DOJ Demands Files on Anti-Trump Activists, and DreamHost Resists | Hacker News Reader

DOJ Demands Files on Anti-Trump Activists, and DreamHost Resists

npr.org

193 pointsstefmonge138 comments

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Previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15011636

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15018429

DreamHost is probably going to lose. The warrant is actually quite standard.

Basically the DOJ is just grabbing everything so they can filter through the comments and logs at their convenience.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

In the physical world, the government can search only one apartment in an apartment building with a single warrant; it can’t search the entire apartment building. Are the collective records of a website more like an apartment building or a single apartment?

If this is the reasoning they're going then yes, Dreamhost is out of luck. One account is pretty obviously an apartment on a server (building) with the website being an even smaller part than that.

It's also extremely pertinent that the warrant is being executed against an organization exercising political speech. That's very different from, say, the DoJ requesting visitor logs to a film torrent site.

   > It's also extremely pertinent that the warrant is being 
   > executed against an organization exercising political 
   > speech.

Why? If you hurt me (many innocent people were hurt), but you do it because you feel "political", it's OK?

Isn't the law supposed to be blind, or do political groups have a "get out of jail free" card?

The express purpose of Free Speech provisions is to prevent the government from persecuting citizens engaged in political speech that the government happens to dislike.

But how does one draw the line between political speech and inciting violence? What if it was an ISIS propaganda speech instead?

Many countries have different rules (and even sentences limits or additional rights for political prisoners) for politically motivated acts. It's because these are vital to democracy.

But I agree with you and hold a more cynical view that it's because laws are made by politicians.

> Isn't the law supposed to be blind, or do political groups have a "get out of jail free" card?

Yes, core political speech is Constitutionally protected [1]. You can charge people being violent while protecting their rights to say stupid things.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

Free speech protection in American law is with its limits. Speech itself isn't protected if it is directed to incite or produce imminent lawless action. See Brandenburg v. Ohio.

> Speech itself isn't protected if it is directed to incite or produce imminent lawless action. See Brandenburg v. Ohio

Correct, but for that argument to hold within the context of this case (EDIT: warrant) we would need the government to show that most people who visited this site did so with the intent to incite imminent lawless action. (Note, too, that Brandenburg v. Ohio specifically struck down a law banning the mere advocacy of violence.)

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

   > Correct, but for that argument to hold within the 
   > context of this case we would need the government to 
   > show that most people who visited this site did so with 
   > the intent to incite imminent lawless action.

Of course that's not true. For the government to prosecute all of those visitors requires additional proof, to be sure. However, for the government to gather evidence on a subset of those visitors who have already been arrested and are being charged with politically inspired violence, is perfectly appropriate.

> for the government to gather evidence on a subset of those visitors who have already been arrested and are being charged with politically inspired violence, is perfectly appropriate

If this warrant were replaced with demands for visitation logs from specific IP addresses or relating to certain people, it would be far less controversial.

Imminent lawless action would be an impossible standard, and if that's your standard, then accepting harsh KKK political speech should be within your realm. Maybe they step out of line sometimes, but they know how to play the Westboro Baptist game. There's so much hate speech that can't be obviously said to incite violence.

Also, at the heart of banning bad speech is the fear that your fellow countrymen are too weak and stupid to deal with political, racial, sexual, or just scientific thought in general, and you fear the democratic reigns in their hands.

Context can be important, too.

Perhaps the website is the "apartment building" and the accounts on the website are the apartments. In that case, not so obvious.

Given the political-speech context, apartments in an apartment building are less apt than offices in a political party's building. If someone commits fraud or corrupt acts from e.g. the DNC's office, the DoJ doesn't get to collect everything at that building.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

I wonder if eff will support them.

Probably semi annual reminder time to consider donating to eff

In the last four years or so, we've (rightfully) had about 300 semi-annual reminders to consider donating to eff.

Yes they are helping.

Is the government really asking for all those visitor logs?

"Yes, they definitely are," says Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Mark Rumold. EFF advocates for Internet privacy and free speech, and has advised DreamHost in its case.

Rumold tells NPR that when DreamHost first approached EFF about responding to the warrant, he guessed "that DOJ would realize how broad the warrant was, and say, oh you know, in fact we're not actually looking for IP logs for everyone who's ever visited the site" and would narrow its request accordingly.

But instead, the government insisted on DreamHost's compliance with the warrant as written.

So if any charges are brought against anyone as a result they could most likely get any evidence from it thrown out because the initial warrant was too broad and violated their right preventing unlawful search?

The real test for the legality of these warrants is typically in the courts for the defendant's trial, which is unfortunate. It's not often thoroughly challenged by the initial judge from what I've heard.

Which is interesting when you think of the implications of NSA FISA warrants not having any public scrutiny at all, just a judge's opinion in total secret.

I know in Canada it's not even full judges who sign off on police warrants but people called "Justice of the Peace" who are less trained than a judge and spend all day working with police signing off warrants.

Various defense attorneys I've spoken to have said they sign almost everything the police give them and tend to give the police the benefit of the doubt. Which is why the first thing every defense attorney does is look to challenge any warrants because they are usually the lowest hanging fruit in terms of how well thought out the police investigation was.

> So if any charges are brought against anyone as a result they could most likely get any evidence from it thrown out because the initial warrant was too broad and violated their right preventing unlawful search?

No, IIRC, because you can only get evidence excluded if our were the target of the unlawful search; an unlawful search of Art's papers that turns up evidence used against Beth doesn't qualify for the exclusionary rule.

Somehow I doubt all our stalwart free-speech proponents from the other week will come out in force for this issue.

It's for the best. Now if they just learn to stay away from right-wing causes too, maybe they'll actually make the world a better place.

The EFF is supporting Dreamhost. Was that what you had in mind?

Good for them.

'Them' meaning Dreamhost? Sorry to be pedantic but there are multiple subjects in the article/title and no other context.

The headline was edited from a "Dreamhost resists demands..." sort of construction.

Ah, gotcha, thanks.

The subject line of this submission was edited in the meantime.

They're seeking the identities of the rioters on January 20th. Over 200 people were arrested but many more have yet to face the consequences for what they did.

So let's give up 1.3 million records of user info. Makes sense. /s

No, they are seeking available personal information on 1.3 million visits to the site.

So there's a million or so people that visited that website and they want to unmask all those people to attempt to find 200 alleged rioters?

That sure sounds like an overreaching fishing expedition.

They already found 200+ alleged rioters. They're looking for the identities of the other 65,844,400.

Wow, ambitious!

No, they are grabbing all of the comments and all of the logs so that they don't have to go back and get a new warrant every time they find something of interest. Broad warrants for electronic records are quite common.

Why is a political organization retaining any info that isn't the minimum to do their job?

It's not like both sides haven't been trying to get their enemies membership lists for the past 100+yr.

Party registration is a matter of public record in almost every state in the US. Though that is admittedly different than a smaller group of people who participated in a particular riot.

Regarding logs:

"...the site's administrators didn't keep this data for DisruptJ20.org, but DreamHost did...

DreamHost keeps server logs in order to manage the sites of its 400,000-plus customers and identify issues like Distributed Denial of Service attacks.

"We only retain those logs for a very brief time," Dunst wrote. "The DOJ served us with a preservation notice immediately after the inauguration, which is why we still have access to that data in this case."

Why would a political organization feel the need to protect their information from the DOJ?

This isn't a matter of "sides", it is a matter of extreme overreach by the executive branch.

It's not overreach if the political organization is behaving like a criminal organization. Much of the rioting and property damage at the inauguration was clearly planned, so the DOJ is just doing its job here.

An across-the-aisle analog would be a Democrat President demanding detailed visitation logs to Breitbart in response to the Charlottesville riots. You can prosecute violent crime without lazily trampling over the First and Fourth Amendments.

Except that there's no indication Breitbart had any involvement in Charlottesville (and anyway the rioting was mostly Antifa). Here we have tweets from people plugging their organizations and promising disorder.

While individuals may have used the platform to plan illegal acts that does not mean everyone on the platform should have their information revealed. This type of dragnet investigation is illegal for a reason. The DOJs job is to collect evidence on criminals without trampling on the bill of rights. Asking for this information is lazy at best and malicious at worst.

Oh you mean like this?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/06/19...

And people still say they are worried about voting from an app with cryptography.

The media hoopla around that story was largely Fake News. Everything in that database was taken from public records. The only value of the database is the painstaking work of making all of those public record requests to the thousands of jurisdictions in the United States, and then merging and cleaning up the data. But several organizations have done it at this point and all a leak would do is potentially cause those organizations to lose money or competitive advantage against organizations without that data.

The question is WHY are those public records taken and stored in the first place??

The alt-left are dangerous but Dreamhost should resist until all legal channels are exhausted. Checks and balances!

What alt-left? Are you referring to community defense groups trying to protect their communities from Nazis? Dangerous to whom?

The antifa that tore up Berkley come to mind.

No, I'm referring to the alt-left who attacked white supremacists, minorities and Trump supporters in Charlottesville.

Oh, so you meant the groups of counter-protestors that protected the clergy from a mob of heavily armed white supremacists? The same group that was later victims of a domestic terrorist? Alright then.

I believe its a new term for what used to be called the radical left. There is evidence they go beyond attacking nazi's, to attacking journalists or just people who "look" like nazis.

Antifa is a good example with their huge riots and firebombing of cars during Trump's inauguration.

The son of Israel's PM considers them a bigger threat to the jewish people than actual neo-nazis (surprising to me). http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-junior-says-leftists-...

Huge riots: 40 guys running around knocking over trash cans. Firebombing cars: one limo got torched at one protest that one time. Antifa: some group of random protestors, or maybe those two dudes that punched Richard Spencer. IDGAF if the son of Israel's PM prefers Duke's mayonnaise, much less his opinion of the American protest landscape.

I believe the term used is ctrl-left and alt-right.

"Alt-left" is being used now because Trump said it in his press conference yesterday.

The lesson to take away from this regardless of your political leanings is that whatever power you give the state to go after a group you may disagree with will always, eventually be used against you.

It makes no difference if the target groups are alleged terrorists, alt-right, alt-left or or any other group. When you expand the power of the state that diminishes the privacy rights of the citizen that law applies to you, your family and your friends also.

Sorry, but antifa is more than Anti-Trump Activists, they are dangerous. They attack people for political reasons and are largely unpunished because they wear all black and wear masks. They are the clowns that started fires in berkeley and hit the Trump support in the head with a bike lock, causing a fractured skull. That's no good imo.

Correct.

Pardon the source but I just searched for "antifa knife" and copied the first link: http://bigleaguepolitics.com/man-stabbed-antifa-mob-outside-...

The alt-left is getting bolder and more dangerous.

So anyone who visits a far-left or far-right political website should have their identities unmasked to the federal government?

Don't refer to these morons committing violent acts in the name of protest as "alt-left." It does nothing but legitimize them, much as the moniker "alt-right" legitimizes white supremacists.

There is a time and a place for violent protest/revolution, but we're nowhere near there yet.

   > much as the moniker "alt-right" legitimizes white 
   > supremacists.

Actually, alt-right was coined as a term to differentiate people who adhere to the traditional republican/libertarian views about personal liberty and small government from the neo-conservatives such as Romney, McCain, Graham, and others who push so strongly for nation-building and big government.

The collection of people that are drawn to the ideal of small-government and liberty is larger than the subset you describe.

Source? The Southern Poverty Law Center says it was coined by Richard Spencer to describe a white nationalist political ideology: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideo...

The Southern Poverty Law Center is notoriously biased [1] against any non-progressive ideology, which includes alt-right and libertarian ideals. If this is indeed their actual opinion, it is wrong. I suspect even they know it is not true. Alt-right traces is lineage back to Ron Paul and the tea-party.

[1] http://www.dailywire.com/news/8967/7-things-you-need-know-ab...

Do you have any sources to back up your claim the the term "Alt-right" can be traced back to Ron Paul and the tea party?

Wikipedia says the first usage of the term "alternative right" was by Paul Gottfried in 2008 (http://forward.com/news/national/348372/meet-the-jewish-pale...)

It also says that the first usage of the contracted form "alt-right" was by Richard Spencer. https://www.adl.org/education/resources/backgrounders/alt-ri... http://www.newyorker.com/news/benjamin-wallace-wells/is-the-... and https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/alt-right-salutes-dona... quote Spencer as claiming to be the person who coined the term. And there's like a dozen other citations on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right

Where are your sources?

And the alt-right is getting dumber. Seriously, "bigleaguepolitics.com"? Are you going to peddle Seth Rich conspiracy theories now too? Because that's also on their front page.

Like I said, I just searched on twitter for the knife attack and clicked the first link. Disregard the source. Was this man not knifed?

We don't know. Just because some guy posts a picture of a knife wound and claims to have been jumped, that doesn't mean anything. You may recall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Todd_mugging_hoax

Quite possibly "not"?

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS753US753&q=sam...

I find it ... odd that not one mainstream media source is in the results there.

For a stabbing...

Not even a local paper.

Not even Fox News.

Just Infowars, Breitbart, AboveTopSecret, all right wing and/or conspiracy sites.

Be careful what you read on the internet. A lot of what I have seen is made to intentionally deceive. For example: http://www.snopes.com/antifa-member-photographed-beating-pol...

There are enough nutjobs on both sides without making them up.

Not defending violence in any form.

The article does not mention "antifa" even once. Can you not throw unrelated bombs into this thread?

Eric Clanton.

so antifa = anti-fascists, right?

By fascists we are talking about the white supremacists fascists with Nazi flags and salutes that staged violence in Charlottesville last weekend?

If you openly glorify Nazi-ism then I'm going to assume that you would kill a few million people you don't like, given any political power. Incidentally a person was killed by fascists.

Given that background, whats wrong with being against fascists?

Now that you mention it, I am an anti-fascist and still firmly committed to non-violence.

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