USDOJ subpoenas Indymedia for server logs, according to CBS News. This is the Obama DOJ asking for logs for something from June 2008. The EFF got involved, and the DOJ has dropped the “you can’t tell anyone this subpoena exists” subpoena.
How’s that hope and change working out, Indymedia?
I would be curious to hear your opinions about what this was REALLY about.
Indymedia is a very loose knit organization that purports to be “journalists”. There were rumors that George Soros was providing support back in 2004. My sense is a lot of anarchists are drawn to their sites – my guess is someone made a threat against an individual or perhaps said something about candidate obama that has someone concerned.
The story indicates that this was a done by a local DOJ person, and should have gone up the chain of command to the Attorney General, which it didn’t do. That may have to do with the definition of what constitutes being a “journalist”. Whether blog writers are journalists in the legal sense is an evolving question. Michell Malkin is – because she writes a syndicated column that is carried by real newspapers.
I spent a little time reading the EFF web site on this. The subpoena was issued from Indianoplis – the Assistant AG added in two things to the boilerplate request form. First, rather than asking for tightly focused information – like the IP address of a specific message or the contact information for a specific individual, they asked for all IP logs for the entire day.
The second thing they added in was a threat that the subpoena was to remain secret. Such a demand must be the result of a court order, which the DOJ had not requested. When the EFF intervened, they backed off and admittted there was no court order – and when they went away to get one, they never came back and dropped the subpoena.
The subpoena was issued on January 23rd, 2009 – that would be three days after the inauguration of President Obama. The logs were to be sent to an FBI agent that is the member of a “task force” (it wasn’t a request by the Secret Service)
What was happening on the date in question?… June 25th, 2008
The prior night, the US Senate was discussing FISA and whether telecoms should get exemption for complying with requests for call detail records (ding ding ding!)
Candidate Obama was meeting in Chicago with the CEO and President of Ford Motor company
Why would a grand jury in Indianpolis care about FISA and telecom companies?
Googling the name of the Assistant DA, she seems to mostly deal with local white collar crime cases.
My guess is she is not particularly computer literate, and as such did not realize how outrageous her demand was and probably didn’t know that much about IndyMedia and who its friends are