[Infowarrior] - DOJ Drops Its Demand For Data On 6, 000 Facebook Users

[Richard Forno]

Government Drops Its Demand For Data On 6,000 Facebook Users

from the sunlight-disinfectant dept

It's amazing what effect a little public scrutiny has on government overreach. In the wake of inauguration day protests, the DOJ started fishing for information from internet service providers. First, it wanted info on all 1.2 million visitors of a protest website hosted by DreamHost. After a few months of bad publicity and legal wrangling, the DOJ was finally forced to severely restrict its demands for site visitor data.

Things went no better with the warrants served to Facebook. These demanded a long list of personal information and communications from three targeted accounts, along with the names of 6,000 Facebook users who had interacted with the protest site's Facebook page. Shortly before oral arguments were to be heard in the Washington DC court, the DOJ dropped its gag order.

The last minute removal of the gag order appears to have been done to avoid the establishment of unfavorable precedent. It looks like the government perhaps has further concerns about precedential limitations on warrants served to service providers. As Kate Conger reports for Engadget, the DOJ has decided to walk away from this particular warrant challenge.

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https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171019/07133838437/government-drops-demand-data-6000-facebook-users.shtml