Government Warrants Target ‘Anti-Administration Activists’ Facebook Users

According to a report from CNN, lawyers from the Trump administration are seeking the account information on Facebook users who they deem “anti-administration activists who have spoken out at organized events, and who are generally very critical of this administration’s policies.”

“We successfully fought in court to be able to notify the three people whose broad account information was requested by the government,” said a Facebook spokesperson on Friday. “We are grateful to the companies and civil society organizations that supported us in arguing for people’s ability to learn about and challenge overly broad search warrants.”

Facebook was presented with the warrants in 2017, including a gag order that prevented them from telling the users targeted by the government. The government dropped their gag order in September, but much of the court filings on behalf of the government remain sealed.

While the specific warrants from the government only cover the accounts of three individuals, the action could affect thousand of Facebook users.

The people whose personal account information was sought by the government include Emmelia Talarico, who operated the disruptj20 page where Inauguration Day protests were discussed. Some 6,000 other user’s personal information could be handed over to the government in this case.

The government has also served a warrant to DreamHost for additional information on the visitors of disruptj20.org, seeking millions of IP addresses from visitors to the site.

Legba Carrefour and Lacy MacAuley were named in separate warrants. Carrefour has been stated that he has, “participated in or helped to organize dozens of demonstrations and events of various types in service of political causes.”

The Justice Department is not commenting on any of these warrants.

Image by Brian Solis via bub.blicio.us and a CC license