Justice Dept. Asked For Broad Swath of IndyMedia's Visitor Records 244
DesScorp writes "In a case that tests whether online and independent journalism has the same protections as mainstream journalism, the Justice Department sent Indymedia a grand jury subpoena. It requires a list of all visitors on a day, and further, a gag order to Indymedia 'not to disclose the existence of this request.' CBS reports that '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,' and that 'The subpoena from US 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.' Clair is being defended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation."
Good luck with that... (Score:5, Informative)
FRCP Rule 37 states: [cornell.edu]
Absent exceptional circumstances, a court may not impose sanctions under these rules on a party for failing to provide electronically stored information lost as a result of the routine, good-faith operation of an electronic information system.
Re:And why are websites still keeping this info? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That's change I can believe in (Score:4, Informative)
Judiciary Justice Department
Judiciary includes:
* The Supreme Court
* Lower Courts
* Special Courts
Executive includes:
* The President
* The VP
* The Department of Justice
* Loads of other departments
http://www.usa.gov/Agencies.shtml
Re:That's change I can believe in (Score:4, Informative)
Holy old news-A summary in disguise. (Score:5, Informative)
Ok. The news article is new, but the content is anything but.
The subpoena was withdrawn in a one sentence letter [eff.org] in late Feburary 2009 after the EFF sent a letter [eff.org] to the DOJ pointing out the problems with the subpeona.
We're only hearing about all of it now. It is troubling that the DOJ will not come out and say what the original motivation for even sending the subpoena in the first and is being mum about it all.
On top of that, the dates are all mixed up. The subpoena was sent in June 2008, according to the CBS article. However, the EFF says it wasn't received until January 30th 2009. This is important to note as Obama took office the 20th. The EFF's letter was sent Feb. 13th, with a return letter from the DOJ on the 25th.
My guess, it was probably a rookie lawyer who sent a badly worded request to SysAdmin during the confusion of a new president taking office.
Re:That's change I can believe in (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That's change I can believe in (Score:5, Informative)
Because Obama personally ordered this? If you knew anything about the US system of governance, you'd know that the Judiciary is separate from the Executive.
And if you knew anything about the US system of governance, you would know that the Justice Department is not part of the Judiciary, it is part of the executive. Not that this necessarily has anything to do with Obama or the White House, although all such requests of media organizations are supposed to be approved by the Attorney General, which would be the White House. It is likely just a prosecutor asking for something hoping that indymedia will just comply. Once they questioned the subpoena, the Justice Department backed down from their threats and withdrew the subpoena. Good for them and good for the EFF. This is basically identical to the AT&T case, except tiny indymedia didn't back down and just provide the information requested. And the government folded immediately because legally they didn't have a leg to stand on.
The big threat discussed in the article is the "you may not disclose this request". Holy Crap!! Absent a court order, what the heck makes them believe they can issue a secret subpoena that is probably illegitimate and order you not to discuss it!? I hope that part is fully investigated and if that is really an official policy of the US attorney's office that it is changed immediately. Talk about ripe for abuse!
Way to miss the "traffic from" in the summary.... (Score:3, Informative)
Whoops. The dates ARE NOT mixed up.
Figures I'd realize this after the dates.
Anywho, the original subpoena was sent on the 23rd of January, 2009.
Why the heck would anyone want traffic that old?
Re:That's change I can believe in (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently you are the one that knows nothing about the US system of governance:
United States Department of Justice: [wikipedia.org] "The United States Department of Justice ... is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice... The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate and is a member of the Cabinet." Emphasis mine.
The federal judiciary branch is the supreme court; the DOJ is an extension of the executive branch into judicial affairs. However, law enforcement has traditionally fallen to the executive branch, so the DOJ's existence is arguably appropriate.
This is not to say that Obama ordered this, but as he is the CEO, if you will, and appointed the guy that directly oversees it, he definitely bears some responsibility. As this particular case is not terribly high profile, he probably wasn't briefed or asked about it. Regardless, it is certainly within his power to tell them to stop.
Re:That's change I can believe in (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why wasn't this story reported sooner? (Score:3, Informative)
Unhh.... because they *DID* want to make him look bad?
If it had surfaced in January or February, NOBODY would have blamed Obama. Because they waited a lot of people thought he had something to do with it.
Mind you, I'm not predicting that he won't do something similar, or claiming that he isn't right now doing something similar that we haven't heard about. But this particular case should be blamed totally on Bush. Read the dates.
Re:And why are websites still keeping this info? (Score:4, Informative)
If you do ever get a subpoena, don't smugly assume you know so much more about technology than people in the justice system. It won't go well for you.
Re:Not to disclose the request (Score:4, Informative)
Yes but the date of the subpoena's issuance was *under Obama's watch*
"On February 1st, 2009, Kristina Clair of Philadelphia, PA -- one of the system administrators of the server that hosts the indymedia.us site -- received in the mail a grand jury subpoena from the Southern District of Indiana federal court."
Re:And why are websites still keeping this info? (Score:2, Informative)
"The problem is that if this becomes "discoverable", you can't simply do a dump of memory, you have to actually prepare it in
a manageable, readable way. Otherwise, eager $500/hour lawyers will do this manually for you. At your own costs.
Merill Lynch did a "here you go" when asked for some files and brought a few hundred backup tapes. The judge was not amused and fined them an extra few million $."
Not exactly. You need to provide it in a usable format IF that format is something you would use regularly. So, handing over an encrypted USB key when the request was for a paper document wouldn't fly. However, you are NOT required to process that data to the prosecution'e advantage. So if the document is 12000 pages of logs, you don't have to sort through it to find what the prosecution wants, but only as narrow as the court orders. Also, I'm pretty sure that one is not required to create data extraction methods. That's why the RAM ruling was so bogus - Sure, you could produce reams and reams of binary, but how is that supposed to be processed into a log of meaningful information?
Re:That's change I can believe in (Score:2, Informative)
It was rescinded a month after Obama took office and 23 days after Holder became our AG. Do you really expect either Obama or Holder to know the tens of thousands of cases the DOJ handles within a month?
Re:Not to disclose the request (Score:3, Informative)
Rather than political finger pointing, I find it more interesting that U.S. Attorney Morrison [justice.gov] has been with the DOJ for 17 years. Sadly, this is probably more indicative of how the DOJ does business than who was in the White House the day the subpoena issued.