Wanting readers names unconstitutional
The US Government has lost a case where it demanded the
IP address of every visitor to an online magazine and not to tell anyone that
it happened. The government clearly had an interest in the readers of
Indymedia who are clearly alternative types who didn't like the Bush
administration much.
When governments don't like people they usually watch
them and prevent them from travelling or make life difficult for them. According to
Boing Boing the order to watch Indymedia came doing the dying days of the Bush
administration, but was enacted 10 days after Obama took over. What got the lobby group the Electronic Frontier
Foundation fuming was that the government was doing something unconstitutional
and demanding that the magazine not tell anyone what it was doing.
The government said in the first page of the subpoena:
"You are not to disclose the existence of this request unless authorized
by the Assistant U.S. Attorney. Any such disclosure would impede the
investigation being conducted and thereby interfere with the enforcement of the
law."
Actually this threat was completely illegal. US law
doesn't require the recipient of a federal grand jury subpoena to keep the
subpoena secret. The government could have obtained a court order
requiring silence when the recipient's disclosure would have an adverse affect
on an investigation, however the government didn't.
Once the illegality of the gagging order was revealed,
the EFF took the government to court and killed the request for data. It was
easy as the snoops had no right to make that sort of request. What worries the EFF is that there must be other ISPs and
small online magazines who have violated their users' privacy by handing over
data that the “Land of the Free” government wasn't entitled.