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Trump DOJ Seeks Private Data on All Visitors to Inaugural Protest Website

Careful with all that organizing and protesting, LEAD South Dakota. Next thing you know, the Trump/Sessions Department of Justice may ask for information on anyone who visits your website.

That’s what DOJ is doing to DisruptJ20.org, which organized Inauguration Day protests last winter. Its web host, DreamHost, is fighting a DOJ search warrant demanding more than 1.3 million IP addresses, e-mails, subscriber names and addresses, photos, and other content. DreamHost is defending its customers against what it calls “investigatory overreach” and “abuse of government authority”:

Chris Ghazarian, our General Counsel, has taken issue with this particular search warrant for being a highly untargeted demand that chills free association and the right of free speech afforded by the Constitution.

…The internet was founded — and continues to survive, in the main — on its democratizing ability to facilitate a free exchange of ideas. Internet users have a reasonable expectation that they will not get swept up in criminal investigations simply by exercising their right to political speech against the government.

We intend to take whatever steps are necessary to support and shield these users from what is, in our view, a very unfocused search and an unlawful request for their personal information [DreamHost, “We Fight for the Users,” corporate blog, 2017.08.14].

I don’t want the Trump-feds trolling for user data from the websites of Inuaguration Day protestors any more than I would support their wholesale scanning of every byte from every user who has visited the vile blog of Jason Kessler, the white-supremacist scum who organized the Nazi/Klan hate-fest in Charlottesville. We must not allow Trump’s law-and-order rhetoric (on everything from racism to opioids) to excuse violations of rights to privacy and protest.

16 Comments

  1. Porter Lansing 2017-08-15 10:52

    This cannot happen!! Nixon did it, too. His term as President ended poorly. Should Bannon get the list of “disrupters” he’s but a phone call away from the IRS and audits may soon follow. HELP DREAMHOST RESIST
    http://www.enemieslist.info/

  2. John Kennedy Claussen, Sr. 2017-08-15 11:41

    Nixon gave us the EPA. Trump is trying to destroy it. Nixon tried to give us universal health care once. Trump does not even understand health care. Trump talks tough towards North Korea, while Nixon actually, and secretly, bombed Cambodia. Trump only wishes he was Nixon. Trump is merely a emperor without cloths, who demonstrates all of the paranoia of the Nixon Era without any of the substance.

    This most recent political and tyrannical stunt concerning websites merely proves that Trump is Nixon on steroids, but in imagine only. And when Senators Thune, Rounds, and Congresswoman Noem return to Washington in September, their first priority should not be tax reform nor an attempt to resurrection health care from the carnage of incompetency. Rather, their first priority should be to work with Democrats to put to an end in a fair, legal, and constitutional manner the incompetent, insane, unethical, Russian loving, and racist presidency of Donald J. Trump.

    We live today during a very pivotal moment in American history. The quicker we legally and constitutionally end the Trump presidency the better our nation will be for it. Any time lost in this endeavor will only feed further our irrelevance as a nation on the world stage in the 21st century. Often the 20th century is called “The American Century,” but how said it would be if the 21st century would find America merely laying in the carnage of irrelevancy, because political leaders in our country, in time and place, did not appropriately act to give us the leadership that is now desperately needed…. It is all up to you John, Mike, and Kristi, it is all up to you and other Republican leaders like you…..It is time to be a “real hero” like John McCain…. It is time to act politically mature, sensibly, legally, and constitutionally!

    WWAD? (What Would Abe Do?)

  3. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-08-15 13:26

    Get Trump out—JKC, might the rumoredly looming ouster of Steve Bannon help that process along? Castrate Bannon, and he gets revenge by running back to Breitbart and publishing all the inside dirt he’s gathering under Trump. Or might that ouster actually make it harder to impeach Trump, since the relatively sane generals would consolidate their hold over the White House?

  4. John Kennedy Claussen, Sr. 2017-08-15 14:13

    Cory, I think it would help the process.

    But when you say “sane generals” are you talking in general (no pun intended)? Or are you talking specifically about Mattis and Kelly? There is an interesting article about Mattis and Kelly which harkens to the era of James Schlesinger and Alexander Haig during the Nixon presidency, however:

    http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/344759-mattis-kelly-agreed-that-one-would-always-stay-in-us-to-keep-tabs-on

    And the one thing, which no one really talks about is how there appears to be possibly a “soft coup” going on at the federal level to preserve our nation from Trump through the further consolidation of power by Mattie and Kelly in recent weeks. And maybe Kelly’s initial acquiescence to Trump’s harsh deportation policies at HLS was merely an attempt to win Trump’s confidence in Kelly, so that Kelly could acquire greater control of the White House…. We can only hope, well, that is if a “soft coup” is possible. Because you can debate whether such a concept, a “soft coup” that is, is possible without letting the “Genie out of the bottle.” But let us hope, that if this is the case, that this “soft coup” is like the Haig, who during the Nixon administration reportedly told the Pentagon, in the final days of Nixon, to not exercise any major military decisions requested by Nixon without Haig’s approval, as opposed to the later Haig, who said in the early months of the Reagan administration….”I’m in charge here”…..

    But regardless of you “generals” comment, I think any consolidation attempt in hard form would merely lead to a greater bunker mentality, and thus, the eventual legal and constitutional removal of the 45th President of the United States… Plus, a Bannon on the outside would probably help, intended or not, to help remove Trump from office by pitting great parts of Trumps base against Trump with the help of Brietbart…..Unless Bannon were to spin his departure as the “Generals” fault and not Trump’s, but that cannot be done without dividing sane conservatives vesrus less sane conservatives, which itself would help to destroy the Trump base, I would think……

  5. Roger Cornelius 2017-08-15 14:36

    During the Watergate era people were clamoring to get on Nixon’s enemies list and were disappointed when they didn’t make it.
    It was a badge of honor to be on the enemies list just like it is an honor to be banned by the Powers Dump Site.
    Trump, Bannon, and the DOJ need to pursue their list and hunt down enemies.
    It will simply lead to another Article of Impeachment.

  6. mike from iowa 2017-08-15 15:05

    Haven’t wingnut’s drawers been in an uproar about Obama apparently spying on everyone? Gee, at least we can document wingnuts spyong on our side.

  7. jerry 2017-08-15 16:42

    trump has gone full Nazi and now defends the white supremacists those Nazi terrorists in Virginia.
    John Dingell ✔ @JohnDingell
    President Trump just referred to a group of violent white nationalists, supremacists, segregationists, and neo-Nazis as “very fine people.”

    He is your boy republicans, he is your Nazi. You can do something about it, elect Democrats. Take down the jackboots and build back this country by voting Democrat to save our democracy.

  8. Roger Cornelius 2017-08-15 17:18

    jerry,
    As I said yesterday, Trump read from a prepared script that indicated he was under some control, so it doesn’t surprise me a damn bit that he would do a 100% flip and go back to his original statement of blaming all sides.
    I don’t give a tinker’s damn about any of their 1st Amendment freedoms, they forfeited all rights when they took up arms against America today and in the past.

  9. owen reitzel 2017-08-15 18:23

    wonder what the right wing Republicans think of this? They hate government so they should hate this.
    So far I haven’t heard much from them

  10. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-08-15 19:06

    JKC, I worry that Trump is lowering my standards of what counts as “sane” leadership. Even George W. Bush looks like a decent President to me now.

    Rather than worrying about political outcomes, I should perhaps focus on the immediate, obvious fact: Steve Bannon outside of the White House can do less damage than Steve Bannon inside the White House.

    Jerry, Trump’s speech today warrants his resignation. I’m considering a separate post on that theme. Roger, you called it: Trump spoke yesterday on script, not from the heart. Today he said what he really believes.

    I don’t know what kind of corporation DreamHost is, and I don’t know how rich they are, but I’m glad we have one corporation fighting to protect customers from the government.

  11. Buckobear 2017-08-15 19:32

    Now, it’s time to get scared and do something.

  12. jerry 2017-08-15 19:49

    The republican party of South Dakota needs to answer if they are Nazi Americans or Americans. We cannot be enslaved by a so called master race as history has already shown. Aberdeen may be a good place as any to demand the answer and what their intent is to either go further with Nazism or tell trump to step down, he has to go.

  13. John Kennedy Claussen, Sr. 2017-08-15 20:29

    “Even George W. Bush looks like a decent President to me now”……Boy, isn’t that the truth. It took us thirty years and the presidency of Dubya to miss Nixon, but with Trump, it has only taken eight plus years for us to miss Bush43 somehow…. Go figure?…..Oh, that reminds me, I need to go on the Zazzle website and order my “I Miss W” bumper sticker too….

  14. Roger Cornelius 2017-08-15 20:38

    Is Trump maneuvering for an all out Civil War? Just asking.

  15. Porter Lansing 2017-08-15 20:52

    @Roger … I don’t know about Trump but the white supremacists must have a death wish. They could hold rallies in safe zones like Texas or South Dakota but they’re going to California. LOL They’ll be outnumbered 50 to 1. Latest eye witness reports of last weekend say the cops just stood by and let ’em fight. Southern entertainment they call it.

  16. jerry 2017-08-15 21:47

    trump is just another Nazi trying to save himself from the courts. He is guilty of collusion to the point of what may be called treason. Like any other criminal, he is doing his best to keep Bob Mueller from hog tying his lying arse and putting him in the hoosegow. So yeah, a civil war or anything that will keep the headlines from saying Donald and Putin colluded to steal the wealth from the taxpayers of the United States, would be right up his dirty little sleeve. In the meantime, Nazi supporters think they have the right to do as they will. They are wrong.

    Question is, when will the elected officials finally come out to denounce him for his actions and words? It sure as hell won’t be someone like Nelson, he is in on the fix regarding the white supremacist thingy. Thune’s pa was a pilot that flew missions in World War II, the same war that killed so many Americans fighting the Nazi’s. Damn, you would think this boy would have something to say about Nazi’s and his distaste for them, or did he forget? NOem, is to busy being cute to do much else. Rounds, was named after an uncle that was killed in World War 2, so you would think he knew a thing or two about Nazi’s and what they stand for, what about him?

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