It can be a thin line between legitimate concerns over the government's role in questions of privacy and free speech, and overheated hallucinations of Big Brother monitoring everything we read and discuss. A recent subpoena issued by the Department of Justice seems to drift out of the realm of the former and into the murkier waters of the latter, and some people are not happy.

Declan McCullagh of CBS News' Taking Liberties blog recently reported that in June of 2008 Kristina Clair, a systems administrator for independent news aggregator Indymedia.us was served with a federal subpoena demanding the website provide DOJ with "all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us [including] IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information" regarding the site's visitors.

But that wasn't all the federal subpoena demanded. It also instructed Clair "not to disclose the existence of this request unless authorized by the Assistant U.S. Attorney."

So not only was Clair being told by the Department of Justice to disclose sensitive information for an unknown reason, she was being told not to mention this to anyone...including an attorney. Well that sounds like a fun interpretation of the Constitution!

A confused Clair reached out to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital industry legal advocacy group, for advice on how to deal with the DOJ's unexpected demand. "Not only was this request a plain violation of federal privacy law," EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston told FoxNews.com, "not only did it threaten the First Amendment right to read anonymously of all of Indymedia's users, it also violated Ms. Clair's First Amendment rights by ordering her not to disclose the subpoena's existence."

The EFF sent a letter to Assistant U.S. Attorney Doris L. Pryor on February 13 detailing some of the concerns listed by Bankston. "On February 24, I received a voicemail from Ms. Pryor in response to my letter," Bankston told Fox News. "In that message, Ms. Pryor said that I was correct that the subpoena did not compel Ms. Clair's silence, but that she would be seeking a court order, as she would confirm in a letter later that day."

The subpoena was almost immediately withdrawn by U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison with little explanation. Apparently this wasn't the end of the saga. According to McCullagh's story, Assistant U.S. Attorney's in Morrison's office reiterated to the EFF that if Clair were to tell anyone about the subpoena she could face prosecution for obstruction of justice, and that such a disclosure "may endanger someone's health" and "would have a human cost."

Those seem like the types of veiled threats of physical harm you would more likely hear from a disgruntled Tea Bagger than an Assistant U.S. Attorney, but if nothing else it is nice to see that the market on threats hasn't been cornered by the faux populists among us.

Lucy Daglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press suggested in an interview with CBS News that the legitimacy of the DOJ's actions is questionable at best. "I have seen any number of these things withdrawn when counsel for someone who is claiming a reporter's privilege says, ‘Can you tell me the date you got approval from the attorney general's office,'" she told McCullagh. "I'm willing to chalk this up to bad lawyering on the part of the DOJ, or just not thinking."

According to Fox News, an anonymous source claims that neither Attorney General Eric Holder nor former Deputy Attorney General/Acting Attorney General Mark Filip ever received or signed off on Morrison's subpoena. Such a signature is required by law. It is not clear if an internal DOJ investigation has been launched regarding this allegation.

The Department of Justice's press office seems to be in deflection mode when it comes to taking the blame for this cute little publicity nightmare. "The U.S. Attorney's office of Indiana South issued the subpoena and it's a grand jury investigation," spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz told Fox News. "[Morrison's office] are the one's giving comment. Unfortunately, [The DOJ] can't comment on grand jury deliberations."

The Department of Justice has gained a reputation in recent years for being a hothouse for wacky federal antics. From former Attorney General John Ashcroft's career as an amateur art critic to the notorious U.S. Attorney firings, the DOJ has been no stranger to controversy. This recent case isn't likely to help clean up the department's image. Then again maybe we should just stop talking about this; after all we wouldn't want to put anyone's health in jeopardy.