Twitter sues U.S. Justice Dept for right to reveal surveillance requests

Twitter, the world’s largest microblogging platform, on Tuesday sued the U.S. government, alleging that the Justice Department’s restrictions on what the company can say publicly about the government’s national security requests for user data violate the firm’s First Amendment rights. With its lawsuit, the San Francisco-based firm is seeking to go further than five other technology companies that earlier this year reached a settlement with the government on the permissible scope of disclosure at a time of heightened concern about the scale of government surveillance. Tech firms may now report the numbers of requests they receive from the government in broad bands - such as zero to 999, for instance. But Twitter wants to be able to disclose the exact number of national-security-related orders received in any particular category - including zero, if that is the case.

It’s our belief that we are entitled under the First Amendment to respond to our users’ concerns and to the statements of U.S. government officials by providing information about the scope of U.S. government surveillance - including what types of legal process have not been received.

Twitter vice president Ben Lee

Twitter’s complaint states that the company wants to report data in a way that reflects the “limited scope” of U.S. government surveillance of Twitter accounts. Unlike e-mail and phone communications, most Twitter posts are public. But unlike large e-mail providers, Twitter does not receive huge numbers of requests. The Justice Department said it was reviewing Twitter’s complaint. Government officials also have said that as the FBI and National Security Agency are seeking to defend the country from real security threats, the more that the world knows about their sources and methods, the greater the risk of losing capabilities. They have pointed to efforts to be more transparent, including their release of thousands of pages of redacted court and government documents pertaining to NSA surveillance programs.

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