U.S. authorities order the shutdown of over 73,000 public websites.

Using vague language concerning "abuse" of some sort, in an unprecedented move of censorship, U.S. law enforcement officials have apparently ordered the shut down of a free website hosting service called "Blogetery.com". The shutdown involves over 73,000 websites and blogs, primarily opinion sites run by private citizens.  Blogetery.com has been hosted by BurstNet for the last 7 months.

On Friday, July 9th, Blogetery.com disappeared from the internet. On the following Monday, Blogetery.com received the following email:

"Due to the history of abuse and on going abuse on this ‘bn.***********’ server.

We have opted to terminate this server, effective immediately. This termination applies to: bn.affiliateplex.com

Abuse Department
BurstNET Technologies, Inc"

After further communication with BurstNet, Blogetery received the following:

"Bn.xx*********** was terminated by request of law enforcement officials, due to material hosted on the server.

We are limited as to the details we can provide to you, but note that this was a critical matter and the only available option to us was to immediately deactivate the server."

And then, even later, a supposed "clarification":

"Please note that this was not a typical case, in which suspension and notification would be the norm. This was a critical matter brought to our attention by law enforcement officials. We had to immediately remove the server."

BurstNet has responded to requests for further info with the following:

“We notified him [the Blogetery owner] when we terminated it [the server], and we refunded him his money to his account, because he has other servers with us If he wants the refund to his card, we can easily do that. However, it should be the least of his concerns,” A BurstNet representative later confirmed.

“Simply put: We cannot give him his data nor can we provide any other details. By stating this, most would recognize that something serious is afoot.”

Is this to become a "test case" in a wider crackdown on opposing opinion by the Obama administration?  One seriously doubts that the current White House, given it's penchant for acting without actually doing even minimal investigation on a subject, would have taken the time to monitor all 73,000 websites before they decided to have them shut down on a wholesale basis.

It has long been reported that President Obama wants the power of an internet "kill switch", with the ability to shut down the internet in the United States in the case of "national emergency".  The current political climate in Washington, D.C. is apt to give him just that power, given the amount of power they have transferred from private to government hands in the mere 19 months Obama has been in office.

Those who attempt to access Blogetery.com, or any of the thousands of hosted websites which use Blogetery, are treated with the following cryptic message:

"After being BurstNet customer for 7 months our server was terminated without any notification or explanation.

We're trying to resolve the situation.

You can find details in this thread on webhostingtalk forum."

http://blogetery.com/

Thanks to "TorrentFreak.com" for contributing to this article.