Twitter to Continue Fight for Transparency
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fazon1/iStock Editorial/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Twitter says it will “continue to look for comprehensive reform of government surveillance powers” while fighting to release a complete transparency report regarding the surveillance of Twitter users by the U.S. government.
In a post to the Twitter blog, the company’s Vice President of Legal, Ben Lee, wrote that the company filed a lawsuit in federal court that would allow them to publish the full version of a transparency report released over the summer. Lee said that the company’s “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 and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court orders received — even if that number is zero.”
Twitter, believing that it has First Amendment rights, hopes the court order will allow the company 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.”
“We should be free to do this in a meaningful way, rather that in broad, inexact ranges,” Lee wrote.
Lee says the company has “tried to achieve the level of transparency our users deserve without litigation, but to no avail.”
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