Albuquerque, New Mexico, November 15, 2021 \u2014 Today Bernalillo County District Attorney Ra\u00fal Torrez filed a Petition to Enforce a Subpoena against Facebook, Inc., after the social media giant repeatedly refused to turn over account information pertaining to members of the New Mexico Civil Guard (NMCG), an extremist militia group that was sued by the District Attorney\u2019s Office for acting as an unlawful police and paramilitary force in violation of New Mexico law.<\/p>\n
This third-party enforcement action was filed against Facebook in San Mateo County, California, after the company repeatedly objected to turning over non-content account information and claimed that the records had been deleted, despite the fact that Facebook designated the New Mexico Civil Guard as a \u201cmilitarized social movement\u201d and an \u201carmed militia movement\u201d in violation of the company\u2019s policy on \u201cDangerous Individuals and Organizations.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cFacebook is asking Congress and the American people to trust it to regulate extremist content on its platform and yet refuses to turn over basic account information about an identified extremist group that used that same platform to recruit, organize and direct its members to engage in unlawful activity,\u201d District Attorney Torrez said. \u201cWe strongly disagree with Facebook\u2019s assertion that the Stored Communications Act shields them from such a request and find it hard to believe that a trillion dollar tech company cannot retrieve account information about a group that the company removed from the platform because of its extremist activities.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEither they have the records and won\u2019t turn them over. Or they permanently destroyed the records, which begs the question of how Facebook intends to prevent members of this extremist group from opening new accounts in the future,\u201d Torrez added. \u201cIf they aren\u2019t maintaining account information on dangerous individuals and organizations, then how can they possibly police extremist content on their platform?\u201d<\/p>\n