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Science Quickly

Feds Want to Know Who's Protesting Trump

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2017

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Internet hosting company DreamHost is battling the U.S. Justice Department over requests for information about people visiting a Web site for organizing protests. Larry Greenemeier reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

0:22.7

.j.p. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J.P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

0:33.8

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Larry Greenmine.

0:38.8

Internet companies often receive requests by law enforcement for customer info to help with ongoing investigations.

0:45.3

Rarely, however, will a court order hit up a web hosting company for upwards of 1.3 million IP addresses

0:51.4

to find out who's been visiting a particular website?

0:55.8

That's exactly what happened recently when the U.S. Justice Department tried to get the company Dreamhost to turn over

1:01.0

contact info, emails, photos, and data related to a website called Disrupt J20. Disrupt J20 has been

1:09.0

involved in organizing protests against the Trump administration.

1:12.9

Dreamhost bristled at the court order and filed an appeal. Company Special Counsel Chris

1:17.5

Gazzarian told me that Dreamhost rarely gets requests to turn over that much client information.

1:22.9

IP addresses in particular can identify which computers visited a site when they visited, what they

1:28.5

viewed, and for how long. IP addresses can also be used to reveal a web user's identity.

1:34.7

The Justice Department later revised its request, saying it was not going to force Dreamhost to

1:39.5

turn over text and photos from blogs written but never posted to disrupt J20.

1:49.2

A Washington, D.C. Superior Court then further amended the government's request.

1:54.0

The judge asked the Justice Department to list the names of all government investigators who will have access to Dreamhost's data and to explain how it will search through the data

1:58.7

to gather evidence against Trump dissenters.

2:01.3

Justice is also barred from sharing the information with other government agencies.

...

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