YouHaveDownloaded is a website that lists information on more than 50 million users and what they have downloaded. This is a fraction of all public BitTorrent downloads.

US District Court Judge Paul Crotty has ruled that the 1st Amendment does not prevent the government from seizing web domains. The issue was raised by the ICE’s shuttering of a sports streaming website called Rojadirecta.com. The owners of Rojadirecta claimed that because the site contained some legal content, seizing the website counted as a suppression of free speech. The judge disagreed, stating that “the main purpose of the Rojadirecta websites […] is to catalogue links to the copyrighted athletic events – any argument to the contrary is clearly disingenuous.” [Gizmodo]

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has sent Mozilla a take-down request for the Firefox add-on called MafiaaFire Redirector. MafiaaFire Redirector allows Firefox users to access websites, whose domain names were taken down by the government over copyright issues. Mozilla responded by asking the government why they should remove the add-on. About two weeks have gone by without a response.

The color codes indicating a potential terror attack will be eliminated. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will likely send out elevated and imminent warnings on Facebook and Twitter. Some of the warnings may be withheld from Facebook in order to prevent exposure to an intelligence op. The system will be replaced on April 27th.

The federal government is canceling the multi-billion dollar plan for building a virtual fence along the southwestern border between Mexico and the U.S. The Department of Homeland Security said that they are shutting down the Secure Border Initiative network (SBInet). Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that the virtual fence was costing too much and was not achieving much.

About 82 torrent and copyright-infringing websites were taken down by Homeland Security in the past week. The Torrent-Finder.com owner complained that his website was taken without a court complaint. The government has justified why they took down websites without notice. It turns out that the government shut down the 82 websites as part of an effort called “Operation In Our Sites II.”

The U.S. government has been proactive about taking down torrent websites. ICE – Homeland Security Investigations seized the domain of BitTorrent meta-search engine Torrent-Finder.com without giving them a court notice or complaint.

Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab is the 23 year old terrorist that attempted to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight in Detroit last week. Umar attempted to set off a device when he was aboard a plane that was preparing to land in the Detroit airport arriving from Amsterdam. The passengers and flight crew put out the flames that he was covered in and subdued him until the flight landed.

The passenger was taken to the University of Michigan hospital where he was treated for the burns. After that he was taken to a prison in Milan, Michigan. The device that Umar used involved pentaerythritol (PETN). A syringe was also recovered by the FBI from the flight which was also being used with the device. Umar was believed to be trained by Al-Qaeda terrorists in Yemen. Umar was previously an engineering student at University College in London.

Immediately after this incident took place, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Acting Administrator Gale Rossides sent out a memo about extra precautions to take: