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Email service hit with subpoena after double bomb threat

Email service hit with subpoena after double bomb threat

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After two bomb threats in Los Angeles and New York, police have issued a subpoena to cock.li, the email service the threats were sent from. Cock.li was served with a subpoena earlier today by the New York Police Department, and is cooperating with the request. According to Vincent Canfield, cock.li's founder and proprietor, the site retains registration IP addresses as well as seven days' worth of IMAP and SMTP logs, all of which were turned over to the NYPD upon request. The NYPD subpoena is the only one the service has received in relation to today's threats.

Notably, the police also requested Canfield not discuss the existence of the subpoena or its contents, as captured in this audio recording, although he ultimately decided that the request was not legally enforceable. He has since published all the information related to the request on his website for public viewing. "I asked mostly to be polite," Canfield says, "just to keep us all on the same page, you know?"

It was earlier reported that the emails originated at an IP address in Frankfurt, but according to Canfield, that refers to the host server of cock.li itself, rather than any information specific to the source email address. A self-described "meme sewer," the service currently provides email to more than 60,000 users including Canfield himself, promoted largely through the 8chan anonymous message board.