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Justice Dept. Asked For Broad Swath of IndyMedia's Visitor Records
DesScorp writes "In a case that tests whether online and independent journalism has the same protections as mainstream journalism, the Justice Department sent Indymedia a grand jury subpoena. It requires a list of all visitors on a day, and further, a gag order to Indymedia 'not to disclose the existence of this request.' CBS reports that 'Kristina Clair, a 34-year-old Linux administrator living in Philadelphia who provides free server space for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked to receive the Justice Department's subpoena,' and that 'The subpoena from US Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded "all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to "include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information," including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers' Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.' Clair is being defended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation."
The biggest worry to me is the line "...not to disclose the request". They can issue a bogus request and get shot down via proper channels. But asking everyone to keep it a secret smells fishy.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
Whaaaaat, Your Honor??? Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome my 24-hour-data-retention-policy is!
Fuck that subpeona.
In the ear.
With a Siberian ice dildo.
Can't stop the Beta? Time to evacuate to ##altslashdot at webchat.freenode.net - Slashcott in effect.
I want to know why admins keep this information if they are running a website that could be the subject of a subpoena? Delete the fucking shit already and be done with it. Then, when the feds come knocking, you simply reply, "I'm sorry my http.conf is setup to direct logs to /dev/null. Have a nice day."
FRCP Rule 37 states:
Absent exceptional circumstances, a court may not impose sanctions under these rules on a party for failing to provide electronically stored information lost as a result of the routine, good-faith operation of an electronic information system.
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
Why would anyone be shocked by something like this? It's not like it hasn't happened before. One thing about LIberals and Conservatives, they both like control. Their idealogies may not be the same but their methods aren't that different.
I remember a Supreme Court case several years ago that dealt with the question of who is considered to be The Press. I think it involved acquiring Press credentials. The Court decided that a member of the Press is anyone who is acting in that capacity, whether full time or part time. It didn't matter if the person was employed by a large corporation, or was part of a middle school glee club.
Judiciary Justice Department
Judiciary includes:
* The Supreme Court
* Lower Courts
* Special Courts
Executive includes:
* The President
* The VP
* The Department of Justice
* Loads of other departments
http://www.usa.gov/Agencies.shtml
Oops, that first line should have said Judiciary not equal to Justice Department
Ok. The news article is new, but the content is anything but.
The subpoena was withdrawn in a one sentence letter in late Feburary 2009 after the EFF sent a letter to the DOJ pointing out the problems with the subpeona.
We're only hearing about all of it now. It is troubling that the DOJ will not come out and say what the original motivation for even sending the subpoena in the first and is being mum about it all.
On top of that, the dates are all mixed up. The subpoena was sent in June 2008, according to the CBS article. However, the EFF says it wasn't received until January 30th 2009. This is important to note as Obama took office the 20th. The EFF's letter was sent Feb. 13th, with a return letter from the DOJ on the 25th.
My guess, it was probably a rookie lawyer who sent a badly worded request to SysAdmin during the confusion of a new president taking office.
import system.cool.Sig;
Because Obama personally ordered this? If you knew anything about the US system of governance, you'd know that the Judiciary is separate from the Executive.
And if you knew anything about the US system of governance, you would know that the Justice Department is not part of the Judiciary, it is part of the executive. Not that this necessarily has anything to do with Obama or the White House, although all such requests of media organizations are supposed to be approved by the Attorney General, which would be the White House. It is likely just a prosecutor asking for something hoping that indymedia will just comply. Once they questioned the subpoena, the Justice Department backed down from their threats and withdrew the subpoena. Good for them and good for the EFF. This is basically identical to the AT&T case, except tiny indymedia didn't back down and just provide the information requested. And the government folded immediately because legally they didn't have a leg to stand on.
The big threat discussed in the article is the "you may not disclose this request". Holy Crap!! Absent a court order, what the heck makes them believe they can issue a secret subpoena that is probably illegitimate and order you not to discuss it!? I hope that part is fully investigated and if that is really an official policy of the US attorney's office that it is changed immediately. Talk about ripe for abuse!
Yes, they're separate. That's why it's sheer coincidence that criminal charges against Obama supporters (Bill Richardson, the Philadelphia voter-intimidating thugs) were dropped in spite of objections by career DOJ lawyers.
Ha, ha, you are a funny man.
Given that, at present, all but one of the states has at least one "fusion center"(and that last one may have gotten one in the meantime) where state and local police forces voluntarily get together with their Fed, military, and private sector buddies for general surveillance state fun, I'd say that the odds of secession over excessive state surveillance are ~0. With the exception of libertarians that the republicans don't listen to, and civil libertarians that the democrats don't listen to, there is broad support, in government and among the public, for pretty much anything that promises "security".There are occasional disagreements over who is sub-human enough to be the public face of the terrifying enemy; but that is largely cosmetic.
With few (and politically irrelevant) exceptions, there are basically no actual "states' rights" enthusiasts. There are plenty of people who reliably take up the "states' rights" banner when they aren't getting what they want at the federal level and then drop it as soon as they are; but that isn't exactly the same thing
Apparently you are the one that knows nothing about the US system of governance:
United States Department of Justice: "The United States Department of Justice ... is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice... The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate and is a member of the Cabinet." Emphasis mine.
The federal judiciary branch is the supreme court; the DOJ is an extension of the executive branch into judicial affairs. However, law enforcement has traditionally fallen to the executive branch, so the DOJ's existence is arguably appropriate.
This is not to say that Obama ordered this, but as he is the CEO, if you will, and appointed the guy that directly oversees it, he definitely bears some responsibility. As this particular case is not terribly high profile, he probably wasn't briefed or asked about it. Regardless, it is certainly within his power to tell them to stop.
More importantly, if you followed the links, you'd see that the original subpoena was sent before Obama took office (and note it takes some time to put a grand jury together in any case; it's not like Obama can take office Jan 20 and start sending out Grand Jury subpoenas Jan. 21)-- this is a Bush era subpoena.
It's a long shot, but this might be the Obama administration's way of killing these kinds of subpoenas.
If BHO, the Attorney-General and the Secretary of Homeland Security decided to stop issuing these subpoenas, that would last at least 4 years and maybe eight, but that would be it. If Congress passed a law that forbade him from issuing these subpoenas pro se, he might abide by it, but the next guy might not, would be able to tie it up in the courts, and the courts might eventually let the thing pass.
However, if he sends out a subpoena to someone who isn't really doing anything wrong, who is likely to fight the case tooth and nail, and if the admin makes the demands of the subpoena so egregious that no court in their right mind would find it acceptible, he might be able to extract a ruling from the supreme court that says these subpoenas are illegal, or at least get good language for a test on their reasonableness. It's very sneaky but for a lawyerly mind it has a certain elegance. The upshot is that no president can ever again send out these kinds of subpoena, by order of the supreme court, and all the while the administration looks like a zealous investigator.
It's a long shot and a conspiracy theory, though.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Did Fox Noise cover this incident? Check their search engine. The answer is no (although they did cover a similar issue with Indymedia in 2004). Why not? Maybe, just maybe, no one except /. readers and 1st Amendment lawyer types thought it was a very interesting story. You'll notice that the link in the story is to a blog that covers 1st Amendment issues on a CBS News site, an outfit that is not exactly a darling of the right. Also, RTFA! EFF tried to discuss the issue of the gag order in a letter filed at the end of May. Given it has been 5 months with no response from DOJ, maybe Indymedia and EFF are only just now considering it safe and legal to release the story.
Not everything is a left-wing media conspiracy except to reality-challenged bozos like yourself who can't be bothered to think beyond whatever sound bite you were handed this morning.
FreeSpeech.org
No, the irony is that you guys don't have a left wing, or even a middle of the road party, its all far to the right.
One question that I haven't seen asked yet is why June 25, 2008? A scan of indymedia's articles didn't turn up anything earth shattering on that day or the day before. Thoughts?
Not really, no, if he wants to keep the next guy from doing it, too. Besides, if it got out that he was forbidding warrants like this, Republicans would scream bloody murder and claim that he was putting the nation at risk to protect the rights of dirty hippies.
If you wanted to ban these warrants for evermore, and you are the president, this is the only way in the US system you can do it; the only other modality is by getting Congress to pass a law, but it's questionable he'd have the votes for it, and he'd put himself at significant political risk.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
there are of course a million dimensions of ideology. there's gun toting right wingers... who grow pot on their rural farms. there's gay people... who are mostly right wing in thinking (the log cabin republicans). there's very religious people... who are utterly socialist in their thinking about taking care of the community, by the community. etc., etc., etc, ad nauseum. for every issue, there is a dimension of opinions. and there's a million issues. and you could mix up make up the most seemingly contradictory impossible ideology of various opinions on various issues, and you'll probably find at least someone out there who believes that with a serious straight face
but there's not a million dimensions THAT MATTER. there's only one that matters
there is one dimension which hangs over all ideological dimensions, and is, in effect, the master dimension. we don't talk about left and right wing because we are simpletons and reductionists, we talk about left and right wing because this is an entirely real and completely dominant ideological pivot, a genuinely valuable metric to use when debating politics:
rate of change
those on the far left want change too rapidly. faster than society can adapt to and absorb. resulting in societal overheating, friction, and eventual societal break down and anarchy. those on the far right don't want change at all, or even backwards movement. which results in stasis, stultification, and impoverishment due to feeble backwardness and ignorance
so what is the most valid rate of change? society determines that, at least in a democracy, with competing parties constantly seeking out the most support from the most people by seeking the most moderate rate of change in the center possible, while straddling and waffling to keep their radical fringes reasonably happy as well. democracy is self-correcting and self-seeking on the sweet spot of rate of change for its population. you see that in the current healthcare debate
democracy works, it really does. it doesn't work from the perspective of "this is my ideology and i want everyone to agree with me", which is the usual retarded criticism of democracy from fringe idiots
but democracy DOES work from the point of view of: "this is the bell curve of ideologies out there. find me the sweet spot and make that the value system of the government in charge"
and when a government most accurately reflects the will of the people, you have met really the only metric possible for determining validity of a government. stability, legitimacy: it enables peace, tranquility, education, progress, economic growth, and everything else you value in good governance and a happy stable rich and productive society
but of course, loud, ignorant ideologues from the fringe will never see the value in such weird concepts. social stability? pffft. to them, the government is evil, corrupt, fascist, communist, corporatocracy, idiocracy, etc... zzz
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And, just out of curiosity, what exactly *are* the right's basic right issues the left is not supporting.
Freedom of Speech? Supported by the ACLU.
Separation of Church and State? ACLU
Not being searched without probable cause? ACLU
Not being arrested without evidence? ACLU
Not allow evidence taken under false pretenses? ACLU
Not allow arrest to be maintained without trial? ACLU
Not being beaten until you confess after arrested? ACLU
The great basic right supported by the right?
The right to make a grand, impressive and ultimately doomed armed stand against an encroaching military dictatorship having done absolutely nothing to stop arrests, torture, planting evidence, unfair trials, and religious theocracy . . . after the sudden realization the dictatorial powers they supported for years it might actually apply to them and its too late to stop it.
Yeah. I'm suitably impressed.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media