Thread: Justice Dept asks for website visitor list

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

I hope you folks know what I would do if they ever sent me one of those letters.

W

I trust you W. but what if they showed up at your house and took your computers ?

Originally Posted by USPatriot

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

I hope you folks know what I would do if they ever sent me one of those letters.

W

I trust you W. but what if they showed up at your house and took your computers ?

What are any of us doing that is illegal??? Telling the truth as we see it to our friends and family... if someone disagrees they can try and change our minds...our minds are open..and we are not blind..

Kathyet

I just found out that the NYDOL keeps records of the site users were on before and after entering. Why do they need that info? (I never read the privacy policy before today )

Information Collected Automatically When You Visit This Web Site

When visiting this web site, NYSDOL automatically collects and stores the following information about your visit:

1. The Internet Protocol address and domain name used, but not the e-mail address. The Internet Protocol address is a numerical identifier assigned either to your Internet service provider or directly to your computer;
2. The type of browser and operating system you used;
3. The date and time you visited this site;
4. The web pages or services you accessed at this site;
5. The web site you visited prior to coming to this web site;
6. The web site you visit as you leave this web site; and
7. If you downloaded a form, the form that was downloaded.

None of the foregoing information is deemed to constitute personal information.

http://www.labor.state.ny.us/privacy.shtm

Originally Posted by kathyet

What are any of us doing that is illegal??? Telling the truth as we see it to our friends and family... if someone disagrees they can try and change our minds...our minds are open..and we are not blind..

Kathyet

Find this book: "William Shirer: The Nightmare Years" the best book about the events that lead from Germany's Democracy to its transformation into an oppressive dictatorship:

http://www.amazon.com/Nightmare-Years-1 ... 915&sr=1-5

Originally Posted by kathyet

Originally Posted by USPatriot

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

I hope you folks know what I would do if they ever sent me one of those letters.

W

I trust you W. but what if they showed up at your house and took your computers ?

What are any of us doing that is illegal??? Telling the truth as we see it to our friends and family... if someone disagrees they can try and change our minds...our minds are open..and we are not blind..

Kathyet

I guess when DHS decided returning vets/those against Illegal Immigration/followers of Ron Paul (which I am all 3) are potential terroist threats while they ignore the Jihad Muslim threat in the USA I decided any Citizen who opposes our current White House may be harrassed without probable cause.

this stuff needs to stop, this is insane.
if the website is not involved with anything illegal, why
is the DOJ asking for anything?

Originally Posted by Ratbstard

I just found out that the NYDOL keeps records of the site users were on before and after entering. Why do they need that info? (I never read the privacy policy before today )

Information Collected Automatically When You Visit This Web Site

When visiting this web site, NYSDOL automatically collects and stores the following information about your visit:

1. The Internet Protocol address and domain name used, but not the e-mail address. The Internet Protocol address is a numerical identifier assigned either to your Internet service provider or directly to your computer;
2. The type of browser and operating system you used;
3. The date and time you visited this site;
4. The web pages or services you accessed at this site;
5. The web site you visited prior to coming to this web site;
6. The web site you visit as you leave this web site; and
7. If you downloaded a form, the form that was downloaded.

None of the foregoing information is deemed to constitute personal information.

http://www.labor.state.ny.us/privacy.shtm

Ok, call me stupid or uninformed, but I have no idea what NYDOL is

N Y dept of labor

More of the indymediaus thing

From Lou Dobbs site:

Must Read

What's Happening to Privacy, Freedom?
Nov-10-2009
What kind of country are we becoming? Is it acceptable for the Justice Department to subpoena a news site for Social Security numbers and bank account numbers from ALL of its visitors? What is going on in the United States in 2009?

Justice Dept. Asked For News Site's Visitor Lists
Posted by Declan McCullagh

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."
Declan McCullagh is a correspondent for CBSNews.com. He can be reached at declan@cbsnews.com and can be followed on Twitter as declanm. You can bookmark Declan's Taking Liberties site here, or subscribe to the
Posted by Lou Dobbs Staff at 12:00 AM - Link to this entry Share this entry

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Kathyet

I think it would be more helpful for the "Justice" Department to subpoena Obama's college records, that prove he in collusion with Pelosi and Reid and the DNC have knowingly conspired to place in office an individual ineligible to serve as President.