Through a trio of search warrants, the Department of Justice (DoJ) is demanding Facebook hand over the personal information of potentially 6,000 of its users, it was revealed Thursday.
According to CNN, which obtained court documents pertaining to the case, the DoJ warrants target the accounts of three “anti-administration activists who have spoken out at organized events, and who are generally very critical of this administration’s policies.”
That description comes from the three users’ attorneys, CNN reports. It all stems from arrests made in Washington, D.C. on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration back in January, following what the government claims were riots.
The warrants were served to Facebook in February, but a gag order prevented the social media giant from alerting the three users to the government’s intentions until the order was lifted in mid-September.
Once alerted, the users contacted the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which now represents them.
“What is particularly chilling about these warrants is that anti-administration political activists are going to have their political associations and views scrutinized by the very administration they are protesting,” the ACLU’s Scott Michelman told CNN.
One of the warrants is for Emmelia Talarico, who ran the disruptj20 page where much of the anti-Trump protesting was organized. The other two are for Facebook users Lacy MacAuley and Legba Carrefour.
If Facebook complies with the DoJ’s request, it will mean the federal government will have access to the personal data — including private messages — of the nearly 6,000 users who simply “liked” the disruptj20 page.
In the ACLU’s motion to quash the warrants, filed with the D.C. Superior Court on Thursday, Michelman notes the type of data the government is seeking to obtain. From one of the warrants:
All profile information; News Feed information; status updates; links to videos, photographs, or other web content; Notes; Wall postings; Comments; Friend lists, including the friends’ Facebook user ID numbers; groups and networks joined by the Account, including the Facebook group ID numbers; event postings; and pending and rejected ‘Friend’ requests.
He sums it all up as such:
In short, the warrants sought a complete record of anything the three users communicated or received from a third party via Facebook, everyone with whom the users associated via Facebook, and everything the users searched for on Facebook, during the specified time period.
That time period is from November of 2016, just before the presidential election, and February 9 of this year, when the warrants were served to Facebook.
In addition to what the ACLU sees as a clear violation of their clients’ First Amendment protections, Michelman warns in the motion of the precedent that would be set:
Additionally, the enforcement of the warrants would chill future online communications of political activists and anyone who communicates with them, as they will learn from these searches that no Facebook privacy setting can protect them from government snooping on political and personal materials far removed from any proper law enforcement interest.
The ACLU also argues that there are no safeguards in the warrants to protect the privacy of those who ultimately had nothing to do with those “riots” back in January. They assert that the DoJ’s action violates Fourth Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure.
Facebook has yet to say whether it will comply with the government’s order, and the DoJ, as CNN writes, “is not commenting on these search warrants.”
Hahahahahahaaha aint F**kbook great. Not only do they make money on your life they give it away to whoever asks
Who’s asking is Jeffy Sessions and Donaldo Drumpf. They can get my FB data, but good luck from that in finding me!
Hey I could ask them to give me my data. Wonder how many man hours would be spent searching for something that aint there (never have logged into that pos).
FB might uncover the financier of all the so-called left wingers.
Total police state tactics and nothing but a fishing expedition!
This is a big boohoo about nothing at all. Fakefriend is already embedded in the intelligence agencies. The info they are requesting is already known. All posts might as well start with “Hello NSA”. The NSA has been taking the attitude of “All your data are belong to me” since at least 1998, when they spliced into the ATT line in San Francisco. But no one got crazy about that raping of the Bill of Rights. No one even paid attention to it until 2008, when fake news expert was doing his tirade against the fake right and wanted to sink the fake right election. Note how he stepped down once the fake left got the job of steering the Titanic. Everything you have ever typed on the internet, to include the nastiest porn visits you’ve ever made, is already known to the NSA. And you thought that flag stood for freedom. Silly boy, freedom is for those with a spine and a brain. Though a lot of money will do as well.
This is a big boohoo about nothing at all. Fakefriend is already
embedded in the intelligence agencies. The info they are requesting is
already known. All posts might as well start with “Hello NSA”. The NSA
has been taking the attitude of “All your data are belong to me” since
at least 1998, when they spliced into the ATT line in San Francisco. But
no one got crazy about that pillaging of the Bill of Rights. No one even
paid attention to it until 2008, when fake news expert Olberman was doing his fake
tirade against the fake right and wanted to sink the fake right
election. Note how he stepped down once the fake left got the job of
steering the Titanic. Everything you have ever typed on the internet is already known to
the NSA. And you thought that flag stood for freedom. Silly boy, freedom
is for those with a spine and a brain. Though a lot of money will do as
well.
It shows that 45 is just like 44 and 43 when it comes to your rights
That’s because all of them are just Puppets controlled by our Masters. Only the really silly think otherwise….. and they are the majority. LOL
Then, what outcome do you expect ?!
.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8636b20212e590c185e33730e2cf1904e2d5b419bf8af718853097072db3a4f4.jpg
I expected this to happen from the get go
But the one thing it will do is keep people from thinking that they can’t try to organize any type of protest. Fear is a very effective tool for a fascist government to use.
This will start effecting what people write in their comments such as this one.
This is what happened because people gave their government their permission to spy on them when they said “they had nothing to hide”.
The fact that the government can access people’s computers, phones and even the smart devices people are putting in their homes, such as certain TVs, Amazon’s Echo etc. This is includes the devices that people have in their cars.
If they can access those devices, then they can plant evidence too.
By the time people decide to rise up against these abuses, the police departments will be fully militarized. If cops won’t shoot their families and friends, the government will just hire private companies that will.
Yep – I watched Snowden. Your very keystroke is logged and sold to the govt assholes. Uncle Sam’s Surveillance State. We are all under surveillance 24/7.
Sounds great for anti-Trump people but If HRC were in the WH, it would be for pro-Trump and not so great.
This is why you never give government (or corporations in this case) any power that you wouldn’t want your worst enemy to have. Liberals thought Facebook were the good guys. But Statism is based on precisely the false assumption that “the good guys will always be in charge”.