US Department of Justice Demands Account Details of Facebook Users who ‘Liked’ Anti-Trump Pages

Washington, September 29, 2017 : The Department of Justice has obtained court orders that could reveal data about a huge number of individuals who extended support to a resistance page on Facebook. The search warrants would allow government lawyers to access Facebook accounts operated by protesters against American president Donald Trump.

The Department of Justice has sought orders to acquire the passwords, personal messages, comments, status updates, photos and additionally, the deleted posts of two individual activists – Lacy MacAuley and Legba Carrefour, along with information about over 6,000 users who 'liked' an anti-Trump page on Facebook.

One of the three warrants was issued for the DisruptJ20 Facebook page, which organized protests upon President Trump's inauguration.

The administration claims it needs the information in connection to an examination concerning and persecution of activists captured in Washington DC as President Trump was confirmed as President on 20 January 2017. Thus, it has asked for data between November 2, seven days before the presidential decision, and February 9.

While the Facebook page is open to the public, executive Emmelia Talarico was quoted by CNN as saying that the Trump organization would have the capacity to get to the "private lists of invitees and attendees to multiple political events sponsored by the page" if details of the account are turned over.

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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is fighting the warrants in court, described the requests as "a gross invasion of privacy".

Lacy MacAuley also asserted that the page had details of her personal life and of people associated with it that the federal government need not know. "The primary purpose of the Fourth Amendment was to prevent this type of exploratory rummaging through a person's private information" she said.

At the moment, none of the three activists in question have been charged with any offence in relation to Inauguration Day.

Previously, the Department of Justice had also attempted to arrange a web-host supplier to reveal the the IP addresses of 1.3 million individuals who went to the DisruptJ20.org site. However, this was quashed by Dream Host, the web facilitating organization.

– prepared by Soha Kala of NewsGram. Twitter : SohaKala