Court says DreamHost must give information on Trump protest site to the DOJ

The web hosting company DreamHost has been told to hand over information on a website that organized protests against President Donald Trump on inauguration day.

A Washington, D.C. court order issued Thursday compels DreamHost to hand the Department of Justice information about the people behind DisruptJ20.org. This information is far more narrow in scope than the DOJ's original request for the 1.3 million IP addresses of those who had visited the site, but it still raises a few First Amendment eyebrows.

The DOJ is going after DreamHost because it says DisruptJ20.org planned inauguration protests with people who intended to commit violence, but civil liberties groups are worried that the government's targeting of an opposition group could dissuade others from protesting in the future.

"DOJ is still investigating a website that was dedicated to organizing and planning political dissent and protest," the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote earlier this week. "That is activity at the heart of the First Amendment's protection."

The EFF wrote that the Department of Justice should allow a third party to go over the information DreamHost produces before the company hands it over, to make sure the government doesn't overstep the scope of its warrant, and Judge Robert Morin of the Superior Court in Washington, D.C. does appear to be taking an active role in how the DOJ proceeds.

The DOJ will have to describe how it intends to shield any private information scooped up from visitors to the site. The agency will also have to name the agents involved in the investigation of DisruptJ20 and will have to provide an outline for how they'll comb through the information they find. The DOJ will have to provide a reason that any information they hold onto is relevant to a criminal investigation.

All of this might be put on hold if DreamHost decides to appeal the ruling, but the company declared victory in a blog post after Thursday's court order.

"The de-scoping of the original warrant, combined with the court’s additional restrictions on the use of, and access to, that data, is a clear victory for user privacy," the company wrote on its website.

The court order is certainly not anywhere near as broad as the DOJ's initial IP request. That's a victory for DreamHost, to be sure, but it remains to be seen just how the DOJ is willing to go in its case against an organization that opposes the president.