Twitter Inc will not be able to reveal surveillance requests it received from the U.S. government after a federal judge accepted government arguments that this was likely to harm national security, after a near six-year long legal battle. 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. Twitter had sued the Justice Department in its battle with federal agencies as the internet industry's self-described champion of free speech seeking the right to reveal the extent of U.S. government surveillance. Twitter's legal battle spanned the tenures of four U.S. 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 Hindu April 18, 2020 10:05 UTC