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Posted on 11/10/2009 10:35:52 AM PST by Senator Goldwater
In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.
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.
Kristina Clair, a 34-year old Linux administrator living in Philadelphia who provides free server space for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked to receive the Justice Department's subpoena. (The Independent Media Center is a left-of-center amalgamation of journalists and advocates that – according to their principles of unity and mission statement – work toward "promoting social and economic justice" and "social change.")
The subpoena (PDF) 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.
"I didn't think anything we were doing was worthy of any (federal) attention," Clair said in a telephone interview with CBSNews.com on Monday. After talking to other Indymedia volunteers, Clair ended up calling the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which represented her at no cost.
Under long-standing Justice Department guidelines, subpoenas to members of the news media are supposed to receive special treatment. One portion of the guidelines, for instance, says that "no subpoena may be issued to any member of the news media" without "the express authorization of the attorney general" – that would be current attorney general Eric Holder – and subpoenas should be "directed at material information regarding a limited subject matter."
Still unclear is what criminal investigation U.S. Attorney Morrison was pursuing. Last Friday, a spokeswoman initially promised a response, but Morrison sent e-mail on Monday evening saying: "We have no comment." The Justice Department in Washington, D.C. also declined to respond.
Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, replied to the Justice Department on behalf of his client in a February 2009 letter (PDF) outlining what he described as a series of problems with the subpoena, including that 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.
Morrison replied in a one-sentence letter saying the subpoena had been withdrawn. Around the same time, according to the EFF, the group had a series of discussions with assistant U.S. attorneys in Morrison's office who threatened Clair with possible prosecution for obstruction of justice if she disclosed the existence of the already-withdrawn subpoena -- claiming it "may endanger someone's health" and would have a "human cost."
Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of The Press, said a gag order to a news organization wouldn't stand up in court: "If you get a subpoena and you're a journalist, they can't gag you."
Dalglish said that a subpoena being issued and withdrawn is not unprecedented. "I have seen any number of these things withdrawn when counsel for someone who is claiming a reporter's privilege says, 'Can you tell me the date you got approval from the attorney general's office'... I'm willing to chalk this up to bad lawyering on the part of the DOJ, or just not thinking."
Making this investigation more mysterious is that Indymedia.us is an aggregation site, meaning articles that appear on it were published somewhere else first, and there's no hint about what sparked the criminal probe. Clair, the system administrator, says that no IP (Internet Protocol) addresses are recorded for Indymedia.us, and non-IP address logs are kept for a few weeks and then discarded.
EFF's Bankston wrote a second letter to the government saying that, if it needed to muzzle Indymedia, it should apply for a gag order under the section of federal law that clearly permits such an order to be issued. Bankston's plan: To challenge that law on First Amendment grounds.
But the Justice Department never replied. "This is the first time we've seen them try to get the IP address of everyone who visited a particular site," Bankston said. "That it was a news organization was an additional troubling fact that implicates First Amendment rights."
This is not, however, the first time that the Feds have focused on Indymedia -- a Web site whose authors sometimes blur the line between journalism, advocacy, and on-the-streets activism. In 2004, the Justice Department sent a grand jury subpoena asking for information about who posted lists of Republican delegates while urging they be given an unwelcome reception at the party's convention in New York City that year. A Indymedia hosting service in Texas once received a subpoena asking for server logs in relation to an investigation of an attempted murder in Italy.
Bankston has written a longer description of the exchange of letters with the Justice Department, which he hopes will raise awareness of how others should respond to similar legal demands for Web logs, customer records, and compulsory silence. "Our fear is that this kind of bogus gag order is much more common than one would hope, considering they're legally baseless," Bankston says. "We're telling this story in hopes that more providers will press back and go public when the government demands their silence."
IIRC, that was also the organizing website for agitators at
the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis.
ping
Not unless freepers are posting credible threats.
I think so.
My dearest little Clair, they always come for the 'useful idiots' first... You should have been paying attention to the voices of Conservatives.
I remember reading some awful stuff years ago there..I stick to FR now. It seems anything goes there.
The question is, exactly what happened on June 25, 2008 or appeared on that site on that date? It’s also odd that the date is months before the administration even took office.
Leftists or no, the Obama Justice Dept is acting like the thugs they are and taking a crap on the Constitution.
Someone probably posted something complimentary about George Bush.
The details are posted on one of the other 6 threads. Maybe if posters who wish to post articles searched first, we could find that information all on one thread.
This article makes no reference to Fox News whatsoever. The headline could be wrong. They talk about indynews, which is not foxnews.
See this comment below the article at the link:
by LeonardSkynard November 10, 2009 12:18 PM EST
Did any of you actually go to the web site and see what all of the hubub is about?
Didn’t think so. The person in question isn’t a journalist. He replied to a story about activists who are against the construction of I69 in Indiana. He’s a terrorist, who has (in this post) threatened people with physical violence, including family and children of private workers involved in the project, as well as admitting to taking part in an act of intimidation against a private firm. He included details that would implicate him.
As always; the biggest hole in any civil rights case is the defendant.
Here’s an excerpt of what he said;
If you do not head this warning, we look forward to seeing you
again. Next time perhaps we will go to your homes, childrens
daycares, churches or wherever else you may happen to turn your
back. We’ll be watching you. We are fighting for our lives while
you are greedily gaining dollar bills and further domination and
exploitation.
Today in Evansville, Indiana, resistance is growing to fight
against the capitalist wet dream called I69. We visited the office
of Bernardin- Lockmueller and Associates, who are responsible for
planning the entire supposed route for the interstate. Seeing as
they’ve been targeted before, we attempted to enter with a nicely
dressed decoy. However, their fear took hold of them and they
immediatly pushed our comrade out and locked the doors. So we
banged on windows, and shouted at them through the intercom. In the
commotion a window was smashed. Which is nothing compared to the
destruction that i-69 will cause, but perhaps gave our enemy a
taste of the terror they force daily on the earth.
Read it yourself;
http://indymedia.us/en/newswire/2008/6.shtml
And then ask yourself if you really think there’s legal protections in place to prevent prosecution of this individual. Name the Constitutional Right that is being violated here.
Now that makes sense...
They better look at DU first !
More info in post 15.
Thank you!
You’re welcome. The article makes little sense and is scary without the background info.
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