• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, November 10, 2009

In a stunning show of disrespect for civil liberties, the federal authorities recently attempted to subpoena the IP addresses of Web visitors to the left-wing news site Indymedia.us, the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation reports.

Not only did the government attempt to obtain all IP addresses of people who visited on a particular day -- June 25, 2008 -- but authorities also ordered site administrator Kristina Clair to keep quiet about the subpoena. "This overbroad demand for internet records not only violated federal privacy law but also violated Clair's First Amendment rights," the EFF states in a new post about the case.

Given that judges and lawmakers have long protected people's right to read anonymously, it's hard to imagine any scenario in which the government could legitimately demand to learn the identities of all readers of a lawful Web site.

As it turns out, Indymedia.us destroys IP logs after five weeks, so Clair wasn't able to comply with the subpoena, which was issued in January. The EFF also convinced the government to back off its demand that Clair keep quiet about the subpoena.

Nonetheless, this incident marks more than just an example of government overreaching. It demonstrates that one sure way to guarantee Web users' privacy is to destroy information that could be used to identify individuals.

Privacy advocates have warned repeatedly that merely keeping records about Web visitors can potentially compromise their privacy. The advocates argue that when information exists, it can be obtained; the government can subpoena it, or people can hack into databases, or employees can simply release it.

Consumer advocates have often said that search engines shouldn't keep log files tying queries to IP addresses, on the theory that storing the information itself puts users' privacy at risk. Groups like the EFF have also said that the Google Books settlement shouldn't go through without enforceable privacy protections for online readers.

Critics tend to say that privacy advocates are just being paranoid, and that policy shouldn't be shaped by unlikely worst-case possibilities. But this recent attempt to subpoena Indymedia's IP logs shows that the worst-case privacy scenarios aren't that far-fetched after all.