Justice Department Fights Web Hosting Company for Trump Protester Information

The Justice Department is fighting for information on all of the visitors to the website disruptj20.org, as well as log files on when and from where the visitors logged onto the site, what they looked at, and emails related to the site. The site at the center of the storm bills itself as a platform connecting Trump protesters and "support[ing] the massive and spontaneous eruption of resistance across the United States that’s happened since the election."

At the New York Times, Charlie Savage reports that federal investigators have issued a search warrant to the internet hosting company DreamHost, which is now challenging the warrant as unconstitutionally broad—complying with it would allegedly require handing over 1.3 million visitor IP addresses and the information, emails and photos of thousands of users. Also see the Washington Post story last night from Ellen Nakashima.

Dreamhost announced the fight yesterday in a blog post entitled "We Fight for the Users." Here are the key documents: the search warrant; the Justice Department's motion to show cause; and DreamHost LLC's third-party response in opposition to the Department's motion.

We'll be summarizing the issues in greater detail soon.