Well, That Was Quick: Twitter Dismisses Lawsuit After Feds Drop Attempt To Unmask Rogue Tweeter
from the quick-flip dept
Yesterday we wrote about Twitter suing the US government after officials at the Department of Homeland Security sought to use a law designed to gather information for figuring out import duties, to unmask the operator of @ALT_uscis, alleging to comment on immigration issues from within the US Citizenship and Immigration Service. Twitter broke out the big guns for that case, as the lead attorney representing it was Seth Waxman, a former Solicitor General in the Clinton administration.
Apparently, the US government realized that it was going to be fairly difficult to make much of a case here and agreed to drop the summons it had issued to Twitter, leading Twitter to dismiss the case:
On April 6, 2017, Twitter filed a Complaint in the above-captioned matter. On April 7, 2017, counsel for Defendants from the Department of Justice contacted counsel for Twitter, to advise that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has withdrawn the summons and that the summons no longer has any force or effect. Because the summons has now been withdrawn, Twitter voluntary dismisses without prejudice all claims against Defendants in the above captioned matter.
There have been some folks who have questioned Twitter’s motives in filing this lawsuit, but that seems misguided. Twitter has a long history of going above and beyond most everyone else in the tech industry in fighting back in court attempts by government officials to get info on its users without proper due process.
Filed Under: customs, doj, free speech, homeland security, immigration service, rogue accounts
Companies: twitter
Comments on “Well, That Was Quick: Twitter Dismisses Lawsuit After Feds Drop Attempt To Unmask Rogue Tweeter”
Thats good, however
Its too bad that if the rogue tweeter were a conservative, Twitter would have given the name to a mainstream media outlet to broadcast, instead of valuing their user’s privacy….
Re: Thats good, however
Re: Re: Thats good, however
No, because it’s only happened in his head.
Re: Thats good, however
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Hmmm, this is where you usually need to cite instances where this has happened instead of speculating on what you wish the real world looks like in order to justify actions by people you support. Are you unable to do that, you poor persecuted fool?
Re: Re: Thats good, however
This is because alt-right loons have appropriated the word “conservative” for themselves. Actual conservatives haven’t got time for BS because we tend to be cautious and pragmatic.
Get the facts: has Twitter historically demonstrated a partisan bias? If not, stop making wild accusations.
Going dark... and hidden
If there is a lesson to be learned here it’s that if you going to say something that annoys the govt you must do so in an untraceable way.
So how many requests went to companies that were more patriotic than twitter and complied silently?
Re: Re:
Impossible to say, after all ‘A Good, Patriotic Company Is A Compliant And Silent Company’.
/poe
(Though to be fair Twitter is a large company and can afford to fight back, whereas smaller companies might not have the luxury and would be faced with the options of caving in or going under trying to fight.)