JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/LEGAL/PROTESTS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “A Los Angeles-based tech company is resisting a federal demand for more than 1.3 million IP addresses to identify visitors to a website set up to coordinate protests on Inauguration Day — a request whose breadth the company says violates the Constitution…
The request also covers emails between the site’s organizers and people interested in attending the protests, any deleted messages and files, as well as subscriber information — such as names and addresses — and unpublished photos and blog posts that are stored in the site’s database, according to the warrant and Ghazarian.
The request, which DreamHost made public Monday [8-14-17], set off a storm of protest among civil liberties advocates and within the tech community.
‘What you’re seeing is pure prosecutorial overreach by a politicized Justice Department, allowing the Trump administration to use prosecutors to silence critics,’ Ghazarian said.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the District of Columbia, which sought the warrant, declined to comment. But prosecutors, in court documents, argued that the request was constitutional and there was no reason for DreamHost not to comply.”
-Ellen Nakashima, “Tech firm is fighting a federal demand for data on visitors to an anti-Trump website,” The Washington Post online, Aug. 14, 2017 11:24pm