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from the Department of Justice contacted counsel for Twitter, to advise that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has withdrawn the summons and that the summons no longer has any force or effect. Because the summons has now been withdrawn, Twitter voluntary dismisses without prejudice all claims against Defendants in the above captioned matter.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