US Government Has 'No Right To Rummage' Through Anti-Trump Protest Website Logs, Says Judge (theregister.co.uk) 277
A Washington D.C. judge has told the U.S. Department of Justice it "does not have the right to rummage" through the files of an anti-Trump protest website -- and has ordered the dot-org site's hosting company to protect the identities of its users. The Register reports: Chief Judge Robert E. Morin issued the revised order [PDF] Tuesday following a high-profile back and forth between the site's hosting biz DreamHost and prosecutors over what details Uncle Sam was entitled to with respect to the disruptj20.org website. "As previously observed, courts around the country have acknowledged that, in searches for electronically stored information, evidence of criminal activity will likely be intermingled with communications and other records not within the scope of the search warrant," he noted in his ruling. "Because of the potential breadth of the government's review in this case, the warrant in its execution may implicate otherwise innocuous and constitutionally protected activity. As the Court has previously stated, while the government has the right to execute its Warrant, it does not have the right to rummage through the information contained on DreamHost's website and discover the identity of, or access communications by, individuals not participating in alleged criminal activity, particularly those persons who were engaging in protected First Amendment activities." The order then lists a series of protocols designed to protect netizens "to comply with First Amendment and Fourth Amendment considerations, and to prevent the government from obtaining any identifying information of innocent persons."
Log Files (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Log Files (Score:3)
1) There are good technical reasons to log everything from debugging to intrusion detection.
2) The warrant wasn't for logs from the website owners but for connection logs from the server host provider.
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logging : security :: pregnancy tests : contraception
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logging : security :: pregnancy tests : contraception
This is a very poor analogy. It hints at serious deficiencies in security.
Most major attacks involve an initial point of ingress, a period of observation, further compromises and privilege escalation, additional network reconnaissance, and, finally, exfiltration of sensitive data and/or sabotage.
If you are logging and monitoring effectively, you can detect an attacker during the early stages and prevent him from accessing sensitive material. This requires a skilled and responsive security team, but it is po
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logging : security :: pregnancy tests : contraception
This is a very poor analogy. It hints at serious deficiencies in security.
Most major attacks involve an initial point of ingress, a period of observation, further compromises and privilege escalation, additional network reconnaissance, and, finally, exfiltration of sensitive data and/or sabotage.
If you are logging and monitoring effectively, you can detect an attacker during the early stages and prevent him from accessing sensitive material. This requires a skilled and responsive security team, but it is possible for any medium-to-large enterprise.
If you're only looking at your logs after the shit has hit the fan, then I'm sorry to say---your security posture is weak, and you are asking to be compromised. You essentially have no capacity to identify or locate an attacker on your network.
Bullshit. The vast majority of attacks, even the big ones, are due to credential exposure (password reuse or phishing).
If your logging system indicates that someone got in, shit has already hit the fan. If your logging system indicates that someone is trying to get in, it's a day that ends in Y.
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arguably not necessary if you are confident your site is secure.
If you are confident your site is secure, you've already lost.
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Bullshit. Why else would and organization spend millions on a UTM & SaaS licensing to protect against APTs?
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IDS is detection. IPS is prevention.
And IBS is a pain in the ass.
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and while we're at it lets talk about the lizard nazis beneath antarctica and other bullshit.
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SJWs: people who fight for civil rights and equality, things that conservatives are some how opposed to.
Religious Right: people who fight to impose their religious views on the rest of society, a thing that the Constitution is opposed to.
these things are not equal.
and you are a moron for trying to make it seem so.
Why Such a Low Opinion? (Score:2)
Re:Why Such a Low Opinion? (Score:5, Funny)
Since the most influential of them are appointed by the party in power at the moment, the process is subject to gaming; yet, the nature of the voting public is fickle, and when the ruling party begins to leave a foul taste in their mouths, the voters generally have dismissed the party in power in favor of the ephemeral change.
Though impartiality is a ruse, and the illusion of the change is little more than that, the balance of power between the right and left has kept the Republic safe.
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Look at the process for confirmation of a Supreme Court nominee. It's about the most political thing that the US gov't does anymore. Both sides literally choose radical shills that vehemently espouse their tribe's proper dogma (with decades of decisions and case law to back their worldview) and then swear up and down that they'll be impartial. It's fucking insulting.
Blame the process, and the two parties of tards that got us there over the past 30+ years.
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The internet is skewing your view.
Many people take to the internet because they are surrounded by people that despise their personal views. The reasonable people tend to not engage the extremists - on both sides.
In fact, most Americans,have an excessively trusting view of the legal system, especially considering the fact that many judges are elected. Yes, that makes them politicians, and they are as corrupt as say Tim Murphy (claimed to be pro-life but pushed his lover to get an abortion).
That said, it i
bravo (Score:2)
Nice (Score:2)
But I guess some judge will receive a threat to 'remove his license'
It would seem (Score:2)
Re:Publically acessable (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, but I know of NO 'public' websites that publish their log files, that is just ill-informed dumbassery, which must be very common in russian troll farms
Re:Publically acessable (Score:5, Informative)
Assuming the website is publically acecssible, of course it does.
Wrong assumption. They are "requesting" (demanding) that Dreamhost provide them with logs containing IP addresses of 1.3M people that merely visited the site (without participating in any discussion). That info is not publicly available. If it was, they wouldn't need a warrant.
Here is the relevant law:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Since there is no probable cause for 1.3 million people, the judge was right to deny the warrant.
Re:Publically acessable (Score:5, Insightful)
Yessir. Lest we forget, the protections afforded citizens by the Bill of Rights are tested most severely when they protect the rights of the people you disagree with.
I see the President for what I believe he is, a charlatan with a magician's gift for distraction, but I would never condone the outing of his supporters' personal information in a warrant-less search.
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You don't know very many then.
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You are making the classic mistake of assuming the anger comes from a difference in opinion, not in the character of the different opinion.
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this is just your typical textbook example of a conservative interpreting "disagreement, arguing, or counter protesting against racists" as silencing them, misinterpreting the freedom to speak, as either a freedom to be heard or a freedom from criticism, or both.
besides, what's wrong with making racists and nazis go away and crawl back into their holes?
they can spew their shit all they want.
they're just such snowflakes they cant handle the the fact that most people disagree with them, and so they complain,
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Totally agree. There's a very real difference between suppressing free speech and punishing someone for not doing a professional job.
Re:Publically acessable (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, with there now being undeniable video of CNN and NYT actually being the antithesis of real journalism (which NBC is doing as well), why should they allow them to continue to spread disinformation?
Are you suggesting that CNN is less accurate than our White House? If DJT tells me one thing and CNN tells me another, I know who I'm going with. Because that keeps happening and DJT is wrong every time. He's still spouting off about America being "the highest-taxed nation in the world" and poor Sanders is stuck trying to defend it.
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He's still spouting off about America being "the highest-taxed nation in the world"
To be fair, this is true in an absolute sense. It is only when you look at percentages or per capita taxes that other countries pay more.
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how about when sanders was saying "he's more to fight ISIS in the past 6 months than Obama did in last 8 years" ...
ignoring both that ISIS is only like 3 years old, AND Trumps super secret "plan to defeat ISIS in 30 days" is just to keep following the plan Obama was already following.
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because it was, and claims otherwise show a tremendous ignorance of the actual facts.
http://www.npr.org/2015/12/19/... [npr.org]
http://www.factcheck.org/2016/... [factcheck.org]
http://www.politifact.com/trut... [politifact.com]
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Trump... has also often been proven right when his stories conflict with those of a number of major media outlets, including CNN and NYT.
But of course you won't hear much about THAT on CNN.
On CNN or anywhere else! Are you sure you didn't dream these situations where DJT has been correcting the MSM? 'Cuz I can name a shit load of examples in the other direction. He kicked things off at "biggest electoral college win since Reagan" and has only gone downhill since.
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undeniable video that of course you are completely incapable of actually providing or proving hte existence of.
Re: Publically acessable (Score:2)
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So just do a Google search for "undeniable video" and there it is?
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You're missing the point.
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keep proving me right
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no.
you see, you dont understand argument.
you made the claim.
you back it up.
until then, its just unsubstantiated bullshit.
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Neat way to confirm what GP was saying.
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still delusional.
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polite. but delusional.
that's not a personal attack.
it is an observation made based on the content of his post.
content that is delusional, devoid of fact, disconnected from reality.
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until November 2016, the Bill of Rights was considered a outdated relic that was irrelevant, but suddenly the Left turned 180 degrees
Not true. The left has championed the 4th Amendment for a long time, just as the right has long defended the 2nd and 10th.
Re:Publically acessable (Score:5, Interesting)
LOL no the only thing that suddenly and mysteriously changed was your perception of the issue. Retroactively. If you can dig deep into your suppressed memories, you might remember free speech cages, and the right wanting to run the bill of rights through a crosscut shredder in the name of stopping those durn Muslim terr'ists under Dubya. Back when the mass surveillance kicked into high gear, that the right hardly ever complained about, even under Obama. Remember that?
Heck, remember when the right had this conspiracy theory that net neutrality was an attempt to bring back the Fairness Doctrine and that was considered a Very Bad Thing? Now the Golfer in Chief talks very plainly about bringing back the Fairness Doctrine in all but name, and nobody on the right bats an eye. One good thing that's come from the Senile Racist Uncle regime is that the shameless, all-encompassing hypocrisy of the right has been laid bare for all to see.
I'm still not sure what the right wants done to prevent boycotts, these days they're always complaining about people's freedom of speech and association when companies are pressured to fire outspoken deplorables in their employ like James Damore and Brendan Eich. Maybe an anti-boycott tribunal to force business relationships to continue when there's evidence of a political motive when ceasing them. Doesn't sound very constitution-friendly to me, but again, the right is very hypocritical about these things. They didn't make a peep about Jemele Hill after all.
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so what youre saying is, is that your delusions are still intact.
Re:Publically acessable (Score:4, Informative)
>Since there is no probable cause for 1.3 million people, the judge was right to deny the warrant.
He didn't deny the warrant you utter nincompoop.
To ensure that the identities of innocent persons are not revealed, the government must adhere to the following safeguards: (1) file a report with the Court explaining the government's intended search protocol and review procedures designed to minimize access to data and information not covered by the Warrant; (2) if the Court approves the report, the government may only conduct its search on a redacted data set that omits non-subscriber identifying
information; (3) upon completion of review, the government must file an itemized list of the materials it seeks to retain with the Court, and explain how such materials are relevant to its investigation and its basis for removing any redactions; and (4) only upon a finding by the Court that the requested information is evidence of criminal activity, as described in the Warrant for which this Court has found probable cause, may the government obtain any un-redacted information, such as the identity of the user.
The judge just set a number of conditions and protocols that the government has to abide by in order to minimize exposing the information not sought in the warrant.
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Wrong assumption. They are "requesting" (demanding) that Dreamhost provide them with logs containing IP addresses of 1.3M people that merely visited the site (without participating in any discussion). That info is not publicly available. If it was, they wouldn't need a warrant.
They probably already have that information, they logged the connections to begin with. [Never forget QWest [wikipedia.org].] But that won't help them with parallel construction...
Re: Publically acessable (Score:2)
Except that that asking for information that is held by a third party isn't covered under that amendment. That's why Congress had to pass the Pen Register Act, among other laws. Laws like that are statutory fixes for situations you couldn't reasonably expect an 18th century politician to anticipate.
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Except that that asking for information that is held by a third party isn't covered under that amendment.
Asking for information is something that the government (like literally everybody else) is perfectly within their rights to do. Compelling information is something that is restricted by the Constitution -- whether its held by a third party or not.
The Constitutional distinction is this:
The government cannot conduct a search without a warrant unless they have the permission of the entity they want to search.
Let's say you have information about me and have not agreed to keep the information confidential. Let'
Half right, half wrong (Score:5, Informative)
This is the Superior Court of DC, so I think this is actually the relevant law on search warrants:
https://beta.code.dccouncil.us/dc/council/code/sections/48-921.02.html [dccouncil.us]
The Constitution doesn't exactly provide a lot of details, so one normally looks at the actual laws on the subject. To re-derive the constitutional contours of search warrants from constitutional principles every time would be sort of like trying to do this [metamath.org] every time you want to add 2+2. In short, no, it doesn't work that way.
It's normal for demands to be overly broad. They ask for whatever they might plausibly get, because sometimes the judge agrees with them and they won't get anything they don't request. This is how an adversarial justice system works. There are other models, for example, inquisitional systems, in use in other countries.
Note that I am not arguing with you about this being non-public information. You were right to correct the other poster about that. And you were right that it is, in fact, completely obvious from the fact that they issued a search warrant. The judge realized there were real concerns here, so they narrowed the scope of what was asked and are allowing the police to search it first, then unmask people later if they have probable cause to believe they were participants in a crime.
In short, it's a detailed and perfectly sensible decision that appears to be quite fair to both sides.
Misleading headline (Score:5, Informative)
The headline is quite misleading, the real details are in the order [regmedia.co.uk] that, thankfully, the summary links to.
Basically, the judge granted a protective order that lets the feds search for evidence of criminality (e.g. more info on those plans to dump butyric acid into the ventilation shafts or to chain trains), without the ability to go fishing around for evidence of other crimes they may have committed.
In short, it's a reasonable protective order that lets the feds do their job while addressing the privacy concerns. From the headline, you'd assume they lost, but if you look at the details, the feds will be able to search the site for evidence with the judge acting as an intermediary to ensure that all the searches are justified.
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From the headline, you'd assume they lost, but if you look at the details, the feds will be able to search the site for evidence with the judge acting as an intermediary to ensure that all the searches are justified.
Their goal was to get more access than they needed for whatever reason, and they failed at reaching that goal. I'd say they lost; now they're going to have to do their jobs (or whatever facsimile thereof they've been tasked with) using only the legal amount of information.
So you're a mind reader now? (Score:3)
> Their goal was to get more access than they needed for whatever reason, and they failed at reaching that goal. I'd say they lost; now they're going to have to do their jobs (or whatever facsimile thereof they've been tasked with) using only the legal amount of information.
Right, and you're a mind reader now? I don't know about you, but I'm more wary of people who have decided the police are out to get them, like those crazy people who assassinated random cops for no reason...
Anyhow, I suggest taking s
Re:So you're a mind reader now? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sadly, there aren't a lot of good guides that go into how it works that aren't overly technical. That said, I think that this info on search warrants [nolo.com] covers the basics pretty well. As far as different justice systems go, I think, this article [ashfords.co.uk] should be pretty readable.
To get a any sense of how things normally work, you pretty much have to read a lot of cases. That's harder these days because most news stories don't bother to link to whatever they're discussing, but I will give credit to this submission for linking to a proper source, at least.
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Yes, Law Comic [lawcomic.net] is very good, I will second that recommendation.
If you want a good law movie, oddly enough, My Cousin Vinny [imdb.com] is one of the more realistic movies. Many of the others are... not so good.
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Yeah, let the police redact their own information before looking at it. I'm sure that will go over well.
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I think that the headline, while clearly written in a provocative way, is accurate. The government asked for the moon, and didn't get it.
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That's what happens practically every time, though. There's no benefit to asking for less than the moon, because you don't get what you don't ask for. It's sort of like how they generally go for the max sentence, because they know that your lawyer will negotiate downwards, so they have to ask for too much to get a fair sentence in the end. Granted, the part about getting a fair sentence doesn't always happen, especially if you or your lawyer negotiate badly. It's sort of like what happens if you play tu
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That's what happens practically every time, though.
Perhaps so, but that doesn't make the headline incorrect.
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It appears to imply that the government is not going to get to examine the data, but it is going to get to examine the data subject to a protective order.
I realize that different people may read it differently, but I thought this was an important point to clarify.
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Feels like typical slashdot.
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> I really don't see how it's misleading.
It implies that the search warrant was denied, when it was granted subject to a protective order.
Re:Publically acessable (Score:5, Funny)
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Of corse he is. What would be the fun of trolling a grammer nazi-wannabe.
The expression "grammar nazi" is interesting because:
1) actual nazis had, on average, poor grammar skills. Goebbels himself (who wanted to obtain a PhD in literature but had to fall back to literary history) wanted to become an author but his grammar was terrible. His own teacher, von Waldberg, once made fun of the fact that Goebbels was a huge fan of Dostoyevsky but never managed to write down the author's name properly.
2) nazis rarely took initiatives; they had a deeply hierarchical culture with centraliz
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That's why the expression is "grammar nazi" and not simply "nazi". It's ascribing the zealotry of nazism to highlighting poor grammar, not saying that all nazis had impeccable grammar.
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They're onto me. Shite... What would our Fearless Leader do with Puerto Rico in shambles, the Secretary of State calling him an effin' moron, and a tinpot dictator besting him in a game of one-upmanship?
"Oh yeah! Well, what about the NFL players kneeling during the anthem?"
Re:1st Amendment.... (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit and you know it. There were lots and lots of anti-obama websites, some coming close to calling for armed insurection. I mean besides fox news et. al. The Obama DOJ didn't go after them at all. Something to do with The Constitution.
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And POTUS Obama's Regime murdering US citizens via drone strike.
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"barely caught a news story" ... what fantasy world are you living in?
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and you seem to have no clue as to the facts of the case.
here's the rundown:
-IRS is tasked with approving 501() tax exemptoin applications
-IRS had a backlog
-IRS tried to shortcut determinations for 501(c) groups, the NON-POLITICAL group category by searching for political terms in group names
-this is because groups didnt want to have to file under 501(d) because (d) requires disclosure of donors while (c) does not (thats why its explicitily for political groups)
-IRS did this to both conservative AND libera
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After tying up the groups in investigations and red tape through the first week of November, 2012. Gee, what might have they wanted to do before the first week of November 2012 that became irrelevant afterwards? I do wonder.
What "liberal" groups did the Obama IRS do this to that weren't enough to his left that they were criticizing him for not being far enough left?
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Bullshit .. because for starters, Obama never asked for such draconian shit.
Look, if Tump the Idiot feels it is his presidential right to attack, intimidate, harass, and otherwise dig into the lives of people who disagree with him, then the reality is he's grossly unfit for the office.
Political dissent is a Constitutionally p
Re:Totally ok to.... (Score:5, Informative)
Russia is not covered by the 1st Amendment.
If you want to use it, you need to be a citizen of the United States or a person within its borders.
Not a guy in Russia buying ads on Facebook. They'd need to do it from within US borders. Then they would be bound by the laws related to political campaign advertising.
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The US Constitution doesn't prevent the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires all activities and finances of a foreigner/foreign government or their agents to be registered, unless specifically exempt.
Re:Totally ok to....BS (Score:2)
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It covers everyone within its borders.
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The same as the pre-Internet era?
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the 1st Amendment doesn't provide free speech. It prevents the US Government from creating laws that restrict it.
Perhaps you should read it.
Freedom of speech doesn't include incitement of hatred or violence, aka "fighting words"
3rd paragraph, page 68, "Recapturing the Spirit: Essays on the Bill of Rights at 200"
https://books.google.com.au/bo... [google.com.au]
So no, ISIS should not be free to spread hate.
Re:Totally ok to.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Russia is not covered by the 1st Amendment.
If you want to use it, you need to be a citizen of the United States or a person within its borders.
Nope. Freedom of speech is considered by the United States to be a natural right, and the first amendment does not create it, only recognize it. In general, the USA has extended the right of free speech to non-citizens. This is not the case worldwide; for example, it's still illegal for a noncitizen of the UK to engage in "seditious" speech while on their soil, while they basically eliminated that for their own citizens some while ago.
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Because if they want to take anyone to court, the evidence needs to be admissible.
Hence the parallel construction of evidence they already have.
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. . . if the same judge would so vociferously enforce the Constitution and "protect netizens" if the political parties were reversed, e.g., hypothetical President Hillary's DoJ demanding the weblogs of hypothetical-conservative-site.org.
Yes. Yes he would.
Of course that presumes that Clinton would have made such a request in the first place, which she wouldn't have, because it was extraordinarily inappropriate.
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Riiiiight. The same Hillary Clinton -- you know, that champion of womens' rights Hillary Clinton shown grabbing rapist Harvey Weinstein's man-tits at some multi-million dollar DNC shindig -- would *never* do anything "extraordinarily inappropriate."
Now that we've gotten your off-topic talking point of the week out of the way...
Because she would respect the Constitution, just like Obama did when he took a big steamer on it with warrantless wiretaps, FISA courts, and every other shitty abuse of power he doubled-down on from GWB and before.
What a freakin' homer.
Whatever you think of the constitutionality of those various actions they were done for the purposes of law enforcement, generally terrorism. And to the extend they went after the logs of websites they were generally pretty extreme sites.
Trump was trying to ID people who protested him, that's not a criminal act.
Like many of Trump's actions the comparisons don't hold up, Trump is not normal and his actions are completely unaccept
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He's an idiot who asks if we shouldn't use nuclear weapons, what do we have them for? Out loud, several times.
Then you made him president. You just keep thinking that electing a dumbshit makes you a rebel.
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Mutually Assured Destruction [wikipedia.org] is still considered to be the first line of defense against Russia and North Korea. Not using them is all we need them for.
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he's not like you
Yes exactly.
He's not:
-mature
-intelligent
-compassionate
-sane
-unlikely to accidentally start WW3
-corrupt
-self aggrandizing
-hypocritical
-truthful
-altruistic
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delusional
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The independence of the judiciary is pretty well grounded in the Constitution.
So is equal protection under the law, prohibitions against religious persecution, limitations to the scope of the amendments, etc.
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ah yes.
the famous leftist agenda of having all citizens treated equally under the law as the constitution demands.
that makes the conservative agenda what exactly?
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To flip it around ... I guess you're ok with the unmasking?
I take Russian meddling far more seriously than a group trying to cause a ruckus at the inauguration, just my opinion though.