The Department of Justice has demanded information on visitors to a website used to organize protests against President Trump, the Los Angeles-based DreamHost said in a blog post published on Monday.
At the center of the requests is disruptj20.org, a website that organized participants of political protests against the current Donald Trump and his current administration.
DreamHost, a web hosting provider, said that it has been working with the Department of Justice for several months on the request, which believes goes too far under the Constitution.
DreamHost claimed that the complying with the request from the Justice Department would amount to handing over roughly 1.3 million visitor IP addresses to the government, in addition to contact information, email content and photos of thousands of visitors to the website, which was involved in organizing protests against Trump on Inauguration Day.
“That information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution’s First Amendment,” DreamHost wrote in the blog post on Monday. “That should be enough to set alarm bells off in anyone’s mind.”
Instead of responding to DreamHost’s inquiries regarding the overbreadth of the warrant, the DOJ filed a motion (PDF) in the Washington, D.C. Superior Court, asking for an order to compel DreamHost to produce the records.
DreamHost has filed a legal arguments in opposition (PDF) of the DOJ’s request for access to this trove of personally identifiable information.
“We intend to take whatever steps are necessary to support and shield these users from what is, in our view, a very unfocused search and an unlawful request for their personal information,” DreamHost posted on its website.
I am not a lawyer but my read of the DOJ requests in the warrant and subsequent filings. That 1> The DOJ is fishing and not sure of the information Dream Host will actually have. 2> It seems that they are trying to do an end run around the 1st Amendment. I think the DOJ knows they would be hard pressed to get the info directly from Disrupt 20.org. Instead they are using the back door.
It seems the DOJ wants to prove some sort of conspiracy in this protest that turned violent. The city law that the protesters were arrested under,,The very wording is reminiscent of the original RICO statute. To date of the 230 arrested 9 cases have been dropped, 60 did receive indictments,which do not indicate guilt. There are over 100 charged and arrested who’s cases are in limbo. I believe the government needs to prove that Disrupt20 incited these people to violence in order to proceed.If this demonstration and the ensuing violence happened anywhere but DC. The DOJ would not be involved.