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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."
Sorry, but I know of NO 'public' websites that publish their log files, that is just ill-informed dumbassery, which must be very common in russian troll farms
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.
Yessir. Lest we forget, the protections afforded citizens by the Bill of Rights are tested most severely when they protect the rights of the people you disagree with.
I see the President for what I believe he is, a charlatan with a magician's gift for distraction, but I would never condone the outing of his supporters' personal information in a warrant-less search.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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.
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.