On Thursday, April 6, 2017, Twitter filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government to block a request to provide personal information about the user behind @ALT_uscis. The account, whose name stands for alternative U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is one of several alternative government accounts created after President Trump took office.
The account currently has more than 40,000 followers and according to the lawsuit, an agent with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection faxed a summons to Twitter last month requesting the user’s account login, phone number, mailing address and IP address.
Twitter argues in the suit that the request is a threat to free speech, which includes “a right to disseminate such anonymous or pseudonymous political speech.”