X user’s data scooped up by warrant targeting Trump

Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell’s warrant forced X to hand over user data of accounts that interacted with Trump between October 2020 and January 2021

Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell

A warrant issued by Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell on January 17th, 2023 sought to force X to hand over virtually all data related to Donald Trump’s account. All but 4 of the pages were completely redacted.

However, on 2 of those four pages are demands that ordered the data of users, who in anyway interacted with Trump’s account, be turned over within 10 days of the warrant being issued.

2. All content, records, and other information relating to communications sent from or received by the SUBJECT ACCOUNT from October 2020 to January 2021 including but not limited to:

   1. The content of all tweets created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted by the SUBJECT ACCOUNT (including all such deleted tweets), and all associated multimedia, metadata, and logs,

   2. The content of all direct messages sent from, received by, stored in draft form in, or otherwise associated with the SUBJECT ACCOUNT, including all attachments, multimedia, header information, metadata, and logs,

3. All other content, records, and other information relating to all other interactions between the SUBJECT ACCOUNT and other Twitter users from October 2020 to January 2021, including but not limited to:

   1. All users the SUBJECT ACCOUNT has followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked, and all users who have followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked the SUBJECT ACCOUNT,

   2. All information from the "Connect" or "Notifications" tab for the account, including all lists of Twitter users who have favorited or retweeted tweets posted by the account, as well as all tweets that include the username associated with the account (i.e., "mentions" or "replies"),

   3. All contacts and related sync information, and

   4. All associated logs and metadata,

This is a sweeping breach of privacy of all the users who have interacted with his account.

If it wasn’t clear already, this includes:

• Contacts and sync info

• Associated account logs and metadata

• Interactions with Trump including like, retweets, mentions, and replies

Where is the probable cause for them to seize such a broad amount of user data… mine included?