This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Larry Greenmin.

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

investigations.

Rarely, however, will a court order hit up a web hosting company

for upwards of 1.3 million IP addresses

to find out who's been visiting a particular website. That's exactly what happened recently

when the US Justice Department tried to get the company Dream Host to turn over

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

Disrupt J20 has been involved in organizing protests against the Trump administration.

Dreamhost bristled at the court order and filed an appeal.

Company Special Counsel, Chris Gazarian, told me that Dream Host rarely gets requests to turn

over that much client information.

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

what they viewed, and for how long.

IP addresses can also be used to reveal a web user's identity. The Justice Department later revised its request

saying it was not going to force Dream Host to turn over text and photos from blogs written

but never posted to disrupt J20.

A Washington DC Superior Court then further amended the government's request.

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 to gather evidence against Trump dissenters.

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