Twitter is
suing the federal government over the Justice Department's essential gag order on the company regarding national security requests for user data. Twitter argues that being prohibited from publicly releasing the exact number of requests it receives is a violation of free speech.
"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," Ben Lee, a Twitter vice president, said in a post online. "We should be free to do this in a meaningful way, rather than in broad, inexact ranges." […]
In its 19-page complaint, Twitter alleged that while the government has spoken extensively on the scope of its national security surveillance activities, it has at the same time gagged companies such as Twitter that wish to respond to the government’s statements or voice their own perspective as recipients of data requests.
The government’s position, the complaint said, "forces Twitter either to engage in speech that has been preapproved by government officials or else to refrain from speaking altogether."
Five other tech companies—Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, LinkedIn and Facebook—had also sued over national security requests, and settled in January, withdrawing their legal challenges. The settlement allows the companies to release national security request information in broad ranges, from zero to 999, for example. But because much of the information passed through Twitter is already public, it doesn't get the same large number of national security queries as the email providers. It argues that it should be able to make that clear to its users.
The company has been in negotiations with the government since April over its transparency report that was to have been issued in July. The FBI refused to allow Twitter to publish the report, concluding "that information contained in the report is classified and cannot be publicly released." The FBI didn't identify what information in the report was classified, and Twitter has had to hold back on releasing it.