Twitter Sues the Government to Disclose More About Spying

Twitter announced Tuesday that it is suing the Justice Department and the FBI on grounds that restrictions placed on its ability to disclose information about government surveillance orders violate the First Amendment. "As part of our latest transparency report released in July, we described how we were being prohibited from reporting on the actual scope of surveillance of Twitter users by the U.S. government," wrote Ben Lee, a Twitter vice president, in a blog post. "Our ability to speak has been restricted by laws that prohibit and even criminalize a service provider like us from disclosing the exact number of national security letters ("NSLs") and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA") court orders received—even if that number is zero."  Twitter's decision to file a lawsuit in federal court in California breaks from five technology companies that earlier this year brokered an agreement with the government permitting them to reveal more details about the data requests they receive from intelligence agencies. That agreement—made with Google, Microsoft, and others—allows Internet companies to publicly report requests they receive, but only within broad ranges, such as bands of 1,000. Even if a company received zero requests under a certain surveillance order, for example, the disclosure could only read as 0 to 999. Those relaxed restraints have been regularly criticized by some tech companies, including Twitter, and transparency advocates as not going far enough. In its lawsuit, the social-media giant is seeking to have those restraints ruled unconstitutional...more