Jackboots In The Justice Department
Its clear we all need to know more about the Justice Department, particularly when they consider that this is a completely appropriate action.
The subpoena from U.S. 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.
Get that? ALL information from EVERYONE that visited the site on June 25 of last year.
It gets worse though.
The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site "not to disclose the existence of this request" unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.
Indymedia, a left-wing website, relied on lawyers from Electronic Frontier Foundation to respond to the DOJ, listing a number of problems with the subpoena.
...it was not personally served, that a judge-issued court order would be required for the full logs, and that Indymedia did not store logs in the first place.
Moreover, the Justice Departments own rules require approval from the U.S. Attorney General where the media is concerned. Apparently neither Eric Holder or acting AG Mark Filip were aware of the subpoena, which was subsequently withdrawn.
Sounds like a comedy of errors, but the implications are chilling--the Obama administration apparently has a DOJ staffed with lawyers who have no regard at all for first amendment rights. I'm not sure which is scarier--that they didn't know the law and DOJ policy, or that they thought they could strong arm a small aggregator website into divulging private information about every visitor to a site. Its a bright-line issue and this can only be construed as an abuse of power.
Those involved should be fired.
Just in case any DOJ staff are reading this blog--we don't log IP addresses either.



