US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces
369 comments
·October 23, 2025nla
jagged-chisel
Define “easier.”
Someone has to read through each email to determine the nature of the complaint, who was involved, how to classify it, etc.
If the web form was free text entry, the same effort is required by the receiving humans.
You can move the effort slider from the reviewer toward the web dev and the reporter by designing a UI to limit input and pre-classify the complaint.
So who has it “easier” now? I guess the server admin?
rco8786
> I would think email is a lot easier than a webform.
why
jmole
Not sure about you, but when I submit a “contact us” form, I am about 10% sure someone will actually read it.
When I send an email that isn’t bounced back, or better yet, get an auto reply with a ticket number, I’m a lot more certain it’s going to get read.
estearum
Sounds like a characteristic of the responder system more so than the input system.
Whereas what’s clearly a distinct advantage of a web form is that you can find it on the web.
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hulitu
> The Leahy Law requires the U.S. government to facilitate receipt of information about alleged abuses by U.S. supported forces.
From Wikipedia: "Senator Leahy first introduced this law in 1997 as part of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act."
It is funny that only today they found it. Wikileaks was documenting American war crimes since some time.
notmyjob
It sounds like this was mainly being used to report abuses by US allies, ie “US armed IDF forces” according to the article. Obviously there is something more to this than the headline and tone of the piece indicate. For one thing, the law written by Leahy was passed in 2011, but this website went online in 2022, so how can removing the site make it impossible to abide by the law? What was going on between 2011 and 2022 than is different from now?
I’m concerned about human rights, but I’m equally concerned about yellow journalism or coordinated media bias.
From a practical standpoint, this is why Wikileaks matters. Rather than count on the State department to serve that role, we should count on independent journalists like Glen Greenwald and outlets like Wikileaks who are reliably independent.
giancarlostoro
Agree. I'm tired of having to do research every time I read a news article. If you want me to trust your news articles give me raw unedited sources, because if I don't see any, I don't trust your assessment.
masfuerte
> It sounds like this was mainly being used to report abuses by US allies
The website is for reporting abuses by foreign forces armed with US kit. The US isn't in the habit of arming its enemies, so of course the reports concern allies. That's what the website is for.
ImHereToVote
It's hard to say whether the article is lazy or is actually just partisan.
docdeek
This seems like a bad decision to me. Not only does it seem not to be in the spirit of the law (you can still report but not as easily now) but it's not clear why they shut it down at all. Cost? Inefficiency? Just wasn't getting used much? They have a better solution?
On the other hand, the US seems so partisan now that had the current administration told the world they were taking huma' rights abuse reporting seriously by creating a web form, some people would probably be criticized for that, too.
rehevkor5
It seems to be an extension of aspects that he talked about in his speech https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4318... Specifically:
> allow me a few words to talk about toxic leaders. > The definition of toxic has been turned upside down, and we're correcting that. That's why today, at my direction we're undertaking a full review of the department's definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing, to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing. > We're talking about words like bullying and hazing and toxic. They've been weaponized and bastardized inside our formations, undercutting commanders and NCOs. No more.
> Third, we are attacking and ending the walking on eggshells and zero defect command culture. > A blemish free record is what peacetime leaders covet the most, which is the worst of all incentives. You, we as senior leaders, need to end the poisonous culture of risk aversion and empower our NCOs at all levels to enforce standards. > I call it the no more walking on eggshells policy. We are liberating commanders and NCOs. We are liberating you. We are overhauling an inspector general process, the IG, that has been weaponized, putting complainers, ideologues and poor performers in the driver's seat.
> No more frivolous complaints. No more anonymous complaints. No more repeat complainants. No more smearing reputations. No more endless waiting. No more legal limbo. No more sidetracking careers. No more walking on eggshells.
> we know mistakes will be made. It's the nature of leadership. But you should not pay for earnest mistakes for your entire career. And that's why today, at my direction, we're making changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable earnest or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity.
> People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career. Otherwise, we only try not to make mistakes, and that's not the business we're in. We need risk takers and aggressive leaders and a culture that supports you.
That makes his view of complaints, and his preference that people "take risks" and don't worry about "not being perfect", pretty clear. He thinks those things are "debris" that have been "weaponized" and that he's "liberating" people from. Maybe that seems great if you're in the military. Not so great if you're on the receiving end of those "risks", or if you or your family becomes the broken "eggshells".
_heimdall
To be fair (ignoring whether Hegseth really deserves that), what he describes is a very common view of military leadership during war time.
"War time" is the key there though. The US is not a nation at war. We have allies at war and the executive branch has taken it upon itself to take warlike actions without Congress, but we aren't st war - especially not a war the scale of which is seen as existential and leads to these kind of views on conduct and policy.
Hegseth seems to be playing out what Eisenhower tried to warn us about decades ago. When a wartime general turned President leaves office with a final warning of the dangers of the new military industrial complex, everyone should listen.
nradov
Any large standing military will typically oscillate between a wartime footing where aggression and risk-taking are rewarded versus a peacetime (garrison) footing where avoiding politically embarrassing mistakes is rewarded. The problem is that when the next war starts the careerist officers who were promoted during peacetime produce disastrous results. It then takes several lost battles until they are replaced with competent warfighters.
For better or worse, US leadership is now attempting to place the military on a permanent wartime footing, largely on the theory that a major regional conflict with China is coming at some unpredictable time in the next couple decades. They think they're going to have to fight WWII again with China now playing the role of Japan. Some level of occasional human rights abuses are seen as an acceptable "cost of doing business" to maintain a higher level of readiness and combat effectiveness. (I am not claiming that this is a good policy, just trying to explain the current thinking within the military-industrial complex.)
actionfromafar
If the war is prolonged, you can't go around treating people like eggshells to be crushed, or morale will suffer.
Unless your target image is how Russia conducts war. Beats (their own) soldiers, puts them in cages, ties them to trees for days, and so on. In Ukraine we see the difference in practice. If the cause is just, you don't have push your soldiers at gunpoint into the fray, like Russia does.
And if the war is not prolonged, what's even the excuse to do that in the first place?
1234letshaveatw
you must "hate" Amy Edmondson
giraffe_lady
Hegseth is publicly just a huge fan of war crimes and this is probably the main reason he got the job he has now. The big thing he's been signaling, and not really even in a sly or dogwhistly way, is that war crimes are ok to do now.
If your goal is to do war crimes and enable others to do war crimes then removing the war crime reporting tool may not directly benefit you much but it certainly doesn't hurt you. And there is a certain idealogical alignment.
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lawlessone
The most polite thing i can say about Pete is that he's the dimmest bulb among them, trying to imitate much more capable people. And everyone can see it.
He's broken the Peter Principle by shooting far above the level of his incompetence.
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varispeed
[flagged]
lbrito
Deflection at its finest.
At least as a thought exercise, consider the possibility that the US administration was _always not great_ on its own merits, not as the fault of whatever foreign boogeyman-of-the-day.
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metadaemon
I highly doubt Putin is concerned with the aesthetics of the White House
bakies
the man cheats in the olympics, he's exactly petty enough to care
FridayoLeary
[flagged]
some_random
First off even if it was 99% unfounded Israel complaints, that's not a reason to axe it, that's just a reason to add a filter in an excel spreadsheet. But more importantly, we are absolutely responsible for making sure that our military aid is used in a way that supports our interests and values.
alt187
> Just a guess but probably 99% of complaints were against israel
That would make sense, but maybe not for the reason you think.
bigyabai
> got overlooked by DOGE
DOGE had no accountability. Of course they did nothing.
SalmoShalazar
Does Israel not commit human rights abuses?
FridayoLeary
No. not on any organised national level.
nakamoto_damacy
My guess is he's either a Jewish Zionist or a Christian Zionist. A genocide denier. You can't teach morality to those people, when they think Muslims are dogs etc.
mikeyouse
> Tim Rieser, former senior aide to Senator Leahy who wrote the 2011 amendment mandating information gathering, told the BBC the gateway's removal meant the State Department was "clearly ignoring the law".
We're in a really bad place... with a servile congress, it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch. When everything relies on "independent IGs" for law enforcement inside executive branch departments, and the President can fire them all without consequence or oversight, then it turns out there is no law.
harrall
Laws can’t fix this problem. The branches check each other but citizens are supposed to check the branches. “Can’t fix a non-engineering problem with engineering.”
But your average citizen is consuming news sources like Fox News that present a rosy picture. In their world, things are going well (and all problems are due to one party).
That’s why dysfunction in the branches can go so far. The basis of American governance, and probably any kind of governance to be honest, is vigilance. If everyone was fully informed on what was happening everyday and behind closed doors, everyone would vote differently.
Instead we vote based often on out-of-context bits that we hear, and surprisingly we all get completely sets of bits. The system — voting, checks and balances — is still solid but the input into it is not great.
The founding fathers did not anticipate the modern media world.
altcognito
By design, the current administration moves as fast as it possibly can because it knows that the public will take time to catch up.
The key to countering is consistent pressure that does not relent to fix the mechanisms that are broken: (congress, the white house, the "deep state" side note: the deep state always existed, it was just a convenient shorthand for "the part of the US government that faithfully implements the laws as passed by congress". That portion has been gutted and replaced with sycophants, and it will now take time to undo it)
Things like the Supreme Court, term limits, election funding also need updating. We all need to do a better job reviewing the fundamentals of government.
jorblumesea
Bold of you to assume the public will ever catch up or care in the world of relentless algos and propagandizing. Tariffs have been in place for months now, which is objectively a regressive self imposed tax on US citizens.
notahacker
The founding fathers lived in a world where the average citizen would have no idea what was going on in Washington. They just didn't expect it to be exploited quite so brazenly
kelnos
The finding fathers also set up a system where most people could not vote, so that wasn't a big problem for them.
itsoktocry
>But your average citizen is consuming news sources like Fox News that present a rosy picture. In their world, things are going well (and all problems are due to one party).
As usual, you see this as a "they are dumb" problem. Look within.
softwaredoug
TBH The Right in the US has such a structural advantage, that Congress's silence becomes de-facto acceptance. Congress choosing to not do oversight becomes a de-facto repeal of the law.
The only other option is to find someone with standing being harmed and sue. And that will take time to wind through the courts, with not great chances at SCOTUS.
mullingitover
It's not just a structural advantage, it's a de facto suspension of the Constitution.
Political parties are in theory subordinate to the Constitution, but when the executors and interpreters of the law are first and foremost agents of a political party, and they refuse to be constrained by the Constitution, that's the ballgame. You have a self-coup.
What we are witnessing is the aftermath of the self-coup, the Constitution is just a polite fiction that must be given lip service to prevent the already massive protests from turning into an outright color revolution.
monero-xmr
[flagged]
jordanpg
This is often described in terms of adherence to democratic norms, but I like your framing better.
If we have to distill the problem down to its simplest essence, it's the political parties. In particular, it's the existence of the two political parties, whose priorities have transcended those of the Republic itself (mostly the members' self interest). It just so happens to be the Republicans in power when the consequences of this have spiraled out of control.
kranke155
Because they now control the Congress and SCOTUS, there is effectively no recourse. Congress is paralysed and SCOTUS will almost always rule in favor of the Administration.
They studied and effectively undermined the system patiently. Now armed forces are being deployed to all major cities.
everdrive
You're not wrong, but Congress has been broken for a long, long time. Congress really doesn't do anything except for agree (if they've got a majority with the president) or disagree (if they're in the minority against the president) with the current president. They don't really make laws, they don't hold anyone accountable, they don't fund the government. They don't govern at all, they just try to keep getting re-elected.
kevin_thibedeau
They have subpoena power and a jail. They just refuse to exact accountability unless you're something critically important like a baseball player.
mulmen
This isn’t true though. Lots of legislation has been passed. Government shutdowns have become common but they’re not universal. Your absolutist take is observably false. It is worth looking deeper at who the obstructionists in congress actually are. A minority of bad actors can cause immense harm.
JKCalhoun
We are, it appears now, a country of laws…uits.
actionfromafar
We have that, for now.
The talking heads on Fox have started to prepare us for a country without judges and lawsuits. Or at least without any Democratic judges.
fsckboy
[flagged]
zzzeek
a giant 147000 square mile space like Montana with 1.1 M people, 2.8% the size of California's population, gets 2 Senators regardless.
That is, the Senate gives representation to empty land.
That's pretty structural !
rayiner
> Congress's silence becomes de-facto acceptance. Congress choosing to not do oversight becomes a de-factor repeal of the law.
Yes, but why is that surprising? If a majority of any legislature doesn't care to see a law enforced, they could vote to repeal the law anyway. It's only because of the artifice of the filibuster in the U.S. system that there's a meaningful difference between those two things.
galangalalgol
The difference is that uneven enforcement is the tool of autocrats. Ignoring the law breeds contempt for it. Madison said requiring a supermajority for normal legislation would poison democracy, and I think the modern usage filibuster has proven him correct. I hope the GOP ditches the whole thing, not just for continuing resolutions. The senate will no longer have any excuses for abdicating its responsibilities. Thrashing laws are a small price to pay. I do wish judicial appointments still required a supermajority.
jjk166
Because the whole point of laws is that they are not merely the whims of whoever currently sits on the throne. They provide guidance to people as to what they can reasonably expect will and will not be permitted, and the obligations of various people to eachother. Laws need to be changeable, because the world changes, but that process is purposefully made somewhat difficult so that only worthwhile changes are made, so that the changes can be explicitly communicated, and those who make the changes can be both advised before and held accountable after.
If congress wants to see the laws changed, it has that power. Indeed, that's its entire reason for existing. The fact that it is not doing so, and instead ignoring laws on the books while leaving them there, is at best dereliction of duty, if not tacit acceptance that they don't actually have the votes to make those changes.
softwaredoug
I agree, I'm not sure it is surprising.
(there would be tremendous oversight if the GOP was in power in Congress, and the President was a Dem)
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JustExAWS
In the Senate at least outside of a few carve outs, you really need 60 Senators to get anything passed not just a majority. The only reason the ACA ever passed was during the brief window they had 60 Senators
rayiner
Your comment reflects a common, but fundamentally mistaken, understanding of the constitution. You're thinking of the government like an operating system with a microkernel that is trusted to neutrally enforce the "law," with the three branches of government running in userspace.
That's not the system the founders created! They understood that everyone is political, and no one can be trusted. The founders understood the "who watches the watchers" problem and created a system without any such single point of failure. The ultimate backstop in our political system is not the law, but instead frequent elections. Congress writes the law, the President enforces the law, and the Judiciary interprets the law. If the President does a bad job of enforcing the law, the recourse is elections (or, as a last resort, impeachment).
drob518
Just a quibble, but we should only be impeaching Presidents for illegal acts, not mere opinions about job performance, which members of the opposite party will almost always disagree with. The remedy for doing a bad job is the ballot box.
klaff
Well that horse left the barn a long time ago - the list of blatantly illegal things is now so long that new ones (like murdering people in boats by remote control) just fly on by.
altcognito
It is interesting that our elections aren't really frequent enough. Other systems cleverly made it possible to immediately recall electors that have gone rogue or the citizens have no faith in.
deathanatos
You should look at what gerrymandering has done / is doing. For example, the entire city of Nashville, TN, has been utterly and obviously gerrymandered out of existence, and the city has no representation in the House. (They used to be TN's 5th.)
This of course does not apply to Presidential elections. The President has multiple times indicated disdain for elections, his party has used "third term and beyond", his supporters have openly floated the idea of repealing the 22A, he's called himself "king" and "dictator".
The VRA is quite literally before SCOTUS right now.
> or, as a last resort, impeachment
"a servile congress" — they understand impeachment. If an attempted coup doesn't get impeachment, nothing will. Regardless, the GOP is going along with the president, so impeachment isn't something that's going to happen.
butlike
SCOTUS lifelong appointments checking in to say "hi"
positus
SCOTUS has life-long appointments because it is designed to move and operate slowly and be the least political of the branches. Parties that try to legislate from the bench when they cannot successfully get something through Congress are the issue.
kranke155
They’ve created enough of a digital system to manage public opinion (through brain rot, manipulation, bots, psychometrics) that they’re less and less afraid of elections.
rayiner
Who is “they?”
Hikikomori
Pretty large chance that the next election will be meaningless though.
skizm
> it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch
There are plenty of laws being ignored. Tariffs being the most obvious.
selectodude
Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then!
cheema33
> Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then!
I hope you know that Congress has abdicated all of their responsibilities to the president. I don't know if the founders ever saw this coming.
jayd16
Third time's the charm, I guess?
runarberg
Parent’s statement still holds. The laws may exist but if they are not enforced, they don‘t really constraint anyone do they?
Joeri
When a different side takes control of the justice department they may choose to go after all those who broke the law by order of this president. The president might be protected from consequences according to the supreme court, but those answering to the president are not.
This administration has set the standard that the justice department can be weaponized against political enemies. The ratchet only goes one way in American politics, presidents never relinquish the powers claimed by their predecessors.
ryandrake
The obvious solution to this is to change everything structurally needed to ensure the other side never again takes control, which is clearly also in progress.
itsoktocry
>The obvious solution to this is to change everything structurally needed to ensure the other side never again takes control, which is clearly also in progress.
- Signed, the side that tried to throw a candidate in prison.
throw0101c
> The president might be protected from consequences according to the supreme court, but those answering to the president are not.
Unless they are granted a blanket pardon beforehand.
Then all you can really do is an "audit" for who did what, from which no charges can be laid.
jayd16
Just lock them up anyway and pardon yourself for ignoring the pardon if that's how the game is played.
The idea of a blanket pardon is absurd on its face and we're only allowing it because we're allowing political prosecution.
zippyman55
That does not allow escaping from international laws.
meowface
He will very likely just pardon everyone on his last day.
ajross
> When a different side takes control of the justice department
That's an argument about the degradation of the rule of law, taking as a prior that the rule of law won't degrade. It's... unpersuasive. The end goal of this kind of thinking is that the other side never does take control, ever.
The current administration pretty clearly does not intend to give up power. They tried to evade democracy once already, and have fixed the mistakes this time.
Whether they will be successful or not is unknowable. But that's the plan. And the determining factor is very unlikely to be the normal operation of American civil society. Winning elections is, probably, not enough anymore.
kranke155
There are some signs that the current Administration has no intention of allowing “a diferente side” to retake power.
Trump third term being one.
dirtyoldmick
[flagged]
elaus
As someone not from the US and looking from the outside: it seems there is a _significant_ difference between the two administrations in this regard?
jayd16
I think the Clintons might take issue with who was weaponizing the justice department when. From Starr to Bengazi...
Like, do you truly believe Biden started this? What was the first act?
throw0101c
> Like Biden didn't weaponize the justice department first?!
Out of genuine curiosity: what specific actions do you think were 'weaponized' investigations / prosecutions under Biden?
luddit3
He prosecuted his own son.
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margalabargala
Let's say for a moment he did.
Shouldn't that be fixed rather than now abused further?
If your justification for Trump doing something is that "Biden did it first", then that means Biden is no worse than Trump. It means Trump just just following along the path Biden laid for him to the same goal.
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ahmeneeroe-v2
The left doesn't acknowledge any of that.
abirch
It defeats the purpose of a veto if the executive branch can ignore the law.
duxup
“It’s ok when my guy does it.”
-SCOTUS majority so far…
nerdponx
At least I get to feel vindicated. Many many people, including me, have long asserted that the so-called "conservatives" in the Supreme Court are anything but. Historically their decisions have appealed to a certain kind of conservative political base, but the pretense is really starting to wear thin. Limiting the power of the executive branch in general was never the goal, it was only to limit the power of presidents who were willing to challenge the capitalist oligarchy master plan. They know that their job now, along with their allies and Congress, is to simply step aside and manage public outrage while the next phase of the plan is set in motion. I'm not just talking about in recent years either, go back through the Obama and W Bush administrations. You might notice that the conservatives in the court curiously turned more conservative when "their guy" isn't in office.
b33j0r
I am so mad that I spent that much time watching an anthropomorphized bill moving through congress. Useless knowledge.
“And we’ll make ted kennedy payyyy
“If he fights back, we’ll just say that he’s gayyyy
munificent
> there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch.
Laws don't do things, people do.
It doesn't matter what's written down on paper if the people in power ignore it and the masses don't have enough organized collective power to prevent them from doing so.
blibble
the Mitchell and Webb "are we the baddies" sketch certainly comes to mind here
1234letshaveatw
The beheadings aren't the problem, it's the people that shut down the web page that was used to make racist reports!
liampulles
While there may well not have been ethical intentions behind this removal (who knows), I think reporting to the press directly is probably better than reporting it to a government, so as to avoid giving the government a chance to cover things up.
wahnfrieden
That’s next:
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/9/22/headlines/trump_says_...
> Trump Says It Is “Really Illegal” for Journalists to Give His Administration Negative Coverage
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/really-i...
> The president concluded that when coverage of someone is “bad” 97% of the time, “that’s no longer free speech.”
> “They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad,” he told reporters, referring to media outlets. “See, I think that’s really illegal.”
hulitu
> > Trump Says It Is “Really Illegal” for Journalists to Give His Administration Negative Coverage
This is not far away from "defamation" in western world. I'm not siding with Trump here, but every western politician seem to think that he/she/it can do whatever he/she/it wants and every criticism must be regarded as defamation.
MangoToupe
Well, he's not talking about politicians, he's talking about reporting of his own behavior and actions.
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westmeal
This fuckin guy is honestly unbelievable.
jimnotgym
They should have just claimed it was hosted on AWS
wnevets
Is this the greatness I was promised?
1234letshaveatw
I wanted someone in favor of beheadings, not the ones that shutdown the antisemitic enabler!
jagged-chisel
Certainly! No more complaints! See how great we are!
ARandomerDude
> US-armed foreign forces
means Israel.
alluro2
Trump is, inevitably, in the comments a lot.
And I'm just surprised when people still react to what he does as "unbelievable", "illegal" etc... I get it, but it's weird how persistently people still try to frame Trump's actions into moral, legal, historical, cultural, responsibility or any other framework.
He is someone who was born into wealth in the worst way possible, and was never - ever - subject to any moral restrictions, material consequences, or requirements that depend on any positive qualities, effort or success.
In those conditions, his bullish way of behaving always got him what he wanted in the moment, without any downsides or counter-weight that would regulate it. Time after time, he was given proof - by us, the society - that there are no consequences, or they are just so unimpactful, and that he can continue doing what he does. There is no framework that he needed to adhere to.
He was then placed into practically the same position within the government - being able to do whatever he wants and benefits him (directly, or through benefitting his posse), and there will be no material consequences of any kind. If he comes up to any inconvenient restrictions put in place before, they can just be removed first.
And that's it, that's what he's been doing all along. He doesn't have any higher interests, any ulterior motivation, or ambitions - in every situation, he just uses it to get something for himself in that moment - even if openly solely to be able to brag that he did it - and he makes himself look big by lying or belittling others, and that's it. Just a very simple unrestricted narcissist, on grander scale.
Their behavior is quite simple to understand and predict. It's just that they can rarely be SO up there, so unrestricted, that people still seem to struggle to not try to tie him to norms and frameworks.
9dev
I concur, Trumps motivation is easy. That of his voters, not so much. They knew what they would get; it was on plain display for them to see.
Every single last one of them is guilty of everything that happened and will happen.
vkou
The motivation of the voters becomes a lot more understandable when you stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
This congress and POTUS is, in fact, a good representation of their values, and they aren't ashamed of it.
(You could have given them that benefit in 2016, and somewhat in 2020, but definitely not in 2024.)
ea550ff70a
are we the baddies?
kome
The whole WikiLeaks affair about "Collateral Murder" was also about hiding U.S. war crimes. US army goes a long way to hide that stuff...
It was followed by a decade of ridiculous but very effective character assassination of Assange, who is hated based on how dislikable he appears.
I recommend youngsters and "zoomers" read about it, because the recent past is often the most forgotten: https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/
procflora
Indeed, the recent trend of the US government itself posting videos of the drone murders of Venezuelans stands in real stark contrast to how that was handled just 15 years ago.
hulitu
15 years ago it was Al-Qaeda.
threetonesun
For better or worse they at least went out of their way to make a coherent narrative for attacks on Al-Qaeda.
The Leahy Law requires the U.S. government to facilitate receipt of information about alleged abuses by U.S. supported forces.
The State Department confirms it no longer operates the HRG, but says it is still receiving reports through other direct channels.
I couldn't find any requirement in the law that requires a public website.
NGOs can still submit information through established contacts or by email.
I would think email is a lot easier than a webform.