Ride the Lightning

Twitter Sues Government Over Right to Disclose Requests for Data

October 13, 2014

Twitter filed a very ballsy lawsuit last Monday in a federal court in northern California, contending that its First Amendment rights are violated by government restrictions prohibiting the disclosure of how many national security letters and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court orders it receives. While the government permits some reporting in broad ranges, it hardly permits meaningful transparency and even criminalizes revealing exact data.

Take a look at the blog post by Twitter vice president Ben Lee. It reads in part:

"We’ve tried to achieve the level of transparency our users deserve without litigation, but to no avail. In April, we provided a draft Transparency Report addendum to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a report which we hoped would provide meaningful transparency for our users. After many months of discussions, we were unable to convince them to allow us to publish even a redacted version of the report.

Meanwhile, we continue to look for comprehensive reform of government surveillance powers in the U.S., and we support meaningful efforts such as the USA Freedom Act of 2014 as introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), which would allow companies like Twitter to provide more transparency to its users."

The complaint may be found here.

I salute Twitter for its courage and determination in pursuing legal action. May others follow.

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