What, specifically, is a violation of due process? According to the story, ICE mistakenly included mooo.com in the domains they were seizing. Since that site functions as a DNS provider, the 84,000 subdomains hanging off it had their names resolved to the IP address with the scary law enforcement warning. That's a bad thing, of course, and I'll come back to that aspect of it - but it's not a violation of due process.
Let's back up a little. There are sites that host child porn or support a traffic in counterfeit goods, and part of ICE's job is to shut that down. Every country has a customs service, and the US is no exception. Art. 1 sec. 8 of the Constitution begins 'The congress shall have power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States [...]' and later in that same section, 'to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States [...]' A1S8 is also the source of authority to act against counterfeiters (of currency), to define and act against piracy, and various 'Offenses against the law of nations.'
So there's nothing unconstitutional about the existence of an agency such as ICE: Immigration and Customs Enforcement are among the specific enumerated powers granted to Congress, and Congress can in turn delegate those powers to agencies that it creates. This is why some kinds of customs activities can be conducted without reference to the judicial branch - no warrant is necessary for inspection of cargo at the border for collection of customs duties, and the various other enumerated powers in that section combine to give the government fairly wide latitude to poke around in people's baggage and so on too. It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway, that all nations assert the power to decide what may be imported, whether to protect their domestic agriculture or to prevent the spread of things like child pornography. Of course such power can be abused to support despotism too, but that's an issue of governance, rather than some inherent flaw in the law itself - just as a computer and the software it runs can be used for worthwhile or nefarious purposes.
Now when it comes to seizure of websites, ICE is exercising its power (as delegated) to regulate commerce, both foreign and interstate. For this, they do need to get a warrant. Here's an example of a warrant in template form: http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/FormsAndFees/Forms/AO109.pd... I am not sure if this the same warrant that would be used for a domain name seizure (IANAL) but if not then it will be quite similar - the principle is basically the same as impounding a boat or cargo container. Child porn is certainly subject to forfeiture, and if it's being trafficked across state or national borders, then all ICE has to do is show the court the website, the fact of its illegal content, and request the warrant be issued. And that's exactly what they do - there's no fourth amendment violation.
As for due process, that isn't abridged either in this situation. If the warrant was correctly issued, then the court is already satisfied that contraband exists. When it's executed against the listed websites, their domain names are seized and fall into the custody of ICE who has them redirected to their warning page. If one of the domain owners disagrees - say, because he does host porn but had a statement on the website that all performers are over 18 and he has documentary evidence on file - there is an opportunity to argue that in court. The warrant is not the end of the process; the government puts the seized property into evidence and a civil trial is held; if the government wins, then the domains become the legal property of the government.
Often in customs enforcement, counterfeit goods or money are seized but nobody is caught. The trial is still held; if you look at court calendars you'll see entries in federal district court every week for cases with names like 'United States v. $250,000 in cash,' or 'United States v. 100,000 capsules of a controlled substance,' or 'United States v. 5603 counterfeit handbags.' The US attorney describes the issue of the warrant and the seizure, displays the seized material or documentary proof of where it is stored, nobody shows up to contest the government's claim upon it, and the government wins and takes ownership of it (if it's money) or destroys it (if it's drugs or counterfeit stuff). I always like to imagine an actual heap of cash piled up on the defense table with its own lawyer in cases like these, but that doesn't happen :) Anyway, they will do the same thing as regards these seized domains that had child porn, and likely nobody will show up to claim them as their property - because unless they had ironclad proof that it was not child porn and so a legal mistake has resulted, then they'd be arrested for the criminal act of trafficking in such material.
With mooo.com, ICE made a technical mistake - but they made this mistake while they were in the process of executing a legitimate warrant. they have not any point claimed that mooo.com or any of its subdomains were involved in illegal activity. If they did so, then it would be weeks or months before the matter was put to trial. That the mistake was reversed within hours tells you that mooo.com was never listed on the search warrant in the first place. I'd bet money that the mistake actually occurred at a computer console - as the seized domains listed in the warrant had their DNS altered, the operator miscounted and pasted the ICE IP address over the next entry in the list, which happened to be mooo.com. Why? Because I have made that sort of mistake many times, and so has anyone else who uses a computer.
It is not acceptable, but it is understandable - whereas there is no evidence at all for the picture that's being painted of corrupt authoritarians abusing the helpless public. Imagine the scene: a technician sitting at a console, while some uniformed ICE officers clutching a crumpled warrant in their sweaty hands stand behind her, drunk with power. The technician says 'well, all done officers.' 'Wait! Wait! What is that other site, that m-o-o-o dot com?' 'Oh, that's just the next entry in the DNS database, officer - totally unrelated.' 'Well, I'm on a roll - take that one out too.' 'but, officer, that's not-' 'Silence! Obey, unless you wish to live out your life in a federal prison surrounded by the scum of humanity! I can totally do that, you know. Now, zap it!'
Really? You find that more plausible than a simple screwup, of the kind we have all experienced and which was quickly corrected? Come on.
I repeat, it should not have happened. ICE has a responsibility to use its enforcement powers carefully and accurately, and failed to do so here. Because mooo.com happened to be a DNS business, ICE's mistake did not just affect one site but mooo.com's 84,000 customers as well. And their mistake didn't simply result in those sites being inaccessible for a few hours - they resulted in those sites (and by implication, their owners and operators) being publicly identified as traffickers in child pornography.
That is a very serious charge, easily enough to wreck a person's reputation or even put their life in danger. When the government says such a thing about a person, even as a mistake which is quickly corrected, many people think no more but accord that accusation the same weight as a criminal conviction. With so many people affected, it's probable that at least a few of them have already been fired from their jobs, or received a visit from their local child protection services, or had their spouse file divorce papers. All those results would be radical overreactions to the sight of ICE's web page, but an official government seal and the words 'child porn' will be enough to provoke that in some viewers - it's literally something that people do not like to think about, and so people do not bother to question the immediate emotional response they feel. 10 years ago in the UK, a bunch of uneducated vigilantes ran a doctor out of her home - they misunderstood her job title of 'paediatrician' on her clinic door to mean 'paedophile,' assumed she was a sex offender, and vandalized her house. Imagine how much more damning an official government warning of actual crime must look to anyone unfamiliar with the DNS or the legal system. You'd be better off being accused of murder than a sex crime; even if you were falsely convicted, you would be able to survive in prison while you appealed. Convicted child abusers usually have to be isolated for their own safety inside prison, and are marked for life outside.
ICE's carelessness seems seriously negligent, and since so many people were affected a class action lawsuit against the agency seems very probable. Suing the government is more complex than suing a private party because the government has immunity from some kinds of liability, so I do not know what technical path the lawsuit might take. But for the government to slap a 'child porn warning' on 84,000 or more people at once, even if it was 'only for a few hours, and only on the internet,' is about as bad a screwup as you can make. With 1, 5, or 10 people it might be feasible for ICE to write some humble letters of apology and offer a settlement to mitigate their trouble, but with tens of thousands a trial is the only efficient solution.
But this was not a failure of due process - it's just another example of internet's multiplier effect. In this case, technology allowed a technical error to affect 84,000 websites at once. The problem here is not the law, but the fragility of the domain name system.
Civil forfeiture in and of itself makes a mockery of due process.
Indeed, once you make once exception to due process, you can argue ten more through.
Whether civil forfeiture is done by a judge or cop, it involves the justice taking stuff from you without a trial. The final result is the "Judge Dred scenario".
Merely a trial called "United States v. $250,000 in cash" should be a rather bald statement that what is going on is a twisting of concepts to suit bureaucracy.
The reason to avoid search-and-seizure without real due process are fairly simple. One is that such huge powers cause cops to become sloppy (as we've seen). Another is that that a person's stuff is taken and their reputation destroyed, their ability to defend a later trial is effectively destroyed and "you can sue to get it back" is a completely empty claim. A third is that this becomes so easy a method for dealing with criminals that it becomes the method of choice for any criminality and soon you wind with no trials as such - just papers presented to judges.
A). I want to hold a trial before any punishment can be meted out. Yes, I think that concept has a long history in common law. Warrant for evidence are a different story.
B) Read my statement again. Your example doesn't contradict it at all. The fact that some people sometimes get some relief after the fact doesn't prove that doing things this is fair or that it involves anything like the spirit of due-process. You can fight bureaucracy and win occasionally in even extremely authoritarian countries.
Edit: OK, reading my original post, I should have said "when you lose everything before, the claim that you can sue to get it back becomes a mostly empty claim". I hope the direction I'm going is clear in any case.
I want to hold a trial before any punishment can be meted out.
You may be in luck. It just so happens that at least one member of the US Supreme Court doesn't believe punishment can be inflicted before conviction because the entire concept of punishment requires a conviction. That's right, there is no such thing as pre-trial punishment by definition.
As for B, you can't always sue to get it back. In fact, under my understanding I'd say you rarely can.
A) forgive my pedantry, but I'm not sure that having illegal property seized in a civil proceeding counts as punishment. Distributing child porn is very illegal, and I don't see any benefit in allowing the domain to stay up while the trial proceeds.
B) I am not a fan of ever-expanding civil asset forfeiture policies either. But some things are illegal to possess and thus subject to forfeit in the first place. The contraband nature of such items are established before the seizure warrant issues, which is what happened here.
forgive my pedantry, but I'm not sure that having illegal property seized in a civil proceeding counts as punishment.
Well, when talking of doubtful distinction in argument, some may pedantry, others might say sophistry. If I say "I never touched him!" (but rubber hose did a fine job on his kidney), which am I engaging in?
More seriously, how the frickin heck can taking someone's stuff not be punishment? Moreover, given that this is a broad power, the existence of some instance where one can argue isn't punishment doesn't mean that there aren't many, many other instances where it is.
But some things are illegal to possess and thus subject to forfeit in the first place.
Note that civil forfeiture was not historically created or used for taking drugs themselves or other "illegal property". If someone has drugs, you can arrest them for possession and take the drugs as evidence. If you drop the charges, they could come to collect, except they won't since they'll be arrested for possession so you can dispose of the stuff (not that I'm particular in favor of drug laws but that's a different story). Civil forfeiture is for taking money and "instrumentalities".
"Asset forfeiture is confiscation, by the State, of assets which are either (a) the alleged proceeds of crime or (b) the alleged instrumentalities of crime..."
IE, it's not used for "illegal property" as such.
And the addresses in this discussion certainly aren't "illegal property".
I don't see any benefit in allowing the domain to stay up while the trial proceeds.
So you believe in guilty until proven guilty?
The content of 83990 sites was taken down, none of which had any disturbing or illegal content. There is great benefit in allowing this to stay up while the trail proceeds.
Quite, but none of them from mooo.com on down should have been included in the first place - the error appears to have taken place during the change to the DNS records, not inside a courtroom. As I said before, if that domain had erroneously been included on the warrant itself, there would have had to be another hearing held before that could be cleared up. There is no mention of such in the story; instead work began to restore the DNS records almost immediately (but propogation time means that's not an instant fix).
A technical error like that could have occurred just as easily following a trial as following a warrant. It was negligence which was to blame, not a lack of due process.
I think he's saying that sometimes it is necessary to take action before a conviction in a court of law.
If I see you about to stab someone I'm not going to get a police office to review the case, pass it on to a legal team to assess and bring before a judge, wait for a subpoena, wait for legal representatives to make submissions and then have you arrested. Instead I'd do my best to stop you stabbing them.
Sometimes one has to take action when a crime appears to have been committed or some wrongdoing appears likely to be occurring. Seriousness is IMO a large factor in appropriate response.
I was not. I was describing evidence of distribution being offered to justify seizing control of the domain from whence child porn was being distributed.
If I were a defense attorney, it's possible I could find myself having to represent someone on trial for that kind of crime. In fact, I have spent quite a bit of time thinking over that very issue in the last year, and the complex ethical responsibilities involved. Although I expect it would be a very unpleasant task, I would have to be prepared to do it as best I could, because that's what 'the right to an attorney' boils down to.
But I really don't think there needs to be any legal protection for the continued operation of a child porn website. The people abused during the creation of such material have rights too, which I think are a lot more important than the porn distributor's property right in a domain name.
Yes, but someone has to determine whether the evidence is real Typically this is a judge's job, isn't it?
Of course there isn't and shouldn't be protection for the continued operation of a child porn website, but shouldn't it be found to be one first? You seem to be saying "yes," but that the evidence should be given to I don't know...a dude at Comcast or wherever? I'm fuzzy on this last part.
??? It sounds like you've only been half-reading my posts above.
Yes, examining the evidence is a judge's job. And it is the judges who issue the warrants (or not) after conducting a thorough review of the evidence provided. That's what is supposed to happen, and that's what almost always does happen, and that's due process in action.
When I referred to the likelihood of a technical error by a network administrator, that would be the person implementing the DNS changes under ICE supervision AFTER being presented with the warrant authorizing the domain seizure. The warrant which the ICE staffers got from a judge, who had first examined the evidence thoroughly.
One more time, in chronological order:
Someone in the DoJ/ICE finds a child porn website, and begins collecting evidence by making screenshots or downloading content or whatever methodology they use.
Everything known about the website is written up in an affidavit (ie a statement), and along with the evidence it is taken to the local District Court.
A judge reads the affidavit and examines the evidence - maybe as collected, maybe by going to the website directly to verify the statements made by the DoJ agent.
If the judge is satisfied that it is the real deal, then she issues a warrant authorizing the seizure.
The warrant is taken to ICANN or InterNIC or wherever it is easiest and fastest to patch the DNS, and is shown to the staff there as proof of legal authority. This is called executing the warrant.
A technician then redirects the domain name of the porn site(s) to point at an ICE server. On this occasion, mooo.com was accidentally redirected as well, which should never have happened. Exactly who screwed up and how is still a mystery.
Despite their excess length, I'm fairly sure I've got an idea of what you're aiming at.
You're noting that the large web site shutdown was probably a mistake but are using that argument to defend the basic mechanism. Seems like a reversal of the principle "better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished" into "better a thousand innocents get hit with accidental collateral damage than one guilty man get away with having something really dangerous on the Internet".
Yes, it was probably a mistake. The point is when it gets easy for repressive measures to happen, they get sloppy and hurt innocents. And when a cop has the luxury not having to have a trial, things will be easy whether there's a judge involved or not.
Constitutional guarantees really do exist to "make the cops job hard". The urge for the good citizen to agree with the cops is too great.
And also, these action were carried out as "civil forfeiture" (in this case "virtual property") so my comments on this seem entirely justified - indeed, I don't think anything I said was specific to physical as oppose to "virtual" property.
Edit: It's not really the judge's "job to interpret evidence" fairly. There really aren't ANY uncorruptable experts on fairness. The ONLY, ONLY, ONLY thing that keeps the justice system honest is the public, adversarial institution of the trial itself (it's kind of like the market that regard - two would-be monopolists can be very honest with enough daylight on them). The trial system hasn't done a terribly good job lately but if it is entirely absent, you get really bad things.
You're right, I haven't read all of your posts. I only have time to read 20,000 words a day and just couldn't fit it in. That said, it appears your stance is either shifting with time or you're playing piggy-in-the-middle while you sit on the fence. It was bad, but hey, mistakes happen, and what's qualified immunity?
I have not changed my opinion about this at all. Obviously I need to work on my communications skills. I do not think qualified immunity will apply here.
I do not think qualified immunity will apply here.
Well that's the most concrete point you've made so far, but I fear you've chosen brevity at just the wrong time. In addition, I think slaps on the wrist like some guy being forced to resign is effectively the same as immunity, since we're talking about legal repercussions here, and escaping the merest suggestion of criminality creates no deterrent.
Statutes exist to allow people to take emergency action when a crime is in the process of being committed - but they have no relation to civil forfeiture, which isn't about stopping an action but to remove peripheral resources permanently.
Why do you keep going on about civil forfeiture? That is not what I have been talking about at all. So you are opposed to it, so am I in many respects.
Shutting down hott_kiddie_porn_pix_4_free.com is quite different from impounding someone's car or putting a lien on a bank account. Please stop arguing with me about the latter when I have only ever been talking about the former.
No part of a criminal investigation which involves disabling a DNS entry. A warrant is required for the transfer of goods or freedom from an entity to the government. This is simple destruction.
Please note more words don't ad validity to an argument.
Violation of due process is simple to show. There is no warning or process for trial or appeal. The trial is secret and there is as of yer no appeal. This is a simple end run around the court system.
I really don't understand the need to complicate things this is outside the intended capacity of the customs. There are still people that don't have their sites back that were falsely accused and no means of appeal. How can this possibly be justice? Secret trials are not part of due process either they are not notified prior to conviction.
Please note more words don't ad validity to an argument. Violation of due process is simple to show. There is no warning or process for trial or appeal. The trial is secret and there is as of yer no appeal. This is a simple end run around the court system.
If they're secret, how is it that I can see customs-related asset forfeiture cases on the court calendar, and that they're open to the public?
edit: I forgot to mention that of course the website owners who were affected can sue the government individually or via a class action. I'd be very surprised if they didn't; I'm sure there are attorneys who specialize in such things busy typing articles about it right now, in case any of the persons affected are wondering who would be able to advise them on the subject.
The problem here is absolutely the law. (disclaimer: IANAL)
You're viewing it from a sympathetic light from the start. While one might argue that domain names are property, the seizure of an access point to an online service means that the seizure can effectively act as an injunction against a business.
Moreover, this is publicly-visible "property". It's like going to your house and turning it into a strip club and putting up a sign saying "We employ minors" (regardless of whether you are a strip club or employ minors). Sure, your house still exists, but the address that it used to be at now showcases something that can damage your reputation irreparably.
So while you might consider the actions legal using an interpretation favorable to law enforcement, if you view it from a different lens of "A harmless business owner's livelihood was suspended without warning by ICE and his reputation untruthfully damaged by said action", then it's clear that some level of legal protection (whether it already exists as a part of due process or not) is missing and that ICE was criminally negligent in its handling of the situation. Of course, this is a favorable viewpoint on the other end of the spectrum, as not everyone whose domain was seized is necessarily a business owner or a highly-trafficked site. However, it is a viewpoint that assumes innocence, rather than guilt, before proven otherwise.
I'm confused. I spent 3 of the last 4 paragraphs talking about the potentially life-changing consequences for all those website owners whose domains were mistakenly tagged with child porn warnings, and why I expected it to result in a big class action lawsuit, and how irresponsible and unacceptable it was for ICE to make such a mistake. Did you just not read that part? I know I'm long-winded, but you're basically agreeing with 95% of what I wrote.
Where we differ is that I'm saying the seizure warrant and the legal procedure before and after are OK. Most of the time they work as intended. The court didn't issue a warrant for the shutdown of 84,000 subdomains due to laziness or ignorance on the part of law enforcement or the judge. They issued a warrant for 8 or 10 specific domains, and when it was executed someone accidentally ran the same process on mooo.com, which was never included in the warrant to begin with (unless I am very badly mistaken, in which case I'll eat humble pie when that comes to light).
The website owners whose reputations and blood pressure were put at such grave risk have a claim on ICE for the needless trouble they were caused. Which will get resolved in a court. I appreciate that you would like to see someone prosecuted for criminal negligence, but that usually happens only in cases involving immediate loss of life.
Let's back up a little. There are sites that host child porn or support a traffic in counterfeit goods, and part of ICE's job is to shut that down. Every country has a customs service, and the US is no exception. Art. 1 sec. 8 of the Constitution begins 'The congress shall have power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States [...]' and later in that same section, 'to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States [...]' A1S8 is also the source of authority to act against counterfeiters (of currency), to define and act against piracy, and various 'Offenses against the law of nations.'
So there's nothing unconstitutional about the existence of an agency such as ICE: Immigration and Customs Enforcement are among the specific enumerated powers granted to Congress, and Congress can in turn delegate those powers to agencies that it creates. This is why some kinds of customs activities can be conducted without reference to the judicial branch - no warrant is necessary for inspection of cargo at the border for collection of customs duties, and the various other enumerated powers in that section combine to give the government fairly wide latitude to poke around in people's baggage and so on too. It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway, that all nations assert the power to decide what may be imported, whether to protect their domestic agriculture or to prevent the spread of things like child pornography. Of course such power can be abused to support despotism too, but that's an issue of governance, rather than some inherent flaw in the law itself - just as a computer and the software it runs can be used for worthwhile or nefarious purposes.
Now when it comes to seizure of websites, ICE is exercising its power (as delegated) to regulate commerce, both foreign and interstate. For this, they do need to get a warrant. Here's an example of a warrant in template form: http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/FormsAndFees/Forms/AO109.pd... I am not sure if this the same warrant that would be used for a domain name seizure (IANAL) but if not then it will be quite similar - the principle is basically the same as impounding a boat or cargo container. Child porn is certainly subject to forfeiture, and if it's being trafficked across state or national borders, then all ICE has to do is show the court the website, the fact of its illegal content, and request the warrant be issued. And that's exactly what they do - there's no fourth amendment violation.
As for due process, that isn't abridged either in this situation. If the warrant was correctly issued, then the court is already satisfied that contraband exists. When it's executed against the listed websites, their domain names are seized and fall into the custody of ICE who has them redirected to their warning page. If one of the domain owners disagrees - say, because he does host porn but had a statement on the website that all performers are over 18 and he has documentary evidence on file - there is an opportunity to argue that in court. The warrant is not the end of the process; the government puts the seized property into evidence and a civil trial is held; if the government wins, then the domains become the legal property of the government.
Often in customs enforcement, counterfeit goods or money are seized but nobody is caught. The trial is still held; if you look at court calendars you'll see entries in federal district court every week for cases with names like 'United States v. $250,000 in cash,' or 'United States v. 100,000 capsules of a controlled substance,' or 'United States v. 5603 counterfeit handbags.' The US attorney describes the issue of the warrant and the seizure, displays the seized material or documentary proof of where it is stored, nobody shows up to contest the government's claim upon it, and the government wins and takes ownership of it (if it's money) or destroys it (if it's drugs or counterfeit stuff). I always like to imagine an actual heap of cash piled up on the defense table with its own lawyer in cases like these, but that doesn't happen :) Anyway, they will do the same thing as regards these seized domains that had child porn, and likely nobody will show up to claim them as their property - because unless they had ironclad proof that it was not child porn and so a legal mistake has resulted, then they'd be arrested for the criminal act of trafficking in such material.
With mooo.com, ICE made a technical mistake - but they made this mistake while they were in the process of executing a legitimate warrant. they have not any point claimed that mooo.com or any of its subdomains were involved in illegal activity. If they did so, then it would be weeks or months before the matter was put to trial. That the mistake was reversed within hours tells you that mooo.com was never listed on the search warrant in the first place. I'd bet money that the mistake actually occurred at a computer console - as the seized domains listed in the warrant had their DNS altered, the operator miscounted and pasted the ICE IP address over the next entry in the list, which happened to be mooo.com. Why? Because I have made that sort of mistake many times, and so has anyone else who uses a computer.
It is not acceptable, but it is understandable - whereas there is no evidence at all for the picture that's being painted of corrupt authoritarians abusing the helpless public. Imagine the scene: a technician sitting at a console, while some uniformed ICE officers clutching a crumpled warrant in their sweaty hands stand behind her, drunk with power. The technician says 'well, all done officers.' 'Wait! Wait! What is that other site, that m-o-o-o dot com?' 'Oh, that's just the next entry in the DNS database, officer - totally unrelated.' 'Well, I'm on a roll - take that one out too.' 'but, officer, that's not-' 'Silence! Obey, unless you wish to live out your life in a federal prison surrounded by the scum of humanity! I can totally do that, you know. Now, zap it!'
Really? You find that more plausible than a simple screwup, of the kind we have all experienced and which was quickly corrected? Come on.
I repeat, it should not have happened. ICE has a responsibility to use its enforcement powers carefully and accurately, and failed to do so here. Because mooo.com happened to be a DNS business, ICE's mistake did not just affect one site but mooo.com's 84,000 customers as well. And their mistake didn't simply result in those sites being inaccessible for a few hours - they resulted in those sites (and by implication, their owners and operators) being publicly identified as traffickers in child pornography.
That is a very serious charge, easily enough to wreck a person's reputation or even put their life in danger. When the government says such a thing about a person, even as a mistake which is quickly corrected, many people think no more but accord that accusation the same weight as a criminal conviction. With so many people affected, it's probable that at least a few of them have already been fired from their jobs, or received a visit from their local child protection services, or had their spouse file divorce papers. All those results would be radical overreactions to the sight of ICE's web page, but an official government seal and the words 'child porn' will be enough to provoke that in some viewers - it's literally something that people do not like to think about, and so people do not bother to question the immediate emotional response they feel. 10 years ago in the UK, a bunch of uneducated vigilantes ran a doctor out of her home - they misunderstood her job title of 'paediatrician' on her clinic door to mean 'paedophile,' assumed she was a sex offender, and vandalized her house. Imagine how much more damning an official government warning of actual crime must look to anyone unfamiliar with the DNS or the legal system. You'd be better off being accused of murder than a sex crime; even if you were falsely convicted, you would be able to survive in prison while you appealed. Convicted child abusers usually have to be isolated for their own safety inside prison, and are marked for life outside.
ICE's carelessness seems seriously negligent, and since so many people were affected a class action lawsuit against the agency seems very probable. Suing the government is more complex than suing a private party because the government has immunity from some kinds of liability, so I do not know what technical path the lawsuit might take. But for the government to slap a 'child porn warning' on 84,000 or more people at once, even if it was 'only for a few hours, and only on the internet,' is about as bad a screwup as you can make. With 1, 5, or 10 people it might be feasible for ICE to write some humble letters of apology and offer a settlement to mitigate their trouble, but with tens of thousands a trial is the only efficient solution.
But this was not a failure of due process - it's just another example of internet's multiplier effect. In this case, technology allowed a technical error to affect 84,000 websites at once. The problem here is not the law, but the fragility of the domain name system.