Constitutional Law

The Very Long Arm of the Law

Without notification, an arm of the U.S. Treasury Department shut down eighty web sites owned by a British national who lives in Spain and sells trips to Europeans because the travel agency has allegedly helped Americans evade restrictions on travel to Cuba, according to a New York Times story.

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control ordered the sites shut down without a court proceeding and despite the travel agency's statement that it is not interested in American tourists. Yale law professor Susan Crawford noted that because many large domain name registers are based in the U.S., OFAC has 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."

Full post as published by ACS Blog on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).