title:  Trump Justice Department Is Going After Anyone Who Even THOUGHT Of Protesting Trump
text: While science doesn t quite have the technology to give Donald Trump the ability to read our minds, his justice department is doing the next worst thing. They are asking for IP addresses of every single person who visited a website that organized inaugural protests. There s a good chance they re after you and me.The website, which coordinated protests across the nation on Inauguration Day, is hosted by Dreamhost, and thankfully, they are fighting the warrant from Trump s justice department. The request from the [Justice Department] demands that DreamHost hand over 1.3 million visitor IP addresses   in addition to contact information, email content, and photos of thousands of people   in an effort to determine who simply visited the website,  DreamHost said in Monday s post [emphasis theirs].  That information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution s First Amendment. That should be enough to set alarm bells off in anyone s mind. Source: BuzzfeedThat kind of data mining would have made Joseph McCarthy drool. It s clearly an attempt to gather evidence against Trump s opposition, even if that opposition is just regular citizens.It s not the first time they have tried going after protesters through internet history. 200 people were arrested during the January 20th protests and prosecutors have tried to go through Facebook to get information about those people Federal prosecutors have sought a range of electronic information related to the Jan. 20 arrests, including defendants  social media accounts. In a mostly sealed case that the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other digital rights groups believe is related to the Jan. 20 arrests, Facebook is fighting an order blocking the company from alerting users about search warrants for account information. That case is before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, the city s highest local court.This is all a disgusting violation of privacy. Visiting a legal website is evidence of nothing, yet it s clear that Trump is gathering a list of people who disagree with him. What he will do with that list is still a mystery, but remember, it wouldn t surprise me if people on that list started seeing letters from the IRS or one of our law enforcement agencies.At the very least, this as an attempt to control dissent and perhaps make people afraid to organize online, which is by far the most effective way to organize. Just like his attempt to gather voter data from states is an attempt at making people afraid to register to vote.Featured image via Pool/Getty Images.