Twitter is likely to beat the Trump Administration’s subpoena seeking the identities of government employees using a rogue Twitter account to anonymously criticize President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, an expert said.

“As best I can tell, there is no crime here,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine Law School and a First Amendment expert. “Assuming I am correct, I think Twitter should win.”

Jennifer Stisa Granick, a law professor and Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, agreed with Chemerinsky. “Twitter will win because the legal demand violates the First Amendment and was issued under improper legal authority,” she told TheWrap.

Twitter made the same point in its lawsuit filed on Thursday against the Trump Administration in San Francisco Thursday.

The lawsuit argued that the government subpoena seeking the identities of the creators of the @alt_USCIS “Alt Immigration” twitter account was “unlawful” and violates the First Amendment.

As Twitter noted in its complaint, the Department of Homeland Security said it was seeking Twitter account documents under a federal law that penalizes the importation of merchandise without paying appropriate taxes, fees, and duties, a civil law called 15 U.S.C. section 1509.

But the federal government “could not plausibly establish that they issued the CPB summons . . . in any investigation or inquiry relating to the import of merchandise,” Twitter said.

The last time Twitter tangled with the government over releasing account information, Twitter lost and turned over account information to criminal prosecutors.

But in that 2012 case, the government sought account information for a Twitter user who used his real name in his Twitter account and had been accused of committing a crime during Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

In contrast, there is no allegation of criminal violations in the case of Twitter v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

In addition to calling the subpoena “unlawful” because it has nothing to do with enforcing federal merchandise law, Twitter also argued that the subpoena is “unenforceable because it violates the First Amendment rights of both Twitter and its users by seeking to unmask the identity of one or more anonymous Twitter users voicing criticism of the government on matters of public concern.”

The Trump Administration is trying to find out who started a twitter account @alt_USCIS or “ALT Immigration,” which describes itself as “Official inside resistance” and includes a disclaimer that the account is “Not the views of DHS or USCIS,” the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

In response to news of the Twitter lawsuit, @alt_USCIS posted the text of the First Amendment

source: http://www.thewrap.com/twitter-will-...n-expert-says/