Twitter today sued the Department of Justice, demanding that the agency allow it to publicly disclose more data about the national security-related requests for data it receives.
"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," Benjamin Lee, vice president of legal at Twitter, wrote in a blog post. "We should be free to do this in a meaningful way, rather than in broad, inexact ranges."
Specifically, Twitter wants permission to disclose more data about the national security letters ("NSLs") and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA") court orders it receives.
In January, the DOJ announced that tech firms could publish information about national security-related requests, but the data must be in ranges of 1,000 or 250, depending on how the information is presented.
Most major tech companies - Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Google - have pushed back and asked for greater transparency. In the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks and accusations of tech company cooperation with the National Security Agency (NSA), these firms argue that they are not fully able to explain themselves if the DOJ restricts the information they can release. The feds, however, argue that being able to release vague data is a good compromise.
Twitter does not agree. The lawsuit asks for permission to publish the full transparency report and for the court "to declare these restrictions on our ability to speak about government surveillance as unconstitutional under the First Amendment," Lee wrote.
Twitter's July transparency report broke down non-national security-related requests for data. Overall, there has been a steady increase in global requests for account information (a 46 percent increase), content removal (up more than 14 percent), and copyright takedowns (a growth of 38 percent).
In the first six months of the year, Twitter counted 2,058 requests for account details submitted by 54 countries—eight of which had not previously submitted requests. During the same timeframe, the social network received 432 requests from 31 countries to remove content.