Web Site Says Justice Department Demanded It Secretly Turn Over Readers' Information

Sounds like something Bush administration used to pull. How low we've descended. Attacks on the Constitution seem to be the norm among Republicans and Democrats. It is a sign of a nation on the decline. At this rate, it won't be long before we have chaos in America. I fear for my country.

in reference to:

"An independent news Web site says the Department of Justice ordered it to release detailed information on its readers -- then directed the site to keep quiet about the demand. Kristina Clair, systems administrator for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked when she received a subpoena from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis in January demanding the IP address of every person who visited the site on June 25, 2008. She said she was also instructed "not to disclose the existence of this request unless authorized by the Assistant U.S. Attorney." Clair said she was astonished by the demand. "It's a purely aggregate site, it only pulls data from other Indymedia feeds," she told FoxNews.com. "There's no information fed to the site directly." When she contacted the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a legal advocacy group for digital freedom, she was told the subpoena was riddled with problems. "Not only was this request a plain violation of federal privacy law -- which would require the government to at least get a court order based on a factual showing to get that kind of data; not only did it violate Department of Justice regulations that require subpoenas to media organizations to be vetted by the attorney general; not only did it threaten the First Amendment right to read anonymously of all of Indymedia's users, it also violated Ms. Clair's First Amendment rights by ordering her not to disclose the subpoena's existence," EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston told FoxNews.com. EFF said it sent a letter to Assistant U.S. Attorney Doris L. Pryor on Feb. 13 relaying its concerns with the subpoena and explaining that Indymedia didn't store IP addresses and didn't have the data the government was looking for."
- Web Site Says Justice Department Demanded It Secretly Turn Over Readers' Information - FOXNews.com (view on Google Sidewiki)