By Tim Abel
Lawyers for the Trump
administration have served Facebook
with three separate search warrants, demanding the private account
information of users who could be described in their words as “anti-administration activists who have
spoken out at organized events, and who are generally very critical of this
administration’s policies.”
Read: Trump critics,
and this has the potential to affect thousands of Facebook users.
Fortunately, the American Civil Liberties
Union filed a motion to quash the warrants on Thursday on behalf of three
Facebook users.
“What is particularly chilling about these warrants is that
anti-administration political activists are going to have their political
associations and views scrutinized by the very administration they are
protesting,” said ACLU attorney Scott Michelman.
If the search warrants are passed and Facebook is required to
hand over the information, the government would have access to the identities
of the estimated 6,000 users who visited the page.
Talarico says if her account information were given to the
government, officials would have access to her “personal passwords, security
questions and answers, and credit card information,” plus “the private lists of
invitees and attendees to multiple political events sponsored by the page.”
Facebook was first served
the warrants back in February and they came with a gag order preventing the
social media giant from alerting the three users in question about the
government seeking their personal information.
Michelman claims that government attorneys dropped the gag order
earlier this month, allowing Facebook to expose the existence of the warrants,
however, all court filings and any response from Facebook are still deemed confidential.
The warrants also seek the
personal information from the accounts of Lacy MacAuley and Legba
Carrefour.
Carrefour, a self-described political activist, acknowledges that he
has “participated in or helped to organize dozens of demonstrations and
events of various types in service of political causes,” but is also concerned
about the warrants because his Facebook account “contains a significant
amount of private material concerning my personal life.”
Author Tim Abel is a former English teacher from Australia who currently
lives in Singapore and spends a lot of time traveling the world for his wife's
work. Besides covering political news for Addicting Info, he also writes his
own blog, drtanstravels.com
