DisruptJ20 page capture on January 20

Donald Trump’s efforts to create a police state…

Enrique Dans
Aug 23, 2017 · 3 min read

On August 15, a disturbing story broke: the US Department of Justice had issued a search warrant for a web hosting company, DreamHost, claiming all available data, including IP addresses, from the 1.3 million page visitors to DisruptJ20, the rallying ground for protest marches on the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington.

Alarm bells sounded immediately, with DreamHost announcing it would appeal the order: is it legitimate for the government of a democracy to request data on the visitors of a page organizing protest against its president?

In response to the courts, the Justice Department has decided to withdraw its request, explaining that it had no interest in the visitors to the page, but only in those that could have used it to coordinate protests and violent actions. Withdrawing the request is a victory for DreamHost, which could have simply treated the matter discreetly and supplied the requested data to the Justice Department, but instead decided to resist and appeal the search warrant on the basis of respect for the privacy of its users.

It comes as no surprise that a president like Donald Trump wants to create a register of dissidents or critics of his government, and all the more after the fiasco of his inauguration ceremony, about which he seems to be completely obsessed. But protest is still legal in the United States, and the idea of ​​requesting visitor data to a protest page is crazy. During the inauguration, which brought together several thousand people in some twenty protest actions, all of whom had the necessary permits and that mostly peaceful, although there were some isolated violent incidents that resulted in the arrest of some 200 people. In other words, no justification for the search warrant, which requested the data of all visitors to the page, in an exercise of power redolent of the witch hunts associated with authoritarian regimes.

According to a government statement, the website was not only a means of publicly disseminating information about the protests, but also a way to privately coordinate between people whose intentions included violence. Following DreamHost’s protest, the Justice Department said it had not realized the magnitude of its request and that it applied to more than 1.3 million users, and claimed to be interested only in a small and select group of people, a statement the veracity of which has been challenged by DreamHost’s lawyers.

Everything we do online is collected in a log file. Requesting such data to identify people needs watertight justification based on the importance of the crime allegedly committed. In politics, at least in countries with a democratic tradition and separation of powers, requesting visitors’ data to a page protesting against the government, regardless of whether some of those protests ended in violence, is sinister. Once again, one of those “minor details” of the mind-boggling — and hopefully fleeting — passage through the White House of the indescribable Donald Trump…


(En español, aquí)

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Enrique Dans

Written by

Professor of Innovation at IE Business School and blogger at enriquedans.com

Enrique Dans

On the effects of technology innovation on people, companies and society (writing in Spanish at enriquedans.com since 2003)

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