Tag Archives: Invasion of Privacy

Department of Justice Demands 1.3M IP Addresses Related to Trump Resistance Site


 

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.