Twitter says government wants to reveal identity behind an account that claims to provide anonymity for civil servants who disagree with Trump policy

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The US government sought to unmask an anonymous Twitter account criticizing its policies, according to a lawsuit filed by the social media platform Thursday.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a division of the homeland security department, issued a summons to Twitter on 14 March seeking records including the phone number, mailing addresses, and IP addresses associated with @ALT_USCIS, an account that purports to convey the views of dissenters within the government.

The account @ALT_USCIS, whose handle refers to the US citizenship and immigration services, is one of dozens of “alternative” Twitter accounts established following the inauguration of Donald Trump. These alternative accounts claim to provide the uncensored view of civil servants dissenting from Trump’s policies, but they are generally anonymous and unverifiable.

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The government’s attempt to break through that anonymity was revealed when Twitter filed suit in federal court seeking to block the summons, citing the first amendment.

“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 states.

Twitter also objected to CBP’s legal justification for its summons, which it said related only to the production of records relating to importing merchandise.

In seeking to unmask the account, Twitter alleged, CBP “requested” that Twitter not reveal the government’s summons “for an indefinite period of time”.

Twitter declined to comment on whether it had received additional requests from the government to provide information about other anonymous “alternative” accounts.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment, citing its policy not to comment on pending litigation.

The American Civil Liberties Union is representing the user, @ALT_USCIS, and plans to file its own arguments against the CBP summons soon.

“Any time the government seeks to unmask an anonymous speaker, they have to have a very strong justification,” said Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney for the ACLU. “The face of the summons provides no justification.”

The revelation of the government’s request inspired immediate consternation from Senator Ron Wyden as well as free speech and privacy advocates. In a statement, Wyden said the DHS “appears to have abused its authority and wasted taxpayer resources, all to uncover an anonymous critic on Twitter”.

“The DHS inspector general should investigate to determine who directed this witch hunt,” he added.

Jennifer Granick, the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, called the government’s behavior “craven” and described the CBP summons as a “classic case of abuse”.

“For the government, a federal law enforcement officer, to not understand the very basics of protecting free speech and following the rule of law is egregious,” she said.

Granick questioned, in particular, what process could have produced the summons. “Either some low-lying people are running the asylum and issuing demands, which is dangerous,” she said, “or people at the top are approving these, which is nauseating and terrifying.”

“If this was approved by the upper levels of the Department of Justice or CBP’s general counsel, we have some serious problems,” she added.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a rights group, raised similar concerns. “The government must not be able to use its formidable investigatory powers to intimidate and silence its critics,” said a staff attorney, Andrew Crocker, in a statement.

Throughout his campaign, Trump frequently threatened legal action against publications and critics, including the New York Times, which published some of his tax returns, and several women who accused him of sexual assault. None of those lawsuits materialized, but he has continued to wage a rhetorical war against the free press, calling them an “enemy of the people”. He has also rejected candidates for government positions based on their past criticism of him.

Trump has appeared to be particularly sensitive to implied criticism on Twitter or from within the government. After a Twitter account for the National Parks Service retweeted a post that unfavorably compared the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration with the turnout for Barack Obama, Trump personally called the National Parks Service’s head to complain, according to the New York Times.

Shortly after the complaint was publicized, @ALT_USCIS tweeted a screenshot of the first amendment.



