Twitter sues government over data transparency requests, Justice Department reviewing its suit

Twitter wants its users to know that it takes requests for data from the government very seriously when it comes to transparency.

And which is why it is suing the government for the right to share data in more granular form while the government itself would like for the data requests to be opaque.

In a post, Twitter expressed its views on data request transparency, in writing, “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. We should be free to do this in a meaningful way, rather than in broad, inexact ranges.

What Twitter means to say here is that when the company report the number of court orders and national security letters, it should be able to do so freely, instead of being bound by rules that prevent it from doing so. In fact, if the number of these orders is zero, it wants to be able to report that as well.

However, these opposing stances does not come as a surprise since the US government wants to keep terrorists in the dark while Twitter wants to keep its users informed as to how their information is being used.

This is yet another instance where this debate about the government’s surveillance is impacting the privacy of users and the nation as a whole.

Of course, Google and Microsoft have gone through this process before and won. With the Justice Department reviewing Twitter’s case, let’s hope the result stays the same.