WASHINGTON — Twitter on Tuesday sued the U.S. government, alleging that the Justice Department’s restrictions on what the company can say publicly about the government’s national security requests for user data violate the firm’s First Amendment rights.
With its lawsuit, the San Francisco-based microblogging platform is seeking to go further than five other technology companies that earlier this year reached a settlement with the government on the permissible scope of disclosure at a time of heightened concern about the scale of government surveillance.
“We should be free to do this in a meaningful way, rather than in broad, inexact ranges,” said Ben Lee, a Twitter vice president.
Twitter is pressing for the ability to be more candid in its twice-a-year transparency reports than the government has been willing to permit. The government’s position, the complaint said, “forces Twitter either to engage in speech that has been preapproved by government officials or else to refrain from speaking altogether.” The Washington Post
