Court Does Not Allow Twitter Disclose Government Surveillance Requests
A federal judge accepted a U.S. government request to stop Twitter from revealing surveillance requests.
The social media company had sued the U.S. Department of Justice in 2014 to be allowed to reveal, as part of its “Draft Transparency Report”, the surveillance requests it received.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers granted the government’s request to dismiss Twitter’s lawsuit in an eleven page order filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California.
The judge ruled on Friday that granting Twitter’s request “would be likely to lead to grave or imminent harm to the national security.”
“The Government’s motion for summary judgment is GRANTED and Twitter’s motion for summary judgment is DENIED”, the judge said in her order.
Through the use of confidential declarations, the Justice Department was able to show that revealing the exact number of national security letters from 2014, as requested by Twitter, posed a risk to national security, Friday’s order said.