Twitter takes the U.S. government to court over FISA

Steven Loeb · October 7, 2014 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/3999

Twitter has long been unhappy about government policy regarding national security disclosures

Twitter has long made its displeasure known when it comes to the U.S. government's stance on national security requests. The company has even tried to negotiate over what it can, and cannot, release but to no avail. The government simply does not want people to know how many of these requests it makes. 

So now Twitter is taking some very bold action in order to get the policy to change, announcing on Tuesday that it has filed a federal lawsuit against the United States government in order to allow the company to be truly transparent when it comes to government requests.

Ever since the PRISM scandal broke last year, and distrust over the relationship between technology companies and the government has become more and more widespread, transparency reports have become the way for them to be more open with the public. But issues with national security letters (“NSLs”) and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) court orders remained.

Companies, including Facebook, Microsoft and Google, made public declarations that they wanted to release this data, and they were being hung out to dry, given that they had no way to convince their users that they were not simply in the government's pocket. A deal was finally struck between the Department of Justice and major tech companies back in January, which allowed them to reveal that requests were made, but only to provide a broad range. For example, they can give a range of between 000 and 999, which is so wide that it basically tells users nothing.

For Twitter, giving out this type of information is simply not good enough, though, especially since it cannot even tell its users if no data requests were received. To give its users real transparency, the company says that it has to be able to provide actual numbers on what the government is doing.

"Our ability to speak has been restricted by laws that prohibit and even criminalize a service provider like us from disclosing the exact number of national security letters (“NSLs”) and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) court orders received — even if that number is zero," Brian Lee, VP of Legal at Twitter, wrote in a blog post.

"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."

Twitter outlined some of the ways that it attempted to avoidi taking this type of action, including providing a draft Transparency Report addendum to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, "a report which we hoped would provide meaningful transparency for our users."

The government would not even let Twitter publish a redacted version of the report. And so now it has come to this.

"This is an important issue for anyone who believes in a strong First Amendment, and we hope to be able to share our complete Transparency Report," said Lee. 

You can read the filing that Twitter made with the U.S. District Court of Northern California here.

(Image source: mysticpolitics.com)

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What is Twitter?

Twitter is an online information network that allows anyone with an account to post 140 character messages, called tweets. It is free to sign up. Users then follow other accounts which they are interested in, and view the tweets of everyone they follow in their "timeline." Most Twitter accounts are public, where one does not need to approve a request to follow, or need to follow back. This makes Twitter a powerful "one to many" broadcast platform where individuals, companies or organizations can reach millions of followers with a single message. Twitter is accessible from Twitter.com, our mobile website, SMS, our mobile apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, our iPad application, or 3rd party clients built by outside developers using our API. Twitter accounts can also be private, where the owner must approve follower requests. 

Where did the idea for Twitter come from?

Twitter started as an internal project within the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, and engineer, had long been interested in status updates. Jack developed the idea, along with Biz Stone, and the first prototype was built in two weeks in March 2006 and launched publicly in August of 2006. The service grew popular very quickly and it soon made sense for Twitter to move outside of Odea. In May 2007, Twitter Inc was founded.

How is Twitter built?

Our engineering team works with a web application framework called Ruby on Rails. We all work on Apple computers except for testing purposes. 

We built Twitter using Ruby on Rails because it allows us to work quickly and easily--our team likes to deploy features and changes multiple times per day. Rails provides skeleton code frameworks so we don't have to re-invent the wheel every time we want to add something simple like a sign in form or a picture upload feature.

How do you make money from Twitter?

There are a few ways that Twitter makes money. We have licensing deals in place with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft's Bing to give them access to the "firehose" - a stream of tweets so that they can more easily incorporate those tweets into their search results.

In Summer 2010, we launched our Promoted Tweets product. Promoted Tweets are a special kind of tweet which appear at the top of search results within Twitter.com, if a company has bid on that keyword. Unlike search results in search engines, Promoted Tweets are normal tweets from a business, so they are as interactive as any other tweet - you can @reply, favorite or retweet a Promoted Tweet. 

At the same time, we launched Promoted Trends, where companies can place a trend (clearly marked Promoted) within Twitter's Trending Topics. These are especially effective for upcoming launches, like a movie or album release.

Lastly, we started a Twitter account called @earlybird where we partner with other companies to provide users with a special, short-term deal. For example, we partnered with Virgin America for a special day of fares on Virginamerica.com that were only accessible through the link in the @earlybird tweet.

 

What's next for Twitter?

We continue to focus on building a product that provides value for users. 

We're building Twitter, Inc into a successful, revenue-generating company that attracts world-class talent with an inspiring culture and attitude towards doing business.

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