Twitter ‘Declined’ Order Of Donald Trump Government To Reveal The Identity Of @ALT_uscis
Twitter Inc on Thursday has filed an adjudication case in order to block the U.S. Government order to reveal the identity of the account holder opposing the immigration policies of President Donald Trump.
According to Reuters, after Trump’s getting the government of U.S., various anonymous twitter feeds, with names and logos of different U.S. Government agencies have seen challenging the views of the Government on different issues. These account call themselves as “alt” accounts.
U.S. CIS refers to US Citizenship and Immigration Service, stating the account to be “immigration resistance”.
Twitter has used Freedom of Speech as the reason of not revealing the identity of @ALT_uscis. According to the case file, the account is handles by at least one federal immigration employee.
“The rights of free speech afforded Twitter’s users and Twitter itself under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution include a right to disseminate such anonymous or pseudonymous political speech,” Twitter said in the lawsuit.
Defendant, The Department of Homeland Security has declined to comments over the pending litigation.
Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union is representing the Twitter user, said the government’s request was highly unusual. Requests for social media account information from the U.S. government typically involve national security or criminal charges, she said.
“We have seen no reason the government has given for seeking to unmask this speaker’s identity,” Bhandari said, adding that the right to anonymous speech against the government is “a bedrock American value” strongly protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
@ALT_uscis has posted a picture of the copy of First Amendment just when the case got filed. Its followers jumped to 89,000 soon after the news became public.
Twitter might have a strong case that the summons was improper, said Paul Alan Levy, staff attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group who specializes in online privacy and free speech issues.
“I don’t think there is any way for the government to come out of this looking good,” Levy said.
- - Advertisement - -
