New York Times - Federal prosecutors said in a grand jury subpoena that the information was needed as part of an investigation into possible voter intimidation. Protesters and civil rights advocates argued that the Web postings were legitimate political dissent, not threats or intimidation.
The investigation, conducted by the Secret Service, comes at a time when federal officials have begun an aggressive effort to prevent what they say could be violence by demonstrators at the convention this week and at other major political events. Large-scale demonstrations in New York began over the weekend.
"People have a right to be heard politically, and the names of a lot of these delegates are already public anyway," said Matt Toups, 22, a system administrator for the Web site under federal investigation. "This is just part of the government's campaign to intimidate people into not saying things."
People do have a right to political speech, but one still has to question Indymedia's intent when posting the names of RNC delegates. What political statement were they making there? What possible reason could they have for doing such a thing other than to encourage their readers to take some sort of action against the listed people?
Bottom line, its a crappy tactic that has no place in civilized political debate. Not that Indymedia has ever been accused of being civilized.
I'd also note that Matt Toups' quote in the article proves that the website being investigated is Indymedia. Here's an article written by Matt from back in September.