Feds Wanted Private Data on All Visitors to Liberal News Site! [View All]

[Better Believe It]

Feds Wanted Private Data on All Visitors to Liberal News Site
By Daniel Tencer
November 11, 2009

A Justice Department subpoena requesting information on visitors to an independent news site is raising serious privacy concerns.

A Justice Department subpoena requesting all available information on all visitors to an independent news site is raising serious privacy concerns, and questions about how much information the US government is storing about its citizens' news reading habits.

Privacy watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation has released an extensive report on a "bogus" attempt by a US attorney in Indiana to get Indymedia.us, an independent left-leaning news site, to hand over all the data it had about all the users who visited the site on a particular day.

Further adding to civil libertarians' and privacy watchdogs' concerns is the fact that the Justice Department ordered Indymedia to keep silent about the request.

"This overbroad demand for internet records not only violated federal privacy law but also violated First Amendment rights, by ordering not to disclose the existence of the subpoena without a US attorney’s permission," the EFF's Kevin Bankston wrote.

According to the EFF, Indymedia received a request (PDF) in January for the IP addresses of everyone who visited the Indymedia site on June 25, 2008. But the request went further than simply asking for the computer addresses of visitors -- the subpoena ordered Indymedia to turn over all identifying information it may have about visitors, including their addresses, email addresses, bank account numbers and social security numbers.

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.alternet.org/rights/143864/feds_wanted_private_data_on_all_visitors_to_liberal_news_site