Twitte­r will not be able to reveal survei­llance reques­ts it receiv­ed from the US govern­mentTwitter will not be able to reveal surveillance requests it received from the US government after a federal judge accepted government arguments that this was likely to harm national security after a nearly six-year-long legal battle. The social media company had sued the US Department of Justice in 2014 to be allowed to reveal, as part of its “Draft Transparency Report”, the surveillance requests it received. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers granted the government’s request to dismiss Twitter’s lawsuit in an eleven-page order filed in the US District Court for Northern California. Twitter’s legal battle spanned the tenures of four US attorneys general – Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Jeff Sessions, and William Barr. 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.

Source: The Express Tribune April 18, 2020 08:15 UTC