When the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to unmask
an irksome Twitter account imploded last year, few within the agency
were surprised, according to newly released records. “Why would we do
this?” one official asked in early April 2017 after Twitter filed a complaint in federal court, according to the heavily redacted emails.
The short-lived investigation into @ALT_USCIS,
an anonymous account that claims it’s run by a U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services employee, sparked an uproar over First Amendment
encroachments and potential abuses of power last year, including from
members of Congress.
The new documents, released last week by the Reporters Committee for
Freedom of the Press after it sued the DHS and Customs and Border
Protection, reveal a partial timeline of the abortive investigation. But
more importantly, the emails show how a seemingly unsupervised CBP
agent improperly attempted to force Twitter to produce records on a
particular user without a court order — completely disregarding whether
the summons was legal.
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Source: The Intercept
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