In the physical world, the government can search only one apartment in an apartment building with a single warrant; it can’t search the entire apartment building. Are the collective records of a website more like an apartment building or a single apartment?
If this is the reasoning they're going then yes, Dreamhost is out of luck. One account is pretty obviously an apartment on a server (building) with the website being an even smaller part than that.
It's also extremely pertinent that the warrant is being executed against an organization exercising political speech. That's very different from, say, the DoJ requesting visitor logs to a film torrent site.
Is the government really asking for all those visitor logs?
"Yes, they definitely are," says Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Mark Rumold. EFF advocates for Internet privacy and free speech, and has advised DreamHost in its case.
Rumold tells NPR that when DreamHost first approached EFF about responding to the warrant, he guessed "that DOJ would realize how broad the warrant was, and say, oh you know, in fact we're not actually looking for IP logs for everyone who's ever visited the site" and would narrow its request accordingly.
But instead, the government insisted on DreamHost's compliance with the warrant as written.
So if any charges are brought against anyone as a result they could most likely get any evidence from it thrown out because the initial warrant was too broad and violated their right preventing unlawful search?
The real test for the legality of these warrants is typically in the courts for the defendant's trial, which is unfortunate. It's not often thoroughly challenged by the initial judge from what I've heard.
Which is interesting when you think of the implications of NSA FISA warrants not having any public scrutiny at all, just a judge's opinion in total secret.
I know in Canada it's not even full judges who sign off on police warrants but people called "Justice of the Peace" who are less trained than a judge and spend all day working with police signing off warrants.
Various defense attorneys I've spoken to have said they sign almost everything the police give them and tend to give the police the benefit of the doubt. Which is why the first thing every defense attorney does is look to challenge any warrants because they are usually the lowest hanging fruit in terms of how well thought out the police investigation was.
Readit News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15011636
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15018429
Basically the DOJ is just grabbing everything so they can filter through the comments and logs at their convenience.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
If this is the reasoning they're going then yes, Dreamhost is out of luck. One account is pretty obviously an apartment on a server (building) with the website being an even smaller part than that.
Perhaps the website is the "apartment building" and the accounts on the website are the apartments. In that case, not so obvious.
Probably semi annual reminder time to consider donating to eff
Is the government really asking for all those visitor logs?
"Yes, they definitely are," says Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Mark Rumold. EFF advocates for Internet privacy and free speech, and has advised DreamHost in its case.
Rumold tells NPR that when DreamHost first approached EFF about responding to the warrant, he guessed "that DOJ would realize how broad the warrant was, and say, oh you know, in fact we're not actually looking for IP logs for everyone who's ever visited the site" and would narrow its request accordingly.
But instead, the government insisted on DreamHost's compliance with the warrant as written.
The real test for the legality of these warrants is typically in the courts for the defendant's trial, which is unfortunate. It's not often thoroughly challenged by the initial judge from what I've heard.
Which is interesting when you think of the implications of NSA FISA warrants not having any public scrutiny at all, just a judge's opinion in total secret.
I know in Canada it's not even full judges who sign off on police warrants but people called "Justice of the Peace" who are less trained than a judge and spend all day working with police signing off warrants.
Various defense attorneys I've spoken to have said they sign almost everything the police give them and tend to give the police the benefit of the doubt. Which is why the first thing every defense attorney does is look to challenge any warrants because they are usually the lowest hanging fruit in terms of how well thought out the police investigation was.
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