The four seized by FARA make complete sense. Allowing news outlets to hide their affiliation with foreign governments or components of foreign governments will bring trouble. According to the release, those four worked a US audience, so good on the DOJ and FBI for seizing those.
The other 88 were because the Government of Iran violated our sanctions by not getting a proper license. The US had the ability to seize because the domains were owned and operated within the US and subsequently broke the laws.
So, it boils down to Iran breaking our rules by not improperly disclosing intent or failing to have the appropriate license. The DOJ and FBI did a good job. The Government of Iran could have registered those news outlets under FARA, but they didn't. Same for the obtaining the licenses, though I'm not versed in that approval process.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the situation but I think this rather highlights the awkward position the world allows itself to be in: to let the USA govern the entirety of the domain space. I believe this ought to be a global affair. Sure this might be headed by the USA as per usual, but the current situation is not one I think we should desire as a global populace.
I think what Iran did here is wrong, no doubt. But don't fool me that the USA does no such similar tactics as well, perhaps a tad bit more convoluted, through side companies for example But it's nothing weird to conceive the USA meddling in other countries their news feeds, right?
> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the situation but I think this rather highlights the awkward position the world allows itself to be in: to let the USA govern the entirety of the domain space.
You are misunderstanding the situation. The US does not govern the entirety of the domain space. Nations have full control over their own ccTLDs, and many (e.g. China and India) absolutely do fully exert that control by censoring outright domains they don't agree with. And there are plenty of other gTLDs that are not run out of the US either, e.g. Radix is a Dubai-based company that runs .site, .online, .store, .space, .fun, .website, .tech, and more, Minds + Machines is a British VI-based company that runs .vip, .work, .fit, .london, and more, etc.
All of these enforcement actions against Iran were able to happen because the registries and/or registrars in question are US-based companies. Of course governments are able to enforce their laws on companies based on their own soil, but that's also all the US is able to do without the cooperation of other countries.
If some outfit claims to be based in the Virgin Islands, you should take that with a large dose of salt unless it's a hotel or something. The BVI is a tax haven.
In practice so far as I was able to tell this is a Californian company which for tax reasons is notionally owned by a company in the BVI.
Thank you for the correction. I wasn't aware of the other options. It still feels a bit wrong though for the USA to solely have the governance on a ubiquitous domain as .com
If Iran hosted these sites in, say, Myanmar, I have a strong suspicion the DOJ and FBI couldn't take down these sites. That said, perhaps the military would end up getting involved, if the threat was serious enough.
>Sure this might be headed by the USA as per usual, but the current situation is not one I think we should desire as a global populace.
Okay, right now, remove the USA from their global role. Who do you want to fill the void? Remember that sudden power vacuums allow bad actors to fill in (ISIS being the most modern example of such).
As controversial as it may sound, the USA still allows for the greatest expressions of liberty of any country, period. It ain't perfect, but no representative system is.
>But don't fool me that the USA does no such similar tactics as well, perhaps a tad bit more convoluted, through side companies for example
Of course we do.
Unless a treaty is signed explicitly condemning such behavior, every country possessing or seeking power meddles with domestic politics of other countries. Political power derives its strength from perception. If a domestic populace views their leaders as capable, political power increases, and vice versa. This reality is used by militaries and intelligence services to influence domestic and foreign nations.
For example, if you're China, you attempt to convince the USA population to perceive their government as weak, ineffective, and non-representative, and you simultaneously tell the USA population that China is a worthy successor to the USA and is totally not a threat. If the population is unaware of these efforts (often spanning years if not decades), you have a fairly high success rate, as you are fabricating an alternate reality which is deemed plausible enough to pass as truth. Raise a whole generation on this reality, and you've laid a new foundation for that society. (For more information on the topic, look up "psychological operations".)
> Okay, right now, remove the USA from their global role. Who do you want to fill the void? Remember that sudden power vacuums allow bad actors to fill in (ISIS being the most modern example of such).
He already said/implied, an international committee or coalition, representative of the world, while possibly still headed by the US. Unless you're seriously arguing ISIS would be a potential alternative to US control of domain names, why even mention them?
> As controversial as it may sound, the USA still allows for the greatest expressions of liberty of any country, period.
Even within the US, authorities regularly and routinely confiscate the property of American citizens, without charging them with anything. So the idea that the US is the greatest protector of liberty for people outside the US is not credible.
>He already said/implied, an international committee or coalition, representative of the world, while possibly still headed by the US. Unless you're seriously arguing ISIS would be a potential alternative to US control of domain names, why even mention them?
I mention ISIS simply to demonstrate that power vacuums can lead to unintended consequences. ICANN has issues, but will pushing the power of domain management to an international coalition be good for the health and openness of the Internet? Hard to say.
>Even within the US, authorities regularly and routinely confiscate the property of American citizens, without charging them with anything. So the idea that the US is the greatest protector of liberty for people outside the US is not credible.
You do know civil asset forfeiture doesn't happen for no reason at all, right? That said, you're right that many local law enforcement agencies started stretching the law to excessively seize assets and thereby fund their departments. You may be interested to know the Supreme Court, two years ago, held state and local law enforcement are also subject to the Excessive Fines Clause, just like federal law enforcement [1]. While there's plenty of work to do to enact limits for each state [2], the foundation for future efforts to restrict civil asset forfeiture is now established.
Look, I get that hating on the USA is in vogue these days. All the cool kids talk about how much the USA sucks, and anyone expressing otherwise is not worth the cool kids' time. But consider that the US Consitution is the oldest governing document currently in force. It works damn well, and perhaps so because it protects liberty extraordinarily well, even though the costs of liberty are high.
It has nothing to do with "hating on the USA", it has to do with knowing the US acts in its own interests only, not those of other countries. (Why wouldn't it?)
The US Constitution means as much to people in other countries as the constitution of Russia or China or anywhere else means to Americans. It doesn't apply, regardless of how old it is.
The point about civil asset forfeiture is that if the US Constitution can't protect Americans against the US government or law enforcement, what hope does the rest of the world have?
The US Constitution does protect Americans from the federal government, though, far more than almost any Western nation. States' rights are still very real. In fact, states' rights are the whole reason why that case went to the Supreme Court in the first place.
What hope does the world have? Give it a few months yet.
The difference between the USA and other Western nations is explainable by understanding the difference between a federation and a confederation.
All confederations are federations, but not all federations are confederations. The difference comes from the federal government's power.
Both constitute a union of regions under a federal government. However, the confederation is distinguished by a union of sovereign regions under a federal government. Independence of the state was so important at the founding of the USA that the first governing document of the country is names the "Articles of Confederation". However, the Articles of Confederation were too weak and did not allow the federal government to levy taxes, so they were scrapped for the present-day Constitution to grant the federal government a bit more power.
The USA isn't an ideal confederation, but the confederal elements pop up from time to time (e.g. any person talking about "state's rights")
Canada is also close to being a confederation, but the executive power is still vested in the British monarchy.
I don't believe any European nation can be considered a confederation.
So, to your point: the most free nations in the world are those espousing confederal values. Even among Western nations, only a handful qualify, and the USA is one of those.
They were subject to US seizure because the Iranians used US-based domain registrars (in the examples given it looks like Namecheap and OnlineNIC). These are US companies that are subject to US law and export restrictions.
Had they used Active.Domains in Russia, DotMedia in Hong Kong, KuwaitNET in Kuwait, or any of the other non-US registrars, they would have been fine.
They also would have needed to have used different TLDs to be outside the reach of US law enforcement. .com is run by Verisign, a US company, and if the FBI gives Verisign a court order to confiscate a given .com domain then Verisign can't say no.
.com, .net, .org, .edu, and .gov are very much US-based and US-centric TLDs, which lots of people tend to forget. Whereas other countries use their own ccTLDs, we have .us but barely use it, for historical reasons.
> .com, .net, .org, .edu, and .gov are very much US-based and US-centric TLDs,
.com, .net and .org weren't created as US-centric and it's a tragedy they are ( and it's an even bigger tragedy that .edu is US only). .org is widely used around the world though.
They were created in 1985 before most of the world was even connected to the Internet. Near as I can tell it was just the US and the UK connected by a single undersea cable at that point in 1985? (Would love to know more history here though.)
.com/.net were originally administered by the US Department of Defense, then in 1993 it went to the US National Science Foundation. They've always been US-centric, and most other countries have always generally tended to use their ccTLDs. .org too has always been run out of the US.
If you don't want to be under the US's power, the correct course of action is and always has been to not use the gTLDs like .com, .net, .org that are operated in the US (and that for the first decade plus of existence were operated by the US). These TLDs were simply never country-agnostic; they have always had a much greater association with the US than with any other country. At some point, whatever the intent might have been 30+ years ago doesn't really matter practically speaking today. They are what they are and everyone knows, or should know, what they're getting with them.
US does plenty of such tactics. See, for example, recent leaks that came out about a massive propaganda campaign to support opposition groups in Syria.
From the "about us" page on the first provided domain: "The website is run by a small team of political science students who work seven days a week to provide fact-based news and views from around the country." [0]
From the original submission:
"In addition, the remaining 88 domains targeted audiences in Western Europe, the Middle East, and South East Asia and masqueraded as genuine news outlets while actually being operated by the IRGC to spread pro-Iranian disinformation around the globe to the benefit of the Government of Iran."
"four of the domains purported to be genuine news outlets but were actually controlled by the IRGC and targeted the United States for the spread of Iranian propaganda to influence United States domestic and foreign policy in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)"
> According to the seizure documents, four of the domains purported to be genuine news outlets but were actually controlled by the IRGC and targeted the United States for the spread of Iranian propaganda to influence United States domestic and foreign policy in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and the remainder spread Iranian propaganda to other parts of the world.
Do they get to seize the Voice of America domain too?
Yes, OPs comment is especially hilarious when you consider that when the US government wants to engage in actual propaganda they will use the NY Times.
NYT is a private organization, with reporters who have sources from many governments. Since it’s US-based, it has more sources in the US and covers more domestic stories, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say it’s a mouthpiece of the US government. NYT has a somewhat adversarial relationship with the government, and regularly publishes highly damaging stories the government would rather suppress.
There’s an important distinction between an independent media outlet with a US perspective, and US government propaganda. The former holds some principles that the nation will better prosper if corruption in the government is exposed. The latter just wants to increase the standing of the nation, and/or keep the present leaders in power.
I totally understand what you're saying and where you're coming from. In reality that is not how it works in many cases. The NY Times is often used by the ruling class to direct public policy.
Propaganda is simply influential speech that someone takes steps to distribute. Not all propaganda is bad, or even disagreeable. Typically it is not literally the state of being propaganda that makes propaganda concerning, but instead, it’s the the agenda that the propaganda is espousing that is of concern.
For example, some propaganda is good and had an agenda that is widely agreeable — e.g. many things produced by the Ad Council.
Few would think it is reasonable for the US to prohibit its government from doing things that it believes is in its own interest.
Tl;dr: it’s because countries don’t prohibit themselves from doing things they think is a good idea.
It may be helpful, then, to draw a distinction between propaganda targeted at a domestic audience and propaganda targeted at foreign audiences.
I think many would say that the US government shouldn't try to spread any "good ideas" that differ from what its citizens already believe are good ideas. That would still allow the US government to publish those ideas to other countries, though.
In that case, I don't think many Americans would take issue with VOA's publishing. It is generally bland, non-controversial reporting. Even their editorials are typically just criticism of human rights abuses or opinions in support of democracy.
This establishes that USA will use their control of .com to further their interests and that if you are at odds with those interests you should prefer a ccTLD.
The .com TLD is under control of the US, so of course the US will leverage that in its own interests when it makes sense.
Can you explain where the surprise is exactly?
It's equivalent to proclaiming surprise that the US will leverage its natural resources to its own advantage, or physically seek to control its borders in relation to its economy for trade purposes, or use & abuse the USD global reserve currency to its advantage. The .com TLD is just another resource under control of the US.
The US, as with every country on the planet, seeks to leverage all manner of things to its advantage, politically and economically. The only difference between nations is how many points of leverage they have to utilize. The US, or China as another example, have many points of leverage to use; smaller or weaker countries do not.
Kind of like OPEC successfully leveraging its oil dominance in the 1970s. It's what countries tend to do, when they can.
It never has been and never will be. These seizures are simply a few in a long line of similar actions stretching all the way back to the beginning of the "war on terror" in 2001. Hell, even the "war on piracy" has seen a lot of domains being seized.
Some would argue Soleimani escalated by coordinating attacks on the US embassy and military bases.
And hopefully, Iran doesn't decide to shoot down a commercial airliner half-filled with their own nationals, that took off from their own airport, as retribution for these domain name seizures.
Check out the Suez Canal, nationalising foreign assets is perfectly fine according to international law ( of course, subject to conditions).
And what kind of imperialistic argument is that? A sovereign country managed to get rid of foreign control, nationalised foreign assets that were exploiting their natural resources and shipping off the the profits offshore ( the original concessions being given while Iran was under UK control), and they're the bad guys and deserve a bloody coup? Again, check the Suez crisis, that's not how the world works anymore ( most of the time).
The answer is to renegotiate the deal peacefully, if the company refuses then nationalise the assets, which still does not give US the right to remove a democratically elected leader just because an oil company gets less profits.
> was a collaborative effort between the FBI and social media companies Google, Facebook, and Twitter [...] a perfect example of why the FBI San Francisco Division prioritizes maintaining an ongoing relationship with a variety of social media and technology companies.
Trying to read between the lines here, but having a hard time without statements of appreciative voluntary collaboration from the companies themselves. Is the FBI saying that collaboration has been valuable, or forced cooperation? Unless any of those companies similarly boasts, I have to assume the latter.
It doesn't really work that way; different entities control different TLDs, for example ".io" is administered by a UK company and most countries have their own.
People used to make complaints like yours when the US had DNS control, but Obama handed that off to ICANN in a somewhat controversial move years ago.
One of these sites was called "usjournal.us". Would you be surprised if Russia seized an allegedly CIA-controlled domain called "russiatoday.ru"?
> Presumably this entitlement to outright remove content on the web should be extended and available for other nations as well.
Sure, within the tlds under each nations control. Iranian government can seize as many .ir domains it wants to. It's historical happenstance that legacy tlds like .com are US controlled, but nobody forces you to use those. While the press release did not list the seized domains here, I bet none of them were .ir.
Ever since the ccTLDs were bulk generated the sovereign entities they notionally belong to have exercised about the level of control over them that you'd expect. See also the flags flown by ships.
If a ship has a French flag, the French state actually takes some responsibility for it, even if you saw it in port in Brazil, that's still a French flag, France cares about that ship 'cos it has their flag on it and they don't let that flag fly just anywhere. On the other hand, if the ship has the Comoros flag, well, don't expect too much from a poor island nation that was mostly glad of the cheque paid. If you're lucky Comoros can give you the phone number for the people who actually own it, but they want nothing to do with that ship.
What matters here is that these were gTLDs operated by American registries, so it's up to the Americans if they want.
It's my understanding that these operations are available for any country, and we hear about them in the US so much just because the registrars for the biggest TLDs are all in the US. There's really no reason you have to have a .com these days, so anyone who's concerned about US censorship should (and does, I think) pick a different TLD.
And those requirements can be all over the place too. The admins of .lgbt will remove anything they find offensive without refund. There's still a .su if you want that soviet era cred. Another interesting case is .bio which has hard requirements if the domain relates to organic farming.
Wholeheartedly agree, actions like this add significant oil to the idea of national and regional Internets. Long term its hard to imagine how this won't eventually become a thing out of necessity
Which is of course the problem. While some people are complaining about "technically incompetent" comments the political reality is that one of the primary motivations for the original Internet was a tool for avoiding government censorship.
The phrase used to be "The Internet perceives censorship as damage and routes around it." Now it seems any censorship is fine as long as it's nationalist enough. And if by a quirk of history the US happens to control the domains with the widest reach - well, so it goes, never mind, and let's wave a flag.
The inevitable outcome will be a Balkanised Internet, with each sphere of influence monitoring and controlling its local content.
This has happened formally in China and Russia (and elsewhere) and has been happening informally in the US and EU.
Perhaps the requirements of realpolitik justify this - and perhaps they don't. It's not a simple question with a simple answer.
So it's a debate worth having - not on the basis of TLD ownership, but on the basis of international civics and the ever-decreasing free movement of information which is not corporate or government-controlled, online and elsewhere, in all spheres of interest.
Why would anyone use that internet. Fair doesn't mean optimal. It would be fair if anyone who published a social media site would get an equal share of the traffic. Isn't optimal though
Please don't break the site guidelines like this. If another comment is wrong, it would be great to provide correct information, so we can all learn something. But please don't call names, and don't post flamebait, and don't post unsubstantive comments generally...all that just makes the thread even worse.
An informative response instead of an ad hominem would be more interesting to read. What does make that comment bizarro and techically incompetent ? Honestly asking.
This has been my experience on HN too recently. It's a downhill slide to Slashdot, HN will be there soon. Does anyone use any of the Chrome extensions to filter HN?
I fondly remember working at my university computer center constantly refreshing /. using a text browser on a VT terminal. It's radically changed since.
Well, isn’t that just the usual product cycle? Something everyone dreams of? Start in a niche with some nerds, then expand from there. Become mainstream over time. Books have been written about it! Crossing the Chasm comes to mind. And of course myriads of Medium articles. I think that’s just way it goes.
Would you say that about Facebook, Google, twitter, etc? The US fights terrorism and oppression of people both foreign and domestic, while big tech fights for their political opinions.
I’m hoping that the last four years have reminded the world that the US is not reliable and our dependence on them needs to be divested slowly over time. Long term it will be very healthy for almost everyone else, probably not as much for Americans.
Would probably be a healthy thing for the Internet to expand capability and capacity to other parts of the world.
All crucial internet and telecommunications technology should be created as independent from the US, as the US itself is gladly reminding everyone about China. It doesn't make sense to have a single country dominating these technologies, as this is the modern form of control and censorship that can be used to dominate other countries.
So you're using once stance to deny the totality of everything? Everything you read will contain both truths and lies (just watch CNN/MSNBC, which are pretty much corporate and political propaganda on the level of RT today).
The CIA did cause a revolution against a democratically elected government in Iran, replacing it with the Shaw. The Iranian-Contra situation is a travesty against the Iranian people.
The world is more complex that A is true and B is false. You have to take everything you read and examine if it's true or not. There are literally no trustable media today.
> against a democratically elected government in Iran
You should read more about Mossadegh if you think that he was democratically elected, and not a dictator. He was democratically elected, and then he refused to leave office when he was legally dismissed. That sounds like a dictator to me.
Unfortunately for the government, I suspect abusing control of domains like this will just make a decentralized DNS that they cannot control more of a reality.
Don't want your domain seized by the US? then don't use a TLD owned by the US to engage in anti-US activities. Have we already forgotten Iran and their calls for death to America? Would you expect any country to allow usage of their services to advocate for their downfall? Would you expect McDonalds to allow you to have an anti-McDonalds protest inside one of their restaurants?
I think you're overstating the reasoning behind the takedown, as cited in the original post. The issue was that the IRGC was pretending to be genuine new outlets, not the actual information they posted.
> Don't want your domain seized by the US? then don't use a TLD owned by the US to engage in anti-US activities.
ICANN is based in the US so they can theoretically turn off any domain they want.
Also are you suggesting it's OK for the US to shutdown any website engaging in whatever the US government defines as "anti-US activities?"
> Have we already forgotten Iran and their calls for death to America?
I'd love to see the proof you have that these websites were bannering "death to America" across their websites.
Unless you have some special knowledge about the situation I don't, I think we can safely say we don't know if any of the accusations the US is making about these websites are even true.
> Unless you have some special knowledge about the situation I don't, I think we can safely say we don't know if any of the accusations the US is making about these websites are even true.
Just read the article and scan some of the websites in a cache.
Reading your comment, after reading the US's claim in the article, and looking at the websites, leads me to believe your comment is straight disinformation.
US claim, "Today, we successfully seized 92 domains involved in a disinformation campaign conducted by Iran-based actors to promote pro-Iranian propaganda."
Looking at a cross-section of the domains in archive.org, shows them to contain one-sided and incomplete information.
They can and exercise a lot of discretion in not doing so. It has nothing to do with the legal authority, which they can also rationalize, feel free to come to the US and appeal in court.
The internet being administered by US corporations makes them easily compellable and any property they steward can be seized despite being for the benefit of foreign citizens and non-residents.
Just like how anti-China rhetoric in the US (allegedly) refers to opposition to the CCP, anti-American sentiment in Iran refers to opposition to the US regime (which isn't shy about its anti-Iranian sentiment, in a similar vein.)
It's an extremely common slogan in Iran(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America). I should note that Iranian officials generally insist that it's not meant literally, although I'm not taking a position on whether or not that's true.
McCain absolutely meant the US should drop bombs on Iran and cause the death of some Iranian people. That's not even a controversial position in the US, probably 75%+ of American voters would support that if proposed by the right person.
And he was a United States senator for 30 years, including a Chair of the Armed Services Committee. How much more involved in setting America's international policy could one be?
I think far, far fewer Americans support its illegal wars than you claim .. they're just silenced by the minority who stand to profit from it and who currently control the war megaphone.
> Death to America (Persian: مرگ بر آمریکا Marg bar Āmrikā) is an anti-American political slogan and chant which has been in use in Iran since the inception of the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
Tehran Radio != Sovereign Iranian Government policy.
The Ahatollah also had this, very specifically, to say about the slogan:
"It goes without saying that the slogan does not mean death to the American nation; this slogan means death to the US’s policies, death to arrogance,” he said."
“It goes without saying that the slogan does not mean death to the American nation; this slogan means death to the US’s policies, death to arrogance,” [the Ayatollah] said.
This is a classic Motte and Bailey[0]. Do you think most of the radicals within Iran that agree with the slogan are giving it the nuanced “we don’t really mean...” The leadership knows what tensions they’re stoking and then hide behind a poor excuse when they know the nuance reaches nobody. The nuance is a geopolitical cover. Will you also be ok with thousands in America chanting “death to Iran”, as long as the POTUS says “we really mean death to Iran’s policies, we wish them well, we just want them to change.”?
If Iran are morally reprehensible for making this slogan a thing, then what exactly makes America's own violent radical religious fringe elements chanting "Bomb Iran, bomb bomb Iran" acceptable?
This double standard is exactly why America is despised.
You cannot claim the moral high road while, literally, pouring billions of dollars into funding ISIS in the region.
"Death to America" is US Constitutionally protected speech, regardless of who is saying it. Your McDonalds example is fallacious, as McDonalds is not bound by the first amendment. Someone protesting on the sidewalk outside of McDonalds certainly has that right, even if McDonalds has bought the local government.
Freedom of speech is not simply being able to wear a Pepsi shirt in downtown Atlanta, but about viewpoints that necessarily make us uncomfortable. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". That so many are willing to discard our hard-earned freedoms for the lure of simplistic neo-fascism [0] is harrowing. Our society has been whipped into a stupor by the specter of foreign strawmen, while the real threats to the US are the domestic powers doing the whipping. If you can't see how this action is utterly anti-American, you are contributing to our destruction.
[0] One telltale indicator of neo-fascism is the analogizing of state activity to business activity.
FARA itself doesn't necessarily result in selective use "to punish the speech of anyone it disagrees." Rather one could argue any law can be selectively applied to punish some and not others.
I provided a link in my original comment to demonstrate there's accusations that this exact thing has been done historically in the case of FARA:
> Rather one could argue any law can be selectively applied to punish some and not others.
The flip side is that anyone being punished can argue they are being selectively targeted, regardless of the validity of it.
None of the examples there show the punishment of speech the US government disagrees with. Furthermore, none of them are analogous to the original post, where a foreign government was pretending to be legitimate news organizations.
AIPAC is a huge lobbying organization in the US and the examples provided in that linked Wikipedia section show they've had a history of being accused as a foreign mouthpiece of Israel, yet nothing has ever been done about it w.r.t NARA.
On the other hand, if the US accuses IRGC of controlling all these websites but does nothing about the multi-billion dollar lobbying organization in the US that's had multiple high ranking officials demanding it register with NARA (and then later mysteriously dropping their demands), does that not strike you as a bit odd?
The other 88 were because the Government of Iran violated our sanctions by not getting a proper license. The US had the ability to seize because the domains were owned and operated within the US and subsequently broke the laws.
So, it boils down to Iran breaking our rules by not improperly disclosing intent or failing to have the appropriate license. The DOJ and FBI did a good job. The Government of Iran could have registered those news outlets under FARA, but they didn't. Same for the obtaining the licenses, though I'm not versed in that approval process.
If you're looking for some riveting reading, check out FARA: https://www.justice.gov/nsd-fara/fara-index-and-act