Twitter considering 'legal options' for more transparent reporting of govt. snoop-data requests

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ANI Washington
Last Updated : Feb 07 2014 | 12:10 PM IST

Twitter is reportedly considering 'legal options' to defend its First Amendment rights after disclosing its recent transparency report on government requests on snoop-data.

The microblogging site revealed for the first time its country-by-country data on snoop-op requests, which is crucial as 75 percent of its users are outside the US, and indicated that information requests went up by 66 percent in the last two years.

Despite releasing a more detailed report, Twitter is weighing its options to fight for more disclosures to the courts, Tech Crunch reports.

According to the report, a more transparency would mean regaining the lost trust of its users owing to the infamous NSA leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden and help Twitter strengthen its principle of providing 'freedom of speech' on its platform.

Other tech giants, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, have also released their own detailed transparency reports, however, Yahoo is among those who have been mulling to get legal in fighting their argument for more transparency.

Manager of Global Legal Policy, Jeremy Kessel, who introduced the new transparency report, said that the ranges allowed by the federal court to reveal the number of government requests do not provide meaningful or sufficient transparency for the public.

He said that for the disclosure of national security requests to be meaningful to users, it must be within a range that provides sufficient precision to be meaningful, and not undermine transparency, the report added.

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First Published: Feb 07 2014 | 11:57 AM IST

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