There are lots of reasons to be suspicious of the surveillance powers of the US government. There is a long history of using them for political purposes and it’s important to always stay vigilant.
But having to listen to the Trumpers squeal incessantly about the “Deep State” when they were doing stuff like this is just infuriating. This was using the full power of the government to punish a satirical opponent of one of the president’s allies. They’ve done a lot of questionable thing over the year but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this level of pettiness by the DOJ before and it’s kind of terrifying. We don’t know what they planned to do to the person who ran “Devin Nunes’ Cow” on twitter:
A newly unsealed court filing reveals an attempt by the Justice Department, in the waning days of the Trump administration, to force Twitter to identify the person (or people) behind a parody account that poked fun at Republican congressman and Trump sycophant Devin Nunes (CA). On November 24, 2020, Twitter was served with a subpoena demanding the name of whoever was running @NunesAlt, along with a gag order prohibiting the company from going public about the request.
“After receiving the Subpoena, Twitter’s counsel promptly contacted the Assistant United States Attorney who had issued it,” according to the filing. “Twitter’s counsel explained Congressman Nunes’s history of litigation and the Congressman’s numerous prior attempts to unmask accounts critical of the Congressman.” I
n the past two years, Nunes and his campaign committee have brought no fewer than nine lawsuits against various entities for criticizing him, two of which were other Twitter parodies, @DevinCow and @DevinNunesMom, it continues. “In each of these cases, Congressman Nunes sought damages for what he believes were targeted attacks against his reputation, by being called names such as a ‘treasonous cowpoke’ on Twitter, and sought to unmask anonymous commenters critical of his job as a politician,” the filing says.
The feds tried to tell Twitter that it was looking into “potential violations of 18 U.S.C. Section 875(c) (threatening communications in interstate commerce).” But the government wouldn’t—or couldn’t—provide any examples or further information.
In response, Twitter argued, “As the custodian entrusted with the private identifying information that the government seeks, Twitter is concerned the Subpoena may not be supported by a legitimate law enforcement purpose, and that therefore, there cannot be any need—let alone a compelling need—for the government to unmask the user.”
Right wing caterwauling that they’ve been censored is simply nonsense. In this case, Big Tech actually held the line against Trump’s corrupt DOJ which was the right thing to do. The fact that they tried this is just more evidence that they are being self-serving in their complaints.
This is not to say that Big Tech doesn’t need to be regulated whether by anti-trust or some other means, of course. But taking the right seriously on this is a folly.