Twitter Threatens To Slap Obama Administration With Lawsuit Over Gov’t Surveillance Requests

(Before It's News)

WASHINGTON (CBS DC) – Twitter is prepared to sue the Obama administration for the right to disclose more detailed information on surveillance requests it receives from the government.

A Thursday blog post from the social media company’s global legal policy chief, Jeremy Kessel, states that privacy and transparency with Twitter customers is eroded by restrictions put on how much information they can disclose on government requests for information.

This comes as fellow tech companies Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Yahoo agreed on a deal with the Justice Department to disclose when Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and other national security notices force the companies to turn over information on their users.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper jointly stated that some previously classified national security data could be disclosed.

“While this aggregate data was properly classified until today, the office of the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with other departments and agencies, has determined that the public interest in disclosing this information now outweighs the national security concerns that required its classification,” Holder and Clapper said.

But the agreement limits the companies to reporting what Twitter labeled “overly broad” ranges of 250 – 1,000 depending on the national security requests.

Twitter contends that the range is insufficient and undermines transparency to their customers.

“These ranges do not provide meaningful or sufficient transparency for the public, especially for entities that do not receive a significant number of – or any – national security requests,” Kessel writes. “For the disclosure of national security requests to be meaningful to our users, it must be within a range that provides sufficient precision to be meaningful.”

READ MORE: http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/02/06/twitter-threatens-to-sue-obama-administration-over-govt-surveillance-requests/

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