Twitter's Transparency Report reveals its efforts to defend First Amendment rights

Today, the Transparency Report of microblogging company Twitter Inc revealed its plans to seek court approval for more disclosure on government requests. According to a report on TechCrunch, current rules do not allow the company to be as transparent as it wishes to be.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 has been mandating several companies to aid the federal government to conduct physical and electronic surveillance and collection of information that has a likelihood of threatening national security. TechCrunch said companies like Yahoo had been outspoken of their intention to publish information about surveillance requests from the US and other governments, and that Twitter is intending to follow the footsteps of five others who earlier had reached an agreement with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court regarding the disclosure of information requests as per FISA orders.

Twitter Global Legal Policy Manager Jeremy Kessel writes, "These ranges do not provide meaningful or sufficient transparency for the public, especially for entities that do not receive a significant number of - or any - national security requests. For the disclosure of national security requests to be meaningful to our users, it must be within a range that provides sufficient precision to be meaningful. Allowing Twitter, or any other similarly situated company, to only disclose national security requests within an overly broad range seriously undermines the objective of transparency. In addition, we also want the freedom to disclose that we do not receive certain types of requests, if, in fact, we have not received any."

Twitter's latest report also showed that US accounted for a little over half of the government requests in the last six months ending December of last year. Japan tops the number of account information requests by a foreign government at 253 accounts, followed by France at 57. When it comes to removal requests, Twitter's report said France has the highest number of requests at 306 from government agencies and the police, 3 per court orders and 133 tweets withheld.

Tags

Twitter Inc, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, Transparency Report

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