Twitter sues US federal agencies in attempt to remove the gag around surveillance by Lisa Vaas.
From the post:
Twitter doesn’t want its transparency report to be fuzzy to the point of meaninglessness, full of “broad, inexact ranges” about how many times the US government has shaken the company down in its surveillance operations, it says – for example, by counting them to the nearest thousand.
So on Tuesday, Twitter sued the Feds over the surveillance laws they’re using to gag it.
Twitter’s lawyer, Ben Lee, said in a post that First Amendment rights should allow the company to be crystal clear about the actual scope of surveillance of Twitter users by the US, as opposed to the current state of affairs, where companies such as Twitter are bound by laws that punish them for disclosing requests for information.
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Lisa has links to the court documents and mentions that Twitter isn’t standing alone against government surveillance:
Both Apple and Google announced in September new mobile phone encryption policies meant to thwart government attempts to get at user data – a move that’s sparked hand-wringing on the part of multiple government officials.
Other US tech companies, including Microsoft, Facebook, Dropbox, and, again, Google, have been fighting government demands for user data in other ways, including attempting to convince the Senate to reform government surveillance.
The “hand-wringing” Lisa mentions is a measure of the technical illiteracy of government policy makers. New mobile phone policies will make secure voice marginally easier for the average user, but even the semi-literate have had access to secure voice for years, see: PRISM-proof your phone with these encrypted apps and services.
Support technology company opposition to government surveillance at every opportunity.