No one seems to want the informers on their platform, not even the Right
Wingers. Seems that there's a constitutional issue. Eric
LILY HAY NEWMAN<https://www.wired.com/author/lily-hay-newman>
SECURITY<https://www.wired.com/category/security>
09.08.2021 02:12 PM
The Texas Abortion ‘Whistleblower’ Site Still Can't Find a Host
Even the most extreme internet infrastructure providers have turned their backs
on the website for violating their terms of service.
[ball under paper]
Given that the site's entire premise is collecting third-party data, it seems
unlikely to find a way to come into compliance. PHOTOGRAPH: DANIEL
GRIZELJ/GETTY IMAGES
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* <https://www.wired.com/story/texas-abortion-law-whistleblower-site/#>
UNDER A RECENTLY passed Texas law, private citizens can sue anyone involved in
helping a person receive an abortion in the state after the sixth week of
pregnancy. In response, an anti-abortion group called Texas Right to Life set
up a website designed to collect anonymous information about any alleged
infractions. Or, at least, it tried to. So far, no company has been willing to
host it.
The fate of prolifewhistleblower.com remains uncertain, and its absence from
the internet does not negate the Texas law or its impacts. But in recent years,
internet infrastructure giants have begun to draw blurry lines around who
they're willing to have as customers, a sometimes murky process exemplified by
the travails of far-right social media network
Parler<https://www.wired.com/story/parler-bans-new-chapter-free-speech-wars/>.
In contrast, prolifewhistleblower.com offers a rare example of consensus about
what constitutes acceptable behavior online.
The site did make a brief appearance on the internet, launching last Wednesday,
but had an ignominious start. First, a small army of TikTok and Reddit users
flooded the reporting mechanism with false claims in an attempt to overwhelm
the system. By Saturday, the web hosting service GoDaddy had terminated its
relationship with the site for violating the company’s terms of service, which
explicitly forbid collecting identifying information about third parties
without their prior consent.
“The big thing is that in some cases services should warn the user and give
them a chance to cure," says Whitney Merrill, a privacy and data protection
lawyer and former Federal Trade Commission attorney. “Like how GoDaddy warned
the site owner that they were doing something in violation of the terms. That’s
not a legal requirement, just a good business practice in my mind.”
Texas Right to Life then registered the site with the notorious service
provider Epik, which has been known to offer safe haven to contentious
platforms like Parler and Gab. But Epik never offered to host
prolifewhistleblower.com content, only a way to register the site's domain. On
Saturday evening, prolifewhistleblower.com simply started redirecting to the
Texas Right to Life homepage rather than reviving its previous incarnation as a
tip submission system.
“We contacted the owner of the domain, who agreed to disable the collection of
user submissions on this domain,” Epik
said<https://www.thedailybeast.com/anti-abortion-whistleblowing-site-gets-new-home-with-provider-known-for-hosting-extremists>
in a statement on Saturday. In other words, Epik will act as
prolifewhistleblower.com’s registrar so long as it's only redirecting to the
group's main site. If it resumes collecting third-party data, Epik will pull
its registration.
Texas Right to Life spokesperson Kim Schwartz offers a different assessment of
the situation. “Prolifewhistleblower.com is currently forwarding to
TexasRightToLife.com because we're establishing extra security protocols to
protect our users before we put it back up," she said in a statement Monday
evening. She added that the site has lined up a new host, but is not saying
which hosting company “for security reasons.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, though, the URL continued to redirect to the Texas
Right to Life homepage. And given that the site's entire premise is gathering
information about people who may have helped facilitate an abortion in Texas—an
inherent violation of basic third-party data collection protections—it seems
unlikely to find a way to come into compliance.
The situation evokes past conflicts in which internet infrastructure providers
have withdrawn hosting, DDoS protection, or other support for extremist sites,
causing them to go offline permanently or until they can find new providers.
Cloudflare, for example, has grappled with decisions about how to remain
neutral and protect speech rights while taking action in extreme cases. The
company dropped support for white supremacist and otherwise controversial
platforms like the Daily Stormer in
2017<https://www.wired.com/story/cloudflare-daily-stormer/> and 8chan in
2019<https://www.wired.com/story/cloudflare-8chan-support-ddos/>.
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“We've had this conversation for a long time about many types of
content—political discourse, disinformation, etc.” says Lukasz Olejnik, an
independent privacy researcher and consultant. He adds, though, that these
challenges have no easy answers. “It’s closely related to moderating free
speech and expression online. And in the end it boils down to terms of service
versus the legality of expression.”
Digital rights advocates see potential danger in internet infrastructure
companies playing the role of content arbiter, fearing inconsistent enforcement
and a slippery slope. But the Texas site's issues come down to a clear-cut
terms of service violation rather than something muddier.
“Generally speaking, I am leery of content moderation happening at the
infrastructure level. That said, I do think there's a real difference between
policing behavior versus content,” says Evan Greer, deputy director of digital
rights nonprofit Fight for the Future. “Saying ‘no sharing data on third
parties’ is a clear rule that you can enforce evenly regardless of why people
are doing it.”
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Meanwhile, activity related to the new Texas abortion law has run afoul of more
than just infrastructure providers. A Reddit forum called r/txbountyhunters
launched on Thursday when the law went into effect, with the advertised purpose
of "sharing tips on identifying, reporting, and collecting bounty on those
breaking Texas law TX SB8." Reddit banned the forum that same day, because it
violated<https://www.reddit.com/r/txbountyhunters> the platform's content
policy<https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy> against “harassing
content.”
Keeping prolifewhistleblower.com offline doesn't stop anyone from filing
lawsuits under the Texas law. The legislation itself still stands. But the
activity it encourages goes against the internet's most basic privacy and
community security protections—and so far, not even the most radical hosting
providers want to be a party to that.
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[https://media.wired.com/photos/5acba3f40810d969021d9ed3/1:1/w_270%2Cc_limit/Lily%252520Hay%252520Newman%252520copy.jpg]<https://www.wired.com/author/lily-hay-newman>
Lily Hay Newman<https://www.wired.com/author/lily-hay-newman> is a senior
writer at WIRED focused on information security, digital privacy, and hacking.
She previously worked as a technology reporter at Slate magazine and was the
staff writer for Future Tense, a publication and project of Slate, the New
America Foundation, and Arizona State University. Additionally... Read
more<https://www.wired.com/author/lily-hay-newman>
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