CBP Investigated for Abuse of @ALT_USCIS

Sam Biddle - CBP Investigated for Abuse of @ALT_USCISIn the first week of April, Twitter revealed that the US Customs and Border Protection agency was trying to force the company to reveal the identity of @ALT_USCIS, an anonymous, deeply anti-Trump account claiming to be run from within US Citizenship and Immigration Services. The Department of Homeland Security is now formally investigating whether the attempted unmasking was an abuse of power.

Just one day after Twitter said that it had been targeted by a CBP summons demanding identifying information about @ALT_USCIS, Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat outspoken on privacy issues, wrote a letter to the agency’s acting commissioner asking for an explanation of what clearly appeared to be a politically motivated attempt to stifle speech critical of the Trump administration. In a response sent today, John Roth, inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, the parent organization of both CBP and USCIS, said that “We have concluded that no classified information was released via the @ALT_USCIS Twitter account,” and that the summons itself is now the subject of an internal review…

–Sam Biddle
Border Agency Under Investigation for Trying to Unmask Anonymous Twitter Account

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