Congressional Investigations Into Dajaz1.com Censorship Begins

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Action for Freedom — Leave a comment

Sourced from TechDirt
By Mike Masnick

If the Justice Department hoped that it could seize the domain of a hip hop blog for over a year with no due process and then return it quietly and pretend nothing had happened, it may be in for a bit of a surprise. About an hour and a half after we broke the story, it just so happened that Rep. Zoe Lofgren was in a Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Eric Holder, providing her an opportunity to ask him about the situation. You can see the full five minute exchange below:

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There’s not much of substance there. Holder basically says that he doesn’t know the specifics, hopes that there’s more to the story, and promises that since his daughters are watching and it has something to do with hip hop, that they’ll be the first to remind him to respond to Lofgren’s question once he has more details.

It looks like he may be getting other reminders as well. Senator Ron Wyden told Wired that he intends to start asking significant questions about Operation In Our Sites, and it doesn’t sound like he’s going to give up easily:

“I expect the administration will be receiving a series of FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests from our office and that the senator will have very pointed questions with regard to how the administration chooses to target the sites that it does,” said Jennifer Hoelzer, a Wyden spokeswoman. She said the senator was “particularly interested in learning how many secret dockets exist for copyright cases. There doesn’t seem to be an obvious precedent or explanation for that.”

I’ll certainly be interested to see what they turn up.