The Mexican website 1dmx.org, set up to promote the perspectives of protestors against the December 2012 inauguration of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, was shut down in December 2013 when GoDaddy suspended its domain without notice.
According to GoDaddy documents, a “Special Agent Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Embassy, Mexico City” directed the investigation. Danny O’Brien reports that, “The contact email pointed to ‘ice.dhs.gov,’ implying that this agent was working as part of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement wing, who have been involved in curious domain name takedowns in the past.” However, GoDaddy does not seem to have requested or relayed any official court order or formal judicial documents to justify the website’s closure.
The 1dmx.org lawyer for the protestors, Luis Fernando García, is suing several Mexican authorities on the suspicion that one of them may have been the source of the order to shut the site down. The court case contends that the order violates free expression protections in the country.
Source:
Danny O’Brien, “Mexican Protest Site Censored by GoDaddy—with the U.S. Embassy’s Help,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, March 4, 2014, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/03/mexican-protest-site-censored-godaddy-us-embassys-help.
Student Researcher: Noah Tenney (Sonoma State University)
Faculty Evaluator: Peter Phillips (Sonoma State University)