Twitter has filed a lawsuit accusing a government department under the Trump administration went to great lengths to unmask the identity of an account that criticised its policies.
Customs and Border Patrol, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, allegedly served Twitter with a summons demanding the phone number, mailing addresses, and IP addresses of persons associated with the account @ALT_USCIS – an account that claims to be a dissenter within the immigration system.
— ALT?? Immigration (@ALT_uscis) April 6, 2017
If you’re not a Twitter user – a blessed position to be in – you may not be aware of this trend of ‘alt’ government accounts, which purport to be run by dissenters within government departments. There are HEAPS of them – with the most popular by far being ‘Rogue POTUS Staff’.
When we started this, we told people to #resist & #persist. We told people to be involved and active to protect the security of the nation.
— Rogue POTUS Staff (@RoguePOTUSStaff) March 30, 2017
None of these accounts have ever provided any proof or identification that they’re actually government employees at all, but people do like them quite a lot – even if they very likely could be bullshit. The fact that the government actively pursued @ALT_USCIS implies that it might have been legit. Or maybe it was just a slow day.
“Permitting CBP to pierce the pseudonym of the @ALT_USCIS account would have a grave chilling effect on the speech of that account in particular and on the other ‘alternative agency’ accounts that have been created to voice dissent to government policies,” the complaint from Twitter states.
The Department of Homeland Security did not provide any comment on the matter, and Twitter has not confirmed whether they have received similar requests regarding any other account.
Source: The Guardian.
Photo: Getty Images
