Twitter Is Suing The U.S. Government
Ben Lee, vice president of Twitter's legal department, took to the Twitter blog on Tuesday to reveal that the company is suing the U.S. Government (pdf) in the U.S. District Court of Northern California. The news follows the company's transparency report released back in July, which did not reveal the real size of the U.S. government's surveillance of Twitter users.
"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," Lee said.
According to the complaint, the government "engages in extensive but incomplete speech" regarding the actual size of its activities as they pertain to communications providers in the United States. Meanwhile, service providers like Twitter are not allowed to provide their own "informed perspective as potential recipients of various national security-related requests."
The lawsuit seems centered around a draft Transparency Report that was submitted to the government around April 1, 2014. Five months after the submittal, the government said that the document contained classified information that cannot be publicly released. Why? Because releasing this information does not comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
The complaint filed in the California court alleges that the government forces Twitter to engage in preapproved speech or forces the social network to refrain from speaking altogether. The complaint also states that discussions of the actual surveillance on Twitter is being "unconstitutionally restricted."
"In fact, the U.S. government has taken the position that service providers like Twitter are even prohibited from saying that they have received zero national security requests, or zero of a particular type of national security request," the complaint said.
Lee said that Twitter has been in negotiations with the government to be more transparent, but so far those attempts have failed. "After many months of discussions, we were unable to convince them to allow us to publish even a redacted version of the report," he wrote, referring to the April document.
Should all service providers have the right of full disclosure in their Transparency Reports? Is there a violation of the First Amendment here? Is the government right in forcing service providers to withhold certain information? Lee commented that this is an important issue for anyone who believes in a strong First Amendment.
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Except the FISA ammendment to allow this was signed into law during the bush years.......
#Dumbandbrainwashed
Except the FISA ammendment to allow this was signed into law during the bush years.......
#Dumbandbrainwashed
as an american i don't care because this applies to A) foreigners B) abroad aka outside america. once you leave american borders and your a foreigner, it's fair game. i don't care where the tweets are made once they are outside of the united states, fair game unless you are an american. the constitution is the establishment of and rules against the government, not against we the people, not against businesses.
I'm on Twitter's side, though.
The system seemed to be working just fine. It was the government that wasn't.
Who is the NSA to say that they are doing the right thing by spying on all of us anyways? Even if there are people in the NSA who believe they are doing the right thing, there are always going to be people who are willing to take advantage and exploit this system.
I feel bad for Twitter stepping up to the government like this. Apparently back in '08, Yahoo denied the government access to user data. In response to this, the government said that they will fine them $200,000 a day and the amount will double each week. That is pretty much a corporate death sentence and Yahoo backed down and caved in I believe but have only now just been allowed to talk about it.
To succinctly sum up what is going on; the US government is a bunch of bullies who feel that they have some self appointed duty to 'protect their country' by spying on humanity and someone is calling them out on it.
The root question which the largest number of people do not truly know the answer to:
Where does money come from?