In the latest surreal and brazen example of federal government overreach, the FBI is demanding that USA Today turn over the IP addresses of all individuals who accessed a public online article during a specific time period.
The subpoena was issued in April but is only in recent days being made public after the newspaper’s parent company Gannett sought to fight it in court. It’s being widely condemned as an outrageous instance of abuse not only of press freedom, but of the public’s right to access information and media as well as breach of both the 1st and 4th Amendments. Underscoring this, WikiLeaks was among the first to highlight the case which seeks to sweep up info on all individuals who accessed the article in question during a 35-minute window on February 2nd, 2021.
FBI Demands identifying Info including IP addresses and telephone numbers of readers of a USA Today articlehttps://t.co/WVDlA8PnIo pic.twitter.com/VUgYeczcuV
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 4, 2021
A statement given from USA Today to The Verge said, “We were surprised to receive this subpoena particularly in light of President Biden’s recent statements in support of press freedom. The subpoena is also contrary to the Justice Department’s own guidelines concerning the narrow circumstances in which subpoenas can be issued to the news media.”
USA Today’s legal team is further seeking to fight the subpoena in order to “protect the important relationship and trust between USA TODAY’s readers and our journalists.”
According to the details known about what the FBI is asking and who it could impact, The Verge report details that “The article in question was one published on February 2nd, 2021, about a shootout that occurred when FBI agents tried to execute a search warrant in a child pornography case, resulting in the deaths of two FBI agents and the suspect.”
But strangely the suspect written about in the article was already literally dead (reportedly by self-inflicted gunshot wound) significantly before the USA Today article was published. – READ MORE
Listen to the insightful Thomas Paine Podcast Below --