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The End of the DreamHost vs. DOJ privacy case
- fred_is_fred 9y agoI thought DH was going under when I saw that headline! Much happier result.
- blakecaldwell 9y agoYeah, me too. Terrible till.
- blakecaldwell 9y ago*title
- zippergz 9y agoYeah, I'm not even a Dreamhost customer (I was for a few years a long time ago), and I instantly had a sinking feeling in my stomach when I read the headline.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- panarky 9y agoAs a US citizen, Dreamhost customer, and visitor to the disruptj20.org site, I'm triply thankful that DH resisted the digital dragnet and established a some case law in the process!
- twobyfour 9y agoThis tiny court decision is a huge win. One that gives me hope for the future of our democracy on a day when I was tending to despair for it.
- marsrover 9y agoWow, I didn't expect to read that and see anything positive. Good job, Dreamhost. Maybe I should get rid of my Digital Ocean account and migrate over.
- neom 9y agoNot to belittle the efforts of DH (who are great!). However, I would imagine that DigitalOcean fights just as hard to protect it's users.
- KGIII 9y agoI'd suggest reading some of the complaints about their service and support. They have had a whole litany of complaints that span years of operation. In their defense, I've read that they have improved significantly - but they had a pretty poor reputation to begin with. While its great to support a company that fights for your rights, it's also prudent to ensure the company meets your service needs. So, I'd suggest reading sites like WebHostingTalk, and similar. Then, after reading, I'd suggest interacting with them to answer questions and measure things like initial response time. And, of course, basing your judgement on that and not just reviews or willingness to fight for your rights.
- robotpony 9y agoI've had a few servers (and previously shared hosting) at DH over the last 20 years. While they have had their fair share of major downtime, it has been on par with Rackspace, AWS, etc., who have all had day+ events in the last. I have heard reports of some shared servers being worse than others, but generally I've only seen reasonable performance at a low price. That said, I also use Digital Ocean, AWS, and Rackspace still for various projects. Really, they're all pretty great.
- KGIII 9y agoMost of the complaints I've seen have revolved around their shared hosting environment and some support complaints. I figure it worth mentioning. I do know there are far fewer complaints AND that they are still in business, so they can't be too bad, can they? But, yeah, at one point their shared hosting services had quite a reputation and they had lots of complaints (reasonable or not) concerning getting terminated for unreasonable resource usage when hosters felt they were in the right. I had a personal site with them for a few months and had some downtime that put it below my acceptability level. They were pleasant enough to work with and refunded the remainder of my money without any compliant. I don't recall the exact figure but it was in the 95% uptime range. Caveat emptor, I suppose. Refunding and moving was easy enough. I'm in the market for hosting, again. So, maybe I'll give them another shot.
- deusofnull 9y agoThis is a big deal. Thank you.
- gkanai 9y agoThat is impressive! More incentive to become a Dreamhost customer.
- hoodoof 9y agoIntegrity....how weird.
- snitch_whorl 9y agoNow if only Cloudflare could follow suit.
- agentultra 9y agoThis makes me proud to have worked for Dreamhost. Great job friends!
- deepnotderp 9y agoNot gonna lie, this headline scared me ;) Good work Dreamhost, proud to be a customer!
- drdeadringer 9y agoThe headline scared me too. To be honest, a part of me was expecting a complete company shutdown if not a mandatory compliance order.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- colordrops 9y agoWhat is disruptj20.org? I'm afraid to visit it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dom0 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisruptJ20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisruptJ20 Also read up on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
- omegaworks 9y agoDisrupt J20 was a website put together for organized resistance to Donald Trump's administration. This case is specifically tied to an overturned trash can and mass marches that were held on inauguration day in DC. Some background on the case: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/18/trumps_doj_demands_personal_info_on https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/18/trumps_doj_demands_pe... From Nate Cardozo, senior staff attorney at the EFF: "The government asserts that there were crimes committed on January 20th. You know, there was some petty vandalism or whatever. The government is claiming, of course, felony rioting, which is another thing altogether. So, the government’s theory of the case, laughable as it is, is that everyone who visited J20—DisruptJ20.org did so in order to plan a crime." 230 people that participated that day were mass-arrested and 194 are potentially facing 75 years in prison. http://defendj20resistance.org/ http://defendj20resistance.org/
- Natsu 9y agoYou left out any mention of this video series, or the claims & counter claims regarding it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHZSfhd1X_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHZSfhd1X_8
- kevinh 9y agoJames O'Keefe has a history of editing footage to make misleading or false claims. Nothing he says should be believed. Just look at the amount of times he has settled claims for misrepresenting individuals and organizations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe
- hamstercat 9y agoIt's great to see Dreamhost standing up for the right of their customer's website visitors. They don't have any financial incentive, but they still made it right. Makes me feel secure to know where they'd be ready to go for their own customers if you ever got targeted by an unlawful request.
- roadbeats 9y agoThe title sounds like they're shutting down. The article has a positive result though.
- islanderfun 9y agoAmazing results and glad they stood up. Looking into signing up!
- cperciva 9y agoCan we have the title edited so it doesn't sound like a going-out-of-business post? I'd suggest "The End of the DreamHost vs. DOJ privacy case".
- kbutler 9y agoNot having experience with disruptj20: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisruptJ20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisruptJ20 DisruptJ20 (also Disrupt J20), a Washington, D.C.-based political organization founded in July 2016 and publicly launched on November 11 of the same year, stated its initial aim as protesting and disrupting events of the presidential inauguration of the 45th U.S. President, Donald Trump, which occurred on January 20, 2017. The protests organized and encouraged by the DisruptJ20 group were a part of a wider array of protests initiated by a variety of individuals and groups, in Washington, DC and nationwide; from a more extensive initial plan, deployments by DisruptJ20 at the inauguration eventually included efforts, at least, to blockade one bridge, and to attempt to shut down security checkpoints. --- I don't care either way about disruptj20, but I appreciate DreamHost's efforts, and the intervention by the court to curtail the overly broad demand for information.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoCan anyone point out how blockading a bridge could possibly lead to political change? The only scenario that seems obvious is if the police overreact and shoot some of the protesters. That would cause a massive public outcry and bring their cause to the front and center stage. What are some other ways that blocking a bridge could be productive?
- castis 9y agoIt lets other people know that theres a general unhappiness with something. Events like that usually make the news. Others who may not have heard about the cause hear about it and get involved. That, or if the man is doing something you don't like, do something they don't like. It's better than sitting on the couch and reading about the things you don't like in the world.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoSure, I respect that. I guess I was just curious if their goal was to enact political change or just to express themselves. It's not clear cut: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15103654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15103654 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/is-there-any-point-to-protesting https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/is-there-any-p... She places its start at the moment of a famous failure: the Mayday Vietnam protest of 1971, when twenty-five thousand people blockaded bridges and intersections around Washington, D.C. A manual describing the demonstration’s tactics allowed Nixon’s Attorney General to summon the police, the military, and the National Guard preëmptively. More than seven thousand protesters were arrested. Mary McGrory, a journalist who was sympathetic to the cause, described it as “the worst planned, worst executed, most slovenly, strident and obnoxious peace action ever committed.” Kauffman disagrees. The spectre of the protest rattled the Administration, she points out. What’s more, it marked the shift toward the tactics-driven approach that we still follow today. “The last major national protest against the Vietnam War, Mayday was also a crucial first experiment with a new kind of radicalism,” she writes. It was less about moral leadership than about the fact of obstruction. It embraced whatever—and whoever—forced the hand of power. “You do the organizing,” the Mayday manual read. “This means no ‘movement generals’ making tactical decisions you have to carry out.”
- MentallyRetired 9y agoThis is amazing. Thank you, Dreamhost, for defending your customers' rights.
- fareesh 9y agoHappy to see the law work it out this way. Good of Dreamhost to stand up for privacy. Unfortunately disrupt J20 is a violent group that promotes assault and anarchy against conservatives, so it's important that law enforcement officials are able to continue their investigation in some other way. Members of this group were arrested and convicted in a plot to attack the inauguration ball using acid in the ventilation system and other alleged tactics.
- rconti 9y agoI don't know anything of the group, but it sounds like law enforcement was able to obtain adequate information on people plotting violent attacks, so the system works!
- guelo 9y ago> Members of this group were arrested and convicted in a plot to attack the inauguration ball using acid in the ventilation system and other alleged tactics. That's incorrect. Convicted liar and video troll James O'Keefe did get them on video talking about acid, but they never acted on the plan, never attempted to acquire acid. The prosecutors were only able to get the defendants to take a plea deal for a "conspiracy" misdeameanor with no criminal conviction or record.
- interfixus 9y agoThis is indisputably true, so I have no idea why you are downvoted. Or rather, I have an idea, but it's not a pleasant one. There's nothing contradictory in applauding Dreamhost's attitude and victory, while at the same time seing the disrupters for exactly what they are.
- spaceseaman 9y agoThe comment above you directly disputes it. How is it indisputable? Please don't forget your citations.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
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- chiefalchemist 9y agoGood news. But now, sadly, we need a service (i.e. Chrome extension?) that rates the depth of the pockets (and the size of "the stones") of the company hosting a site we're about to visit. That aside, it there was smart and kbown way to picking hosting that's - more or less - beyond the reach of such things? Would AWS have been as upstanding as DH?
- chiefalchemist 9y agoCan someone explain the reason for a down vote? If hosting now matters, why is awareness of such things a negative?
- ENOTTY 9y agoIs this really a win for DreamHost (and other internet service providers)? > DreamHost has been deputized to redact sensitive information If DH was deputized to do this on behalf of the government, what limits are there to deputizing DH to do something else, possibly more nefarious, on behalf of the government? Why can't the DoJ now "deputize" Apple to produce the iOS with the backdoor? Also important, who pays for the employee time for this? What about the opportunity cost of moving an employee off of her main duties onto this other duty that has no revenue benefit? Did this ruling just create an unfunded mandate for private businesses? > We see this as an absolute victory not just for DreamHost, but for online service providers throughout America and for internet users around the world. I think this statement requires far more analysis before it can be made. EDIT: Oh good, Orin Kerr has started tweeting about this. I'd trust his judgment on the legal matters more than my armchair lawyering. https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/917923510462435328 https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/917923510462435328
- foolfoolz 9y agothey could have appealed again. what is the cost of their legal team? complying with laws and regulations is a cost of doing business in the any country
- ENOTTY 9y agoI think lawyer time is quantifiable so that's one thing. But the cost of moving a developer over to satisfy the DoJ's request is practically unquantifiable. Say DH has a dev team of 10. One of them moves over to implement the DoJ search protocol and develop redaction scripts. Do the other 9 now work this person's workload? Or does DH bring in a new developer? Now DH has to train this person up. We all know, as programmers, that a new developer to a team induces a temporary drag on performance. Anyways, I think Apple covered this hypothetical in their response brief to the FBI request.
- krisdol 9y agoAgain, this just sounds like the cost of doing business. You’re not always going to be able to have everyone working on the ideal goals. Sometimes a developer will have to be working with auditors (be they from the private or public sector) or lawyers on something other than their typical project. I also don’t think a search protocol would be a part of this request, as much as a dump of redacted data.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- esotericsean 9y agoProud to be a DH customer today. Awesome news!
- drdeadringer 9y agoSame here.
- drdeadringer 9y agoI have been using DreamHost for a decently long time. I signed up right around their infamous "billing issue" around 8-9 years ago; I naively -- and luckily -- ignored the huge red flag that was and bought in long and ard. This current development has only solidified my enjoyment of using them as my hosting service. I am very glad they came out on top here and, to be honest, given recent events mu heart was sinking when I read the title but was uplifted when I read the content.
- djsumdog 9y agoWould you defend the Daily Stormer? http://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate-censorship/ http://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate-c... Unpopular thoughts of the past century are accepted norms today.
- latigidigital 9y agoCensorship is a blight on society, no matter the target. The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. — H. L. Mencken, US editor (1880-1956)
- thephyber 9y ago> Censorship I, personally, think it's still debatable as to whether the DailyStormer issues qualify as censorship. Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFlare, brought this topic up when they dropped DailyStormer. There's no easy answer on how to deal with it. Is there strong demand for a vertical monopoly in content hosting which will host any kind of offensive content? Are legislators close to passing laws denying the right to host a website for distasteful speech? I would argue that censorship is an active action and that what happened to the Daily Stormer is mostly a passive action. Analogy: This is not like burning a book. It's more like every book publisher passing on publishing the book before it's printed. Would you risk your reputation as a book publisher just because "I don't want to censor the author" despite not liking the content, not knowing if there was any paying market for the book, and despite the negative press + potential boycotts of your company? If you won't, how can you expect anyone else to do different in similar circumstances? The slippery slope argument is a valid concern, but is there a moral panic spreading concerning things that are equally distasteful? Last I checked, the Westboro Baptist Church is still on the internet with both a website and a Twitter account. And they were used by the FBI to train agents to withstand hateful speech while maintaining their composure. Note: Granted, Google Domains not allowing them to transfer their domain seems very icky, but I can see how there is no good policy for that situation.
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- tdeck 9y ago> We are now required to hand over a drastically reduced amount of data to the government and will redact any identifying information from every scrap of it that relates to non-subscribers. Does anyone know what they mean by "non-subscribers"?
- ssutch3 9y agoIt means anyone who isn't paying for the hosting of the website.
- entelechy0 9y agoDreamhost once publicly exposed private information about products I had purchased from them over Twitter. I immediately switched providers.
- djsumdog 9y agoIt's interesting how DreamHost picks and chooses which opinions it defends: http://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate-censorship/ http://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate-c...
- mtgx 9y ago> Under this order, we now have the ability to redact all identifying information and protect the identities of users who interacted with disruptj20.org before handing over any data to the court. Chief Judge Morin acknowledged that the government “does not have the right to rummage through the information contained on DreamHost’s website” to “discover the identity of . . . individuals not participating in alleged criminal activity.” That's interesting. Days before he left office, President Obama gave the NSA permission to share raw internet data with 16 other agencies (because of course he did...). That data should mostly include American citizens' information. So I wonder if the EFF or ACLU can sue the White House/DoJ over expanding those rules, considering judges seem to not like such mass surveillance, as exemplified in this case. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more-latitude-to-share-intercepted-communications.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more...
- betimsl 9y agoAs I was reading "The end of the Dreamhost[...]". I started to feel very happy until I realized this is not their end but something else :(
- kareldonk 9y agoThis is the kind of stuff that happens when large groups of people still choose to live like slaves of a government, and believe that government is neccessary.