Does this bother anyone else?

Bothers the dickens out of me and I am not a citizen, nor do I even live there. I visit very rarely. However I have reason to believe that such information might be available from some other government agency. A few years ago, I receiced email from Free Lotto (I may have got that name wrong). I do not gamble, but I visited the site to see what it was about. I did not play, but the next year, and for a few years after that, I kept getting emails from your tax collection authorities to declare my winnings.

My broter-in-law who lives in Florida said that follow-up mail asking me for that declaration were ariving in his mail also. Once, while visiting him, I had read my email from his computer.

I played once using the free award Free Lotto gave me and never received a request asking me to declare my non-existant winnings. Are you sure the mails were from a tax collection authority or from a scam artist pretending to be such an authority?

They would not have written to you because they saw a tax return. They saw none from me. I don't live there, I earned or won nothing while in the U.S.

I looked into this and as I recall it was a request for visitor logs for a particular day, not all the logs for all vistors to that site. That would fit with the concept of an on going investigation, as would the request to keep quiet about the request, particulary if there was concern that the site was still being used by persons engaged in nefarious activity.

The Internet offers greater opportunity for surripticious communication than the newspaper classifieds and the telephone ever did. As long as there are bad guys out there, there is every reason to believe they are using it for just such purpose, and most of them will be more clever than the clowns I at one time suspected were using Yahoo comments to send coded messages via totally nonsense comments that had nothing to do with discussions in which other people were participating.

As long as goverment requests are as limited in scope as this one appears to have been I see no reason to think the government is on some sort of fishing expedition.

If all protocol had been followed, I don't have a problem with such a limited request (and, yes, these are made all the time). Since protocol wasn't followed, I'm glad it was withdrawn.

Just because the press is involved, doesn't mean there is or should be immunity from investigation. It's all about the size of the "net" and demonstrated need for it.

By the way, I do have a problem with someone "leaking" the fact of this request when it was under gag order. It starts all kinds of rumours that will be a mix of fact and fiction ... another conspiracy theory, here we come.

Someone goofed and or suffered a mental health moment on the job.

"Update 1:59pm E.T.: A Justice Department official familiar with this subpoena just told me that the attorney general's office never saw it and that it had not been submitted to the department's headquarters in Washington, D.C. for review. If that's correct, it suggests that U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison and Assistant U.S. Attorney Doris Pryor did not follow department regulations requiring the "express authorization of the attorney general" for media subpoenas -- and it means that neither Attorney General Eric Holder nor Acting Attorney General Mark Filip were involved. I wouldn't be surprised to see an internal investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility; my source would not confirm or deny that."

Source: CBS NEWS BLOG:
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/09/taking_liberties/entry5595506.shtml?tag=mncol;txt

Big Brother is alive & well.....

Yup. It's bothersome.

It is only the contention of EFF, a highly dubious source for legal opinions, that the express consent of the US Attorney General is specifically required for this type of demand to be made.

If you'd care to have a look at the .pdf file cited in the CBSNews.com story, it specifically cites the US Code that demonstrates rather clearly, there was nothing wrong in what US Attorney Tim Morrison is said to have done. Title 18 Part I Chapter 121 Section 2703

I find no mention whatsoever of the Attorney General anywhere in the pertinent law, and I defy anyone else to find the requirement as well.

In addition, supeonas ALWAYS include a gag order on ANYONE appearing before a sitting Grand Jury, so this is another red herring thrown up by EFF to inflate their chests and offer up something for the left wing nutjobs at indymedia to crow about.

A careful reading of the US code in question reveals quite quickly this is much ado about nothing.

jJack,

Miracles of miracles! We seem to agree in something.

Actually sounds OK to me, too AND I'm a real "Tin-Hatter".