The Department of Justice has walked back its request for information on every single person who visited disruptj20.org, an anti-Trump website that organized and advertised protests prior to the president’s Jan. 20 swearing-in ceremony.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia filed paperwork Tuesday scaling back a search warrant it delivered last month to DreamHost, a Los Angeles-based web hosting company with control over the site, narrowing its earlier request seeking every “record or other information” pertaining to disruptj20.org, including databases, email correspondence and the IP address of each person who ever visited it.
Prosecutors filed the initial search warrant on July 12 while investigating the riots that erupted in D.C. during President Trump’s inauguration ceremony six months earlier. DreamHost refused to comply, however, and recently claimed that the IP addresses being sought could potentially identify more than a million people who had visited the website.
“The government has no interest in records relating to the 1.3 million IP addresses that are mentioned in DreamHost’s numerous press releases and Opposition brief,” federal prosecutors responded in Tuesday’s filing.
The initial warrant was not intended to “identify the political dissidents of the current administration,” prosecutors added, but “is focused on evidence of the planning, coordination and participation in a criminal act — that is, a premeditated riot.”
“What the government did not know when it obtained the warrant — what it could not have reasonably known — was the extent of visitor data maintained by DreamHost that extends beyond the government’s singular focus in this case of investigating the planning, organization and participation in the January 20, 2017 riot,” the filing said.
DreamHost applauded the government’s decision in a blog post Tuesday calling it “a huge win for internet privacy,” but said it planed to raise lingering First and Fourth Amendment concerns during a court hearing Thursday.
More than 200 people were arrested in D.C. on Inauguration Day and subsequently charged with felony rioting.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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