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Article

7 Apr 2017

Author:
Alex Johnson, NBC News

USA: Twitter sues federal govt. to protect identity of govt. critic

"Twitter Sues Feds to Keep Anti-Trump Admin User ‘ALT_USCIS’ Anonymous", 6 Apr 2017

Twitter sued the federal government on Thursday to protect the identity of the person or people behind an anonymous account highly critical of Customs and Border Protection [CBP]. [L]awyers for Twitter disclosed a summons the social media company received last month from CBP and... the Department of Homeland Security, demanding that the company turn over everything it knows about the anonymous account @ALT_uscis. The summons... seeks user names, login records, phone numbers, physical addresses and IP addresses of anyone associated with the account, which tweets sharply critical comments about U.S. immigration policy and President Donald Trump...The CBP summons doesn't state any reason for the demand... Twitter said CBP was obligated to demonstrate that some criminal or civil offense had been committed and that outing the account holders' identities was the least restrictive way to advance the investigation...Twitter's lawyers wrote, "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 many other 'alternative agency' accounts that have been created to voice dissent to government policies."