Twitter sues U.S. Government over user’s data reporting 

The social media giant wants to loosen restrictions on what it is allowed to tell users about government information requests.

Twitter filed a lawsuit against the United States government on Tuesday, seeking to ease restrictions on public disclosures of how often the company receives requests for user data from government agencies.

The suit, which makes Twitter the lone big tech company to continue the disclosure fight with federal agencies, charges that in restricting how often companies like Twitter can inform their members of government requests for personal information, the government is in violation of users’ First Amendment rights.

“We’ve tried to achieve the level of transparency our users deserve without litigation, but to no avail,” said Ben Lee, a vice president for legal matters at Twitter, in a company blog post.

The move is the latest in a long push-and-pull battle between the United States government and the technology companies that hold information on the billions of people who rely upon their services daily.

For years, however, technology companies have been limited by the law as to how much they can publicly disclose to their users about these government requests. That has put companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook in the difficult position of occasionally handing over user data, but not being able to let their members know when doing so.

“Technology companies have an obligation to protect their customers’ sensitive information against overbroad government surveillance, and to be candid with their customers about how their information is being used and shared,” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union. “We hope that other technology companies will now follow Twitter’s lead.”

Source: NYT-Twitter sues U.S. Government over user’s data reporting

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