Slashdot Mirror
US Government Has 'No Right To Rummage' Through Anti-Trump Protest Website Logs, Says Judge (theregister.co.uk)
A Washington D.C. judge has told the U.S. Department of Justice it "does not have the right to rummage" through the files of an anti-Trump protest website -- and has ordered the dot-org site's hosting company to protect the identities of its users. The Register reports: Chief Judge Robert E. Morin issued the revised order [PDF] Tuesday following a high-profile back and forth between the site's hosting biz DreamHost and prosecutors over what details Uncle Sam was entitled to with respect to the disruptj20.org website. "As previously observed, courts around the country have acknowledged that, in searches for electronically stored information, evidence of criminal activity will likely be intermingled with communications and other records not within the scope of the search warrant," he noted in his ruling. "Because of the potential breadth of the government's review in this case, the warrant in its execution may implicate otherwise innocuous and constitutionally protected activity. As the Court has previously stated, while the government has the right to execute its Warrant, it does not have the right to rummage through the information contained on DreamHost's website and discover the identity of, or access communications by, individuals not participating in alleged criminal activity, particularly those persons who were engaging in protected First Amendment activities." The order then lists a series of protocols designed to protect netizens "to comply with First Amendment and Fourth Amendment considerations, and to prevent the government from obtaining any identifying information of innocent persons."
Assuming the website is publically acecssible, of course it does.
Wrong assumption. They are "requesting" (demanding) that Dreamhost provide them with logs containing IP addresses of 1.3M people that merely visited the site (without participating in any discussion). That info is not publicly available. If it was, they wouldn't need a warrant.
Here is the relevant law:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Since there is no probable cause for 1.3 million people, the judge was right to deny the warrant.
Bullshit and you know it. There were lots and lots of anti-obama websites, some coming close to calling for armed insurection. I mean besides fox news et. al. The Obama DOJ didn't go after them at all. Something to do with The Constitution.
Russia is not covered by the 1st Amendment.
If you want to use it, you need to be a citizen of the United States or a person within its borders.
Not a guy in Russia buying ads on Facebook. They'd need to do it from within US borders. Then they would be bound by the laws related to political campaign advertising.
The headline is quite misleading, the real details are in the order that, thankfully, the summary links to.
Basically, the judge granted a protective order that lets the feds search for evidence of criminality (e.g. more info on those plans to dump butyric acid into the ventilation shafts or to chain trains), without the ability to go fishing around for evidence of other crimes they may have committed.
In short, it's a reasonable protective order that lets the feds do their job while addressing the privacy concerns. From the headline, you'd assume they lost, but if you look at the details, the feds will be able to search the site for evidence with the judge acting as an intermediary to ensure that all the searches are justified.
>Since there is no probable cause for 1.3 million people, the judge was right to deny the warrant.
He didn't deny the warrant you utter nincompoop.
To ensure that the identities of innocent persons are not revealed, the government must adhere to the following safeguards: (1) file a report with the Court explaining the government's intended search protocol and review procedures designed to minimize access to data and information not covered by the Warrant; (2) if the Court approves the report, the government may only conduct its search on a redacted data set that omits non-subscriber identifying
information; (3) upon completion of review, the government must file an itemized list of the materials it seeks to retain with the Court, and explain how such materials are relevant to its investigation and its basis for removing any redactions; and (4) only upon a finding by the Court that the requested information is evidence of criminal activity, as described in the Warrant for which this Court has found probable cause, may the government obtain any un-redacted information, such as the identity of the user.
The judge just set a number of conditions and protocols that the government has to abide by in order to minimize exposing the information not sought in the warrant.
This is the Superior Court of DC, so I think this is actually the relevant law on search warrants:
https://beta.code.dccouncil.us/dc/council/code/sections/48-921.02.html
The Constitution doesn't exactly provide a lot of details, so one normally looks at the actual laws on the subject. To re-derive the constitutional contours of search warrants from constitutional principles every time would be sort of like trying to do this every time you want to add 2+2. In short, no, it doesn't work that way.
It's normal for demands to be overly broad. They ask for whatever they might plausibly get, because sometimes the judge agrees with them and they won't get anything they don't request. This is how an adversarial justice system works. There are other models, for example, inquisitional systems, in use in other countries.
Note that I am not arguing with you about this being non-public information. You were right to correct the other poster about that. And you were right that it is, in fact, completely obvious from the fact that they issued a search warrant. The judge realized there were real concerns here, so they narrowed the scope of what was asked and are allowing the police to search it first, then unmask people later if they have probable cause to believe they were participants in a crime.
In short, it's a detailed and perfectly sensible decision that appears to be quite fair to both sides.