Liberal Forum

Twitter alleges Trump administration tried to unmask critical account.

Twitter filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Thursday alleging that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials had tried to get the company to reveal the identity of an anonymous account that has been critical of the agency.

The lawsuit alleges CBP agents issued an administrative summons to Twitter asking it to reveal the identity of the user @ALT_uscis, an account that has been critical of the administration and specifically the US Citizenship and Immigration Services and claims to be run by a government employee.

Both CBP and USCIS are part of the Department of Homeland Security, which is named in the lawsuit.

Shortly after the news broke, @ALT_uscis posted a screenshot of the First Amendment.



According to the lawsuit, CBP agents Adam Hoffman and Stephen Caruso sent the administrative summons to Twitter on March 14, saying that the company was "required to turn over "[a]ll records regarding the [T]witter account @ALT_USCIS to include, User names, account login, phone numbers, mailing addresses, and I.P. addresses."

"The purpose of this request appears to be, and the effect of Twitter's complying with it likely would be, to enable or help to enable Defendants to pierce the anonymity of the person or persons who established and use the @ALT_USCIS account," the lawsuit reads.

The summons allegedly said that failure to comply would result in Twitter being dragged to federal court.