Twitter wants to tell users about the National Security Letters and FISA orders it receives in its Transparency Reports

Oct 8, 2014 07:14 GMT  ·  By

Twitter has decided to sue the United States government because of the gag order it has been under regarding the surveillance activities of the NSA and other agencies involving Twitter users.

The company is defending the principles of free speech as the company seeks more transparency, beyond the reports it files every semester.

The case is based on a Transparency Report that Twitter prepared earlier this year and submitted to the FBI on April 1, seeking prepublication review. That in itself, doesn’t sound very well for the company that has been known to stand up for its users’ rights to privacy.

On the other hand, it seems that Twitter was trying to get permission to tell users how many National Security Letters and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act orders the company received from July 1 to December 31, 2013.

The DOJ took its sweet time and replied with an unsurprising “no.” Twitter was informed that the report contained classified information, and therefore could not be released to the public.

Other companies can (sort of) report numbers

Internet companies have been protesting against the rules for a while now, but with little success. The issue is the fact that disclosing information about national security letters is against federal law, prohibited by the Stored Communications Act. While several courts have found this to be unconstitutional, it’s little companies can do to fight against them other than take the government to court over and over again.

Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Yahoo and Microsoft were allowed to publish the number of national securities letters they receive back in January, although they’re none too happy with how things go either. That’s because they can only publish the information in bands of 1,000. This means that if a company gets 2 or 997 letters, they’ll have to report it as “0-999.”

Twitter wants the right to tell its users that they aren’t being used for the massive dragnet operation other companies have been forced to be a part of because it has very small numbers. “While engaging in their own carefully crafted speech on the issue of US government surveillance, US government officials have relied on statutory and other authorities to preclude communication providers from responding to leaks, inaccurate information reported in the media, statements of public officials and related public concerns,” writes Eric Miller, attorney representing Twitter, in the complaint that was filed on Tuesday.

Twitter details its hurdles

In a blog post signed by VP of Legal matters at Twitter, Ben Lee, he states that part of its latest transparency report in July, they’ve described how they were being stopped from reporting on the actual scope of surveillance of Twitter users.

The company complains that its ability to speak has been restricted by laws prohibiting and even criminalizing a service provider from disclosing the number of national security letters and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court orders it receives, even if that number is zero.

“We’ve tried to achieve the level of transparency our users deserve without litigation, but to no avail. In April, we provided a draft Transparency Report addendum to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a report which we hoped would provide meaningful transparency for our users. After many months of discussions, we were unable to convince them to allow us to publish even a redacted version of the report,” Lee writes.

He states that this is an important issue for anyone who believes in a strong First Amendment and the company hopes to be able to share the complete Transparency Report following the lawsuit.