科学美国人60秒 联邦政府想知道是谁在对特朗普提出抗议（在线收听）

Internet companies often receive requests by law enforcement for customer info to help with ongoing investigations. Rarely, however, will a court order hit up a Web hosting company for upwards of 1.3 million IP addresses to find out who's been visiting a particular Web site.

互联网公司经常会被执法部门要求提供客户信息来协助某些正在进行的调查。然而，法庭却很少会命令网络托管公司提供130多万个IP地址，来查找访问某个特定网站的人。

That’s exactly what happened recently when the U.S. Justice Department tried to get the company DreamHost to turn over contact info, e-mails, photos and data related to a Web site called DisruptJ20. DisruptJ20 has been involved in organizing protests against the Trump administration.

然而最近却发生了这样的事。美国司法部试图让网络托管公司DreamHost (美国空间) 交出DisruptJ20（注：“干扰1月20日”特朗普就职典礼）网站的相关信息——包括联系人信息、电子邮件、照片和其它相关数据。DisruptJ20曾参与组织反对特朗普政府的抗议活动。

DreamHost bristled at the court order and filed an appeal. Company special counsel Chris Ghazarian told me that DreamHost rarely gets requests to turn over that much client information. IP addresses, in particular, can identify which computers visited a site, when they visited, what they viewed and for how long. IP addresses can also be used to reveal a Web user’s identity.

DreamHost对法庭的命令表示不满，并提出上诉。公司特别顾问克里斯·加扎里安告诉我，DreamHost很少会收到要求交出这么多客户信息的请求。特别是IP地址，它可以识别哪些计算机于何时访问了哪些站点，都看过什么，以及看了多长时间。IP地址也可以用来揭露访问某个网站的用户的身份。

The Justice Department later revised its request, saying it was not going to force DreamHost to turn over text and photos from blog posts written but never posted to DisruptJ20.

司法部后来修改了它的请求，称不会强迫DreamHost交出那些从未发布到DisruptJ20的博客文章和照片。

A Washington, D.C., Superior Court then further amended the government’s request. The judge asked the Justice Department to list the names of all government investigators who will have access to DreamHost’s data and to explain how it will search through the data to gather evidence against Trump dissenters. Justice is also barred from sharing the information with other government agencies.

华盛顿特区某高等法院随后进一步修改了政府的要求。法官要求司法部列出所有能够访问DreamHost的数据的政府调查人员的姓名，并解释他们会怎样搜索这些数据来收集反对者针对特朗普的证据。同时，司法部也被禁止与其他政府机构共享这些信息。

We’ll see whether the government ends up prosecuting anyone using DreamHost’s data. If that happens it could drive digital civil disobedience to encrypted mobile apps or possibly the Dark web, a largely uncharted online realm where it’s easier to remain anonymous.

至于政府是否会用DreamHost的数据来起诉任何人，我们将拭目以待。如果真的出现这种情况，则可能导致网民的温和抵抗，驱使他们去使用加密的移动应用程序，甚至是去使用暗网——一个几乎无法查询的网络领域。在暗网中人们更容易保持匿名状态。

That would raise disturbing questions about the state of citizens’First Amendment rights in the U.S. these days.

而这或将引发人们对美国公民第一修正案权利的令人不安的质疑。