<story><title>Twitter Sues Federal Government</title><url>https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3538047-Twitter-Complaint.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>RangerScience</author><text>Okay, what seems to be going on is:&lt;p&gt;a) DHS &amp;#x2F; Customs &amp;amp; Border Protection want to unmask the person(s) behind the @ALT_USCIS account&lt;p&gt;b) They want to use an unnamed &amp;quot;investigatory tool&amp;quot; to do this&lt;p&gt;c) Twitter does not want them to do this, on (extensive) 1st amendment grounds&lt;p&gt;d) Twitter says the Supreme Court is on their side on this issue&lt;p&gt;The lawsuit is to stop DHS &amp;#x2F; CBP from using the tool.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;tool&amp;quot; is a legal &amp;quot;tool&amp;quot; - an ability granted to the agencies to legally compel Twitter to do stuff.&lt;p&gt;The reasonable editorial is then that the Government wants to do this because they don&amp;#x27;t like being criticized or contradicted by these ALT_* accounts, and Twitter wants the accounts to stay anonymous because the criticism is good (both in terms of quality and effect), and taking away that anonymity is all kinds of bad.&lt;p&gt;(I&amp;#x27;m &lt;i&gt;totally&lt;/i&gt; on Twitter&amp;#x27;s side on this)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;an unnamed &amp;quot;investigatory tool&amp;quot; to do this&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Paragraph 7 of the complaint identifies 19 U.S.C. § 1509 as &amp;quot;the sole statutory authority CBP invoked in issuing the summons&amp;quot; [1]. It appears to be a customs authority related to the &amp;quot;examination of books and witnesses&amp;quot; [2]. Sufficient to say, it&amp;#x27;s a stupid overreach.&lt;p&gt;Side note: we need a fund that re-imburses private companies for challenging such orders. It could be managed by the ACLU, EFF, &lt;i&gt;et cetera&lt;/i&gt;. What Twitter is doing, here, is public service.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.documentcloud.org&amp;#x2F;documents&amp;#x2F;3538047-Twitter-Complaint.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.documentcloud.org&amp;#x2F;documents&amp;#x2F;3538047-Twitter-Comp...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;uscode&amp;#x2F;text&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;1509&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;uscode&amp;#x2F;text&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;1509&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Twitter Sues Federal Government</title><url>https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3538047-Twitter-Complaint.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>RangerScience</author><text>Okay, what seems to be going on is:&lt;p&gt;a) DHS &amp;#x2F; Customs &amp;amp; Border Protection want to unmask the person(s) behind the @ALT_USCIS account&lt;p&gt;b) They want to use an unnamed &amp;quot;investigatory tool&amp;quot; to do this&lt;p&gt;c) Twitter does not want them to do this, on (extensive) 1st amendment grounds&lt;p&gt;d) Twitter says the Supreme Court is on their side on this issue&lt;p&gt;The lawsuit is to stop DHS &amp;#x2F; CBP from using the tool.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;tool&amp;quot; is a legal &amp;quot;tool&amp;quot; - an ability granted to the agencies to legally compel Twitter to do stuff.&lt;p&gt;The reasonable editorial is then that the Government wants to do this because they don&amp;#x27;t like being criticized or contradicted by these ALT_* accounts, and Twitter wants the accounts to stay anonymous because the criticism is good (both in terms of quality and effect), and taking away that anonymity is all kinds of bad.&lt;p&gt;(I&amp;#x27;m &lt;i&gt;totally&lt;/i&gt; on Twitter&amp;#x27;s side on this)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Jach</author><text>On c), not just 1st amendment grounds. That&amp;#x27;s their secondary complaint. Their primary complaint is that the summons invoked a nonsensical justification, related to merchandise imports, for its lawful authority to make such a summons. This one: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;uscode&amp;#x2F;text&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;1509&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;uscode&amp;#x2F;text&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;1509&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>