HomeFeatureTwitter Sues FBI, Believes Full Surveillance Reports Be Published admin Thursday, October 9, 2014 Feature, Technology, The Receipt The Twitter team got balls!! Over the past few years, the Department of Justice and FBI have cracked down on social media companies for user information. Companies like Yahoo!, Facebook, and LinkedIn all agreed to turn over private user information, if requested by the FBI. However, as a compromise, each company is allowed to notify their users on how often they are required to turn over user information. But, Twitter says “hold up” wait just a minute! The social media company filed a lawsuit Tuesday in a California federal court to publish its full “transparency report,” which documents government requests for user information. Twitter Inc. published a surveillance report in July but couldn’t include the exact number of national security requests it received because Internet companies are prohibited from disclosing that information, even if they didn’t get any requests. The San Francisco-based company said in a blog post that it believes it’s 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.” The U.S. government has been able to access phone networks and high-speed Internet traffic for years to catch suspected criminals and terrorists. The FBI also started pushing technology companies like Google, Skype and others to guarantee access to their data streams and grab emails, video chats, pictures and more. It recently emerged that Yahoo was threatened with a daily fine of $250,000 by the U.S. government if it didn’t comply with demands to give up information on its users. A secret 2007 lawsuit and subsequent appeal was ultimately unsuccessful, the company said last month after a federal judge ordered some material about the court challenge to be unsealed. Read more… Although user information is only given to the Feds if given a court order, this is still some crazy “Big Brother is Watching” type stuff. This is why it is important to not put all your business out on these social networks. You never know who’s watching or handing over your information.
