Twitter takes US government to court over anti-Trump account

Microblogging site Twitter is set to bring legal action against the US government after demands from the administration to identify the owner of an account which was critical of President Donald Trump.

Twitter user @ALT_uscis has posted a series of tweets criticising Trump’s immigration policies since he took over the Oval Office in January, and has claimed it is run by employees of the employees of the federal government’s Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The social media company has argued that the administration’s request was an attack against free speech.

"The rights of free speech afforded Twitter's users and Twitter itself under the First Amendment of the US Constitution include a right to disseminate such anonymous or pseudonymous political speech,” the company argued.

Twitter’s statement added that it should not be required "to disclose information regarding the real identities of these users without first demonstrating that some criminal or civil offense has been committed".

The government made the request to hand over the information by 13 March, but Twitter did not receive it until the day after the deadline.

The company led by Jack Dorsey has consistently remained strong against government demands to hand over information, previously suing the Department of Justice in 2014 after it sought permission to access details from users.