The Justice Department is ordering a web-hosting provider to turn over the IP addresses of people who visited a website organizing protests against President Trump’s inauguration, the company claims.
DreamHost, which hosts the resistance website disruptj20.org, is fighting the DOJ’s search warrant demanding it hand over “every piece of information it has about every visitor”, according to a blog post on the company’s website.
Citing a D.C. law regarding rioting or inciting to riot, the purported search warrant encompasses 1.3million IP addresses, along with the contact information, email content, and photos of thousands of visitors, the blog post states.
“That information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution’s First Amendment,” the blog posts reads.
“This is, in our opinion, a strong example of investigatory overreach and a clear abuse of government authority.”
Just one week after inauguration, DreamHost received a Grand Jury subpoena forcing the company to turn over information about the person who registered the Disruptj20 website.
Last week, DreamHost’s lawyer Chris Ghazarian filed legal arguments opposing the Justice Department and a hearing is scheduled on Friday.
