Twitter has withdrawn a lawsuit against the federal government after the government dropped its summons for the social media company to “unmask” the individuals behind an anonymous account critical of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
“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from the Department of Justice contacted counsel for Twitter, to advise that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has withdrawn the summons and that the summons no longer has any force or effect,” a short court filing Friday said in part. “Because the summons has now been withdrawn, Twitter voluntary dismisses without prejudice all claims against Defendants in the above captioned matter.”
On Thursday, Twitter sued the Department of Homeland Security, and specifically U.S. Customs and Border Protection and its leadership, for requesting identifying information for the individuals behind the @ALT_USCIS account, which posts critical commentary on the government’s handling of immigration and other issues.
Twitter accused the government of potentially violating its and the account holders’ rights to free and pseudonymous speech, and said that the summons for information sent to them by CBP had contained nothing more than “boilerplate language” with no specific evidence of a criminal or civil offense.
H/t Michael Scarcella.
You mean the same right to free speech that the Twitterer-in-Chief has exploited for his own benefit for years? The same reason we’ve been subjected to his inane tweets all this time? Oh yeah, that.
So in the past month or so, Trump settled a lawsuit regarding Trump University, settled with Jose Andres, lost the “travel ban” twice, and now backs down to Twitter.
If I weren’t so sure he was winning, I’d think he was losing.
Yeah, you twit: the summons is no longer in effect because it was f**kin’ illegal. Why don’t you guys get a REAL lawyer instead of a paranoid hatchet man?
They dropped an unconstitutional and clearly illegal “summons” (read: threatening letter that quickly got called bullshit). How magnanimous of them.
Well, I guess it’s back to
disappearingdeporting any witnesses who might testify against the most corrupt disAdministration in American history.Right. And if they want to pick on someone, how about going after the bot-weilers? Because without them, he wouldn’t have won?