Margin note for The New York Times
 By Rosa Miriam Elizalde
A CubaNews translation by Giselle Gil
Edited by Walter Lippmann
2008-03-01

OFAC Blacklist of Cuba associated websites

The New York Times is correct in saying that the decision to apply regulations, which even in the States are legally dubious, in the Internet to all countries is “scandalous”. This is an excellent note, but it leaves out information that can help people understand why the censorship to .com websites is only the tip of the iceberg of the aggressions against Cuba in the internet.

How many .com websites associated with Cuba are in the Treasury Department black list?
Going over the OFAC blacklist with Asian patience we found 557 blacklisted companies and 3,719 websites which have been blocked without previous warning. To get an idea of what this means you can check the Latin American domain list at www.latinoamericann.org . Cuba has 1,434 .cu domains registered in this website. This means that the United States has blocked almost three times more sites than the ones Cuba has registered with our identification.

What is eNom, the company that blocked Mr. Marshall’s websites?
eNom Inc is the second largest domain registering company in the world. It is credited by the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), a supposedly independent corporation to bring order to the net. ICANN designates domain names and numbers, something similar to postal districts but in the Internet.

Can the United States block the whole Internet?
This is additional proof that the United States controls the cyberspace access not only of its own citizens, but also of all internet users. Although there is a lot of talk about free internet access world wide, the ICANN depends on the Department of Commerce and American regulations. This was proven when they violated their own rules without protest. Their intervention in websites is supposedly technical only. They cannot censor sites, nor approve or disprove legal or political policies. If there is a claim on property rights it should be presented at an international refereeing court. Nevertheless, eNom, which is attached to this corporation and has its same functions, not only followed a United States government decision that violates the laws and regulations of other countries, but, it did so without notifying the persons and companies involved as The New York Times rightly points out. This fact proves that the United States controls the main international servers and that in practice, it can block anything it likes on the web, without even the excuse of a terrorist attack.

What law does the United States government invoke to violate the sovereignty of our country and of all other countries using the Internet?
It is the so-called Torricelli Law or the Law of authorization of national defense for the fiscal year 1992. This law authorized our satellite connection to the web under the condition that every megabyte had to be under contract to an American company or subsidiary and approved by the Treasury Department. This law establishes limitations to contracts and decides extraordinary sanctions – 50 thousand dollar fines for each violation – for those inside or outside the US who favor the island economically. This has been followed very rigorously and little by little the OFAC has been adding names to the blacklist until it has reached the proportions that The New York Times has reported.

By the way, this office has more people working on finding out who travels or sends money to Cuba than the ones tracking down possible terrorist funding transactions. In April 2004, OFAC informed Congress that four of its 120 employees were tracking Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein finance trails, while almost two dozen were busy reinforcing the embargo against Cuba. They admitted using the Internet to follow money trails.

What can one do?
The Intellectual Property World Organization establishes that any person in the world can take legal action with respect to any dominion name registered under .com, .net or .org. Article 4 of ICANN states that you can take abusive registering or censorship of a dominion name to an international refereeing court, which of course has to be proved. Thanks to this note in The New York Times and the opinions of all the specialists the writer interviewed now there are 3,719 censorship claims that can be made against the United States. Who wants to go first?

ORIGINAL:http://www.cubadebate.cu/index.php?tpl=design/especiales.tpl.html&newsid_obj_id=14981

 

 

 

 


         
Nota al margen para The New York Times
Rosa Miriam Elizalde

2008-03-01

 

La lista negra de los sitios vinculados con Cuba en la OFAC

 

Tiene razón The New York Times al calificar de “escandalosa” la decisión norteamericana de aplicar en Internet, para cualquier país, regulaciones cuya legalidad no se sustenta ni siquiera en el propio territorio de los EE.UU. Es una nota excelente, pero deja al margen elementos informativos esenciales que ayudarían a entender por qué la censura a los sitios web cuyos nombres llevan el sufijo .com, el más utilizado en la Red de Redes, es solo la punta del iceberg de una agresión de mayor alcance contra Cuba y contra la Internet mundial.

 
¿Cuántos nombres de dominio .com vinculados a Cuba aparecen en la lista negra del Departamento del Tesoro norteamericano?

Revisada con paciencia asiática, la lista negra de la OFAC reseña 557 empresas “malditas” de todo el orbe y 3 719 dominios .com que han sido bloqueados en la Red sin la más mínima notificación previa a sus dueños. Para que se tenga una idea de lo que eso significa basta mirar el reporte más reciente de registros de dominio en Latinoamérica (www.latinoamericann.org). Aquí se registra que Cuba tiene 1 434 sitios con el dominio .cu. Es decir, EE.UU. ha bloqueado casi tres veces más sitios que todos los que tiene registrados la Isla bajo el genérico de nuestro país.

 
¿Quién es eNom, la empresa que bloqueó los sitios del señor Marshall?

La empresa eNom Inc. es la segunda más grande de registro de dominios en el mundo, acreditada por la ICANN (acrónimo en inglés de Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers o Corporación de Internet para la Asignación de Nombres y Números), una supuesta organización independiente bajo la cual se ordena la Red. La ICANN designa los nombres y los números de dominio, el equivalente de los distritos postales en Internet.

 
¿Puede EE.UU. bloquear toda la Internet?

Esta es una nueva prueba de que EE.UU. controla no solo el acceso de sus ciudadanos en el ciberespacio, sino el de todos los usuarios de la Internet global. Aunque abunda una gran retórica libertaria sobre la Red de Redes a nivel mundial, la ICANN depende del Departamento de Comercio de EE.UU. y de las legislaciones norteamericanas, y tan es así que ha violado sin chistar sus propios estatutos. Supuestamente, todas sus intervenciones en la Red son de orden técnico y no puede censurar sitios, ni combatir o apoyar ninguna normativa legal o política. Ante cualquier reclamación sobre derechos de propiedad, debe llevarlo a un arbitraje internacional. Sin embargo, eNom, adscrita a esta Corporación y con estas mismas funciones, no solo se sometió a una decisión del gobierno norteamericano violando las legislaciones de otros países, sino que lo hizo sin siquiera notificar a las empresas y personas perjudicadas como bien señala The New York Times. El hecho demuestra que EE.UU. controla los principales servidores internacionales y puede bloquear en la práctica todo lo que se le antoje en la red, sin que medie ni siquiera el pretexto de una agresión terrorista.

 
¿Qué Ley esgrime al gobierno de EE.UU. para violar la soberanía de nuestro país y la de todas las naciones del mundo en el ámbito de la Internet?

La llamada Ley Torricelli o Ley de autorización y de defensa nacional para el año fiscal 1992, que autorizó la conexión de la Isla a la Red, por vía satelital, con el condicionamiento de que cada megabyte (rango de velocidad de conexión) debía ser contratado a empresas norteamericanas o sus subsidiarias y aprobado por el Departamento del Tesoro. Estableció limitar esa contratación y decidió sanciones extraordinarias —multas de 50 000 dólares por cada violación— para quienes favorezcan, dentro o fuera de EE.UU., el negocio electrónico o el más mínimo beneficio económico de la Isla. Esto se ha estado aplicando rigurosamente y poco a poco la OFAC ha ido ampliando su lista negra hasta el delirio que acaba de descubrir el diario norteamericano. Por cierto, esta Oficina mantiene más funcionarios en plantilla dedicados a vigilar a los ciudadanos de este mundo que viajen o envíen dinero a Cuba, que a perseguir las transacciones sospechosas de financiar el terrorismo en EE.UU. En abril de 2004, la OFAC informó al Congreso que de sus 120 empleados, cuatro fueron asignados para seguir la pista de las finanzas de Osama Bin Laden y Saddam Hussein, mientras que casi dos docenas se ocupaban de reforzar el bloqueo contra Cuba. Admitieron que utilizaban la Internet como fuente fundamental para seguir las pistas del dinero.

 

¿Qué se puede hacer?

La OMPI (Organización Mundial de la Propiedad Intelectual) establece que cualquier persona del mundo puede presentar una demanda relacionada con un nombre de dominio registrado bajo .com, .net y .org. Conforme al Artículo 4 de la política de la ICANN, se puede llevar a arbitraje internacional los casos de registro abusivo de un nombre de dominio o censura de este, circunstancias que habrá que probar en el escrito de demanda. Pues bien, gracias a esta nota de The New York Times y a la opinión de los especialistas que su reportero consultó, existen 3 719 posibles demandas por censura de EE.UU. a la vista. ¿Quién empieza?                                             

(Washington claims it wants to bring "freedom" to Cuba, something which Washington claims Cuba doesn't have.
Here's a good example of exactly what Washington means by "freedom" in actual real day-to-day life.)
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
March 4, 2008
Sidebar
A Wave of the Watch List, and Speech Disappears
By ADAM LIPTAK

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/us/04bar.html

 

Steve Marshall is an English travel agent. He lives in Spain, and he sells trips to Europeans who want to go to sunny places, including Cuba. In October, about 80 of his Web sites stopped working, thanks to the United States government.

The sites, in English, French and Spanish, had been online since 1998. Some, like www.cuba-hemingway.com, were literary. Others, like www.cuba-havanacity.com, discussed Cuban history and culture. Still others - www.ciaocuba.com and www.bonjourcuba.com - were purely commercial sites aimed at Italian and French tourists.

"I came to work in the morning, and we had no reservations at all," Mr. Marshall said on the phone from the Canary Islands. "We thought it was a technical problem."

It turned out, though, that Mr. Marshall's Web sites had been put on a Treasury Department blacklist and, as a consequence, his American domain name registrar, eNom Inc., had disabled them. Mr. Marshall said eNom told him it did so after a call from the Treasury Department; the company, based in Bellevue, Wash., says it learned that the sites were on the blacklist through a blog.

Either way, there is no dispute that eNom shut down Mr. Marshall's sites without notifying him and has refused to release the domain names to him. In effect, Mr. Marshall said, eNom has taken his property and interfered with his business. He has slowly rebuilt his Web business over the last several months, and now many of the same sites operate with the suffix .net rather than .com, through a European registrar. His servers, he said, have been in the Bahamas all along.

Mr. Marshall said he did not understand "how Web sites owned by a British national operating via a Spanish travel agency can be affected by U.S. law." Worse, he said, "these days not even a judge is required for the U.S. government to censor online materials."

A Treasury spokesman, John Rankin, referred a caller to a press release issued in December 2004, almost three years before eNom acted. It said Mr. Marshall's company had helped Americans evade restrictions on travel to Cuba and was "a generator of resources that the Cuban regime uses to oppress its people." It added that American companies must not only stop doing business with the company but also freeze its assets, meaning that eNom did exactly what it was legally required to do.

Mr. Marshall said he was uninterested in American tourists. "They can't go anyway," he said.

Peter L. Fitzgerald, a law professor at Stetson University in Florida who has studied the blacklist - which the Treasury calls a list of "specially designated nationals" - said its operation was quite mysterious. "There really is no explanation or standard," he said, "for why someone gets on the list."

Susan Crawford, a visiting law professor at Yale and a leading authority on Internet law, said the fact that many large domain name registrars are based in the United States gives the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, control "over a great deal of speech - none of which may be actually hosted in the U.S., about the U.S. or conflicting with any U.S. rights."

"OFAC apparently has the power to order that this speech disappear," Professor Crawford said.

The law under which the Treasury Department is acting has an exemption, known as the Berman Amendment, which seeks to protect "information or informational materials." Mr. Marshall's Web sites, though ultimately commercial, would seem to qualify, and it is not clear why they appear on the list. Unlike Americans, who face significant restrictions on travel to Cuba, Europeans are free to go there, and many do. Charles S. Sims, a lawyer with Proskauer Rose in New York, said the Treasury Department might have gone too far in Mr. Marshall's case.

"The U.S can certainly criminalize the expenditure of money by U.S. citizens in Cuba," Mr. Sims said, "but it doesn't properly have any jurisdiction over foreign sites that are not targeted at the U.S. and which are lawful under foreign law."

Mr. Rankin, the Treasury spokesman, said Mr. Marshall was free to ask for a review of his case. "If they want to be taken off the list," Mr. Rankin said, "they should contact us to make their case."

That is a problematic system, Professor Fitzgerald said. "The way to get off the list," he said, "is to go back to the same bureaucrat who put you on."

Last March, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights issued a disturbing report on the OFAC list. Its subtitle: "How a Treasury Department Terrorist Watch List Ensnares Everyday Consumers."

The report, by Shirin Sinnar, said that there were 6,400 names on the list and that, like no-fly lists at airports, it gave rise to endless and serious problems of mistaken identity.

"Financial institutions, credit bureaus, charities, car dealerships, health insurers, landlords and employers," the report said, "are now checking names against the list before they open an account, close a sale, rent an apartment or offer a job."

But Mr. Marshall's case does not appear to be one of mistaken identity. The government quite specifically intended to interfere with his business.

That, Professor Crawford said, is a scandal. "The way we communicate these days is through domain names, and the Treasury Department should not be interfering with domain names just as it does not interfere with telecommunications lines."

Curiously, the Treasury Department has not shut down all of Mr. Marshall's .com sites. You can still find, for now, www.cuba<240>-guantanamo.com.

Online: Documents and an archive of Adam Liptak's articles: nytimes.com/adamliptak.