 50k in the event of my death was lousy as it was and b) the hotel I was about to be posted at was bombed. I let you figure out who delivered the airmail.) , and having some of my colleagues in the US court be told by the US government they could not be guaranteed they would NOT be killed by the US military while operating in the United States as journalists.

I also might add that yes, the drones did hit Pakistan. In fact the Pakistani Government protested so much that the US gave them compensation due to aid. (Look up the US budget sometime and read it line by line. Some of the things you'll find in there is fascinating, like the fact the US were paying the Taliban to operate while they were bombing them. Yes, the money was sent for about 2-3 years (to about 2004) after the US operations started.)

Of course, in Australia, we had the Jedi council sex ring, a round of mass murders, suggestions of stripping citizenship out of people who a minister thinks is a terrorist without a court, and a branch of the military literally paying off people smugglers to turn their boats back, and make refugees an Indonesian problem again.

My point? Don't throw in allegiance to anyone 'just because', nor demand it 'because they're the military'. There's an entire mass of people (somewhere in the 1-3 billion range, depending who you ask) who simply do not trust the US military, and there's an even BIGGER mass of people who don't trust 'the military' period, and often for very good reason.

Then of course, there's people who a military act against, and you know, some of the reasons they're getting shot at might just make them upset, for better or worse. Military force is just that, and a lot of people don't like seeing (or being the object of) that force.

Now is that force justified? Depends on the situation, but that's exactly my point. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it's not, and you're going to have a LOT of people who aren't going to be fans (and rightly feel insulted by people who demand respect for the military) when it's perceived to be not.

And underhandedly (yes, you threw a threat in there) is NOT going to help your cause.

[Vas]

I might just step in and point out that the US military (along with just about EVERY other one you could name) do all sorts of things that people don't approve of.

I should know. Being told by a US high command rep that I would be specifically targetted if I did my job for the Associated Press back in 98 is one (I didn't end up going because well, a) 50k in the event of my death was lousy as it was and b) the hotel I was about to be posted at was bombed. I let you figure out who delivered the airmail.) , and having some of my colleagues in the US court be told by the US government they could not be guaranteed they would NOT be killed by the US military while operating in the United States as journalists.

I also might add that yes, the drones did hit Pakistan. In fact the Pakistani Government protested so much that the US gave them compensation due to aid. (Look up the US budget sometime and read it line by line. Some of the things you'll find in there is fascinating, like the fact the US were paying the Taliban to operate while they were bombing them. Yes, the money was sent for about 2-3 years (to about 2004) after the US operations started.)

Of course, in Australia, we had the Jedi council sex ring, a round of mass murders, suggestions of stripping citizenship out of people who a minister thinks is a terrorist without a court, and a branch of the military literally paying off people smugglers to turn their boats back, and make refugees an Indonesian problem again.

My point? Don't throw in allegiance to anyone 'just because', nor demand it 'because they're the military'. There's an entire mass of people (somewhere in the 1-3 billion range, depending who you ask) who simply do not trust the US military, and there's an even BIGGER mass of people who don't trust 'the military' period, and often for very good reason.

Then of course, there's people who a military act against, and you know, some of the reasons they're getting shot at might just make them upset, for better or worse. Military force is just that, and a lot of people don't like seeing (or being the object of) that force.

Now is that force justified? Depends on the situation, but that's exactly my point. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it's not, and you're going to have a LOT of people who aren't going to be fans (and rightly feel insulted by people who demand respect for the military) when it's perceived to be not.

And underhandedly (yes, you threw a threat in there) is NOT going to help your cause.

Threat or not, regardless of perspective or predilection. And I'll admit, my original response was rather immature and poorly thought out, lacking any serious thought behind it. Call it a knee-jerk reaction, if you will.
Now, I can't say I've been in your situation nor have I seen some of the things you've seen or experienced. That's a given. However, with that being said.

A military undeniably does things not everyone will agree with, whether it's debatable or not.

Your colleagues not being guaranteed safety from US military IN the US itself? I don't even see how that's justified, let alone why that would be even a possibility.  Yes, I've personally experienced soldiers committing acts of terrorism myself, but never has it been under the name of the Army.

In regards to the Pakistan situation, I'll admit, that's inhumanly wrong, power and technology or not. And the hate for that action is entirely justifiable. Still, "the military" is an organization, not a single entity. I don't believe it to be fair to hate, distrust, disagree with, etc. towards the entirety of the military for something based on a decision made by the higher ups. Again, undeniably, the act is wrong no matter how one looks at it.

"Because they're the military" isn't any reason to respect or demand respect of "just because." I'm not arguing that people should respect them nor that they're demanding respect, just that I respect the military based on my own beliefs and experiences, and I don't agree with openly throwing out a distasteful opinion publicly, especially on such an off-topic subject, knowing that it can easily be interpreted as an offensive. As for people not trusting the American military or any military in general, I have no qualms against that. Let you, I, and them think however we see fit.

[Setsuna]

I think it's safe to say 'Neither here or there' would be the safe response. There's enough material out there to make the entire work of Shakespeare seem like a light novel if we started discussing atrocities conducted of military forces of all kinds (and their subcontractors) over the last fifty years. I just woke up, but if you want me to provide the articles they wrote in question, we can continue it in PM.

I'm a freelancer, so they're all entities, and they have their own objectives (good or bad), and they're made up of individuals. Those individuals carry out said actions.

You're going to live with the fact that most people aren't able to (or won't have the time) to tunnel down to determine the exact individuals, so it's easier to talk about the entity in question, and refer to the action said individuals belong to as being part of the entity.

It's not right or wrong, it's just how the world works, and more accurately the emotional and logical shorthands people use.

We'd live in a more accurate place if we all started tunnelling down, but that's a lot of work that could be deemed unnecessary for the purposes of say a single conversation, and in quite a few cases, it would be illegal to do so (due to the likes of secrecy law, laws covering current military operations, privacy acts and the like)

But I deal with a lot of entities when I worked in journalism (major international banks, the Vatican, militaries, governments, major corporations) so my perspective of the world is quite different than most people I speak with. Then again, if I spoke about all the fun* stuff I've seen during my years, you'd probably either want to go into a mass murdering rage, find the nearest tall building, or consider taking up terrorist activity as a national past time.

Entities have their own objectives (be it good, bad, or neutral) and they work towards them. My opinion of said entities is based of those actions. No more, no less, and the only expectation I have is your actions (from an entity to an individual) match your intentions. Or in short, if someone's pointing a loaded gun to my head and professing how much they love me, don't expect me to believe your statement.

Expressing your opinion is something that can't be taken away from you, and I would never discourage that. There are consequences for said opinion of course, but suppressing the ability to say such things is a fast way to end up in a dictatorship.

Or as I like to put it 'You are free to say what you want, and I reserve the right to base my actions on what you say. However, I will encourage you to say it, because I don't believe that we live in a society that wants another Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Shah or any other dictator out there to be calling the shots.'

The consequence of that is we'll hear a lot of things we personally don't like, or things we know aren't a good idea. But that's okay, because the alternative is 'We only get to hear what ONE person likes, and that opinion will be backed by force' and that's dangerous, even if the said opinion sounds like a good idea at the time. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, after all.

(*fun stuff includes fraud in the hundreds of trillions of dollars against entire populations of people, mass murder, drug trades, corruption in the hundreds of millions, slavery, dirty trade deals, extortion, pedophile sex rings, excessive censorship, tyranny via social workers etc. You probably don't want me to answer the question in more detail, and no, I don't profess to know everything either. Some of my colleagues can talk about even more fun stuff than I can, because we only have so many hours in the day and there's a LOT of stuff out there.)

Threat or not, regardless of perspective or predilection. And I'll admit, my original response was rather immature and poorly thought out, lacking any serious thought behind it. Call it a knee-jerk reaction, if you will.
Now, I can't say I've been in your situation nor have I seen some of the things you've seen or experienced. That's a given. However, with that being said.

A military undeniably does things not everyone will agree with, whether it's debatable or not.

Your colleagues not being guaranteed safety from US military IN the US itself? I don't even see how that's justified, let alone why that would be even a possibility.  Yes, I've personally experienced soldiers committing acts of terrorism myself, but never has it been under the name of the Army.

In regards to the Pakistan situation, I'll admit, that's inhumanly wrong, power and technology or not. And the hate for that action is entirely justifiable. Still, "the military" is an organization, not a single entity. I don't believe it to be fair to hate, distrust, disagree with, etc. towards the entirety of the military for something based on a decision made by the higher ups. Again, undeniably, the act is wrong no matter how one looks at it.

"Because they're the military" isn't any reason to respect or demand respect of "just because." I'm not arguing that people should respect them nor that they're demanding respect, just that I respect the military based on my own beliefs and experiences, and I don't agree with openly throwing out a distasteful opinion publicly, especially on such an off-topic subject, knowing that it can easily be interpreted as an offensive. As for people not trusting the American military or any military in general, I have no qualms against that. Let you, I, and them think however we see fit.