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Twitter Sues US Government Over Attempt To Unmask Anti-Trump Account (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: According to Twitter's suit, filed today in Northern California District Court, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has attempted to use a "limited-purpose investigatory tool" to unmask the owner of the Twitter account "@ALT_USCIS." The account, one of several "alt" or "rogue" government accounts that appeared in the wake of Trump's ascent to the presidency, was used "to express public criticism of the Department and the current Administration," according to Twitter's complaint. In the suit, Twitter writes that @ALT_USCIS has purported to be a dissenting member of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. On March 14, Twitter received a summons from Customs requesting records that could reveal the identity of the account's operator, including IP logs and any associated phone number or mailing address. In addition to the Department of Homeland Security and its subagency, the lawsuit names four individuals as defendants: DHS secretary John Kelly, acting CBP commissioner Kevin McAleenan, and special agents Stephen P. Caruso and Adam Hoffman, who issued and served the order itself.
Uh, yeah. If they really only want to see if it's an employee doing it on company time, then it's no longer "political". That's actually a crime for a federal government worker to do such. The only real problem would be if it's not a government worker and they harass him - at that point I'll be concerned.
They cited tax law on imports as the basis for the warrant.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...
How exactly are tweets criticizing the President related to investigate power for
Obviously there is zero relationship, and this is purely an attempt to abuse unrelated investigative powers for political purposes.
That's actually a crime for a federal government worker to do such.
So, as I sit here at McChord Air Force Base in Washington State, in my cushy job as a C17 Mission Planner, you are telling me I'm breaking the law prattling on Slashdot? Is that why we have and Official Social Media Policy that talks about using Social Media on GOV computers? Oh, that's right, you don't work for the government and in fact have no idea what you are talking about.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
As a private corporation, Twitter is allowed to decide what its users are allowed to post on its service. As a public entity the government is not.
So?
Maybe you don't understand, if this was a criminal prosecution they would have brought charges against a John Doe and applied for a warrant. Using the national security tool they are using (designed for foreign actors outside US jurisdiction) bypasses the requirement to obtain a warrant and avoids that nasty complication of proving the speech in question is NOT protected speech.
Your blatant disregard of how this bypasses standard criminal procedures by waiving it away blatantly ignores that they are doing it this way so they don't have to get a subpoena and document why this speech isn't protected. Any time the wrong procedure is being used like this you can bet dollars to donuts the are abusing the process because what they are doing would have never met the requirements for a valid warrant. Don't cheer lead so hard that you ignore abuse of power.