<i>The government’s position, the complaint said, “forces Twitter either to engage in speech that has been preapproved by government officials or else to refrain from speaking altogether.”</i><p>Isn't that the definition of censorship? I'm surprised they don't actually use that word in the lawsuit: <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/r/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/10/07/National-Security/Graphics/Complaintnew.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/r/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/201...</a>
Back when I was in 8th grade, there was a guy who claimed he had a girlfriend. She lived in [two towns over]. But no one believed him because they never saw her. Never got her last name. There were just claims that "she's from [town], and she's awesome".<p>I have the same reaction to the national security theatre that we're always presented with from classified space. "Trust us there's a real threat, but you don't know about it because it's classified". They can't tell us anything about their 'constant' and 'heroic' efforts to save us from the evil monster redacted. There's no evidence presented to me.<p>On the other hand, the real bad guys are constantly doing stuff to get in the news. So the only conclusion I have is 'national security' is the bureaucratic way of saying "my girlfriend lives two towns over".
I've never really understood why companies aren't able to disclose these numbers. It tells the public nothing about specific investigations.<p>To me - it seems like the government has chosen to draw the line in the sand so far beyond where it should be, to avoid having the actual debate over corporate disclosure of more-specific information.
This eminently reasonable - Basically all Twitter wants to say is we have received X requests of Y type. Right now they are restricted to broad categories 0-999, between 6 & 8 thousand etc.<p>I thought they were going farther - that they wanted a per account notification ability; not the case.
I'm curious as to what would actually happen if Twitter just decided to release the exact numbers. Would they be slapped with a fine? What if they didn't pay the fine? Would they be forced to be shut down? People would not tolerate that one bit.
If I understand correctly, companies cannot say "we have received X (let's say 9) requests".<p>So, is it possible for them to say "We have NOT received 8 or 10 requests"? This clearly doesn't say how many they have received but gives a clue that they might have received 9.<p>Please ignore me if this is silly.
I think this is the first time I've seen the phrase "post Edward Snowden world", used like "post 9-11 world" has been for the last decade-plus.<p>I hope that catches on.<p>Edit: can't believe I got the name wrong. Fixed.
For companies like Twitter, being based in the US seems to have become something of a liability. There's Google, Apple, et al attempting to quell international concerns with promises of better encryption... I wouldn't be surprised if one of them just up and moves their operation overseas. After all, some of the up-and-coming open-source competition is a decentralized, globally distributed organization and not under the thumb of any nation state per se. They have the luxury, I think, of cherry picking the best privacy and security policies, and can open the kimono on their source code to prove it.
Twitter is a medium at the forefront of democracy movements worldwide. If there were any site worth standing down surveillance in pursuit of a larger foreign policy goal then I would have thought Twitter would be that site. Instead, I'm now imagining young staffers at various US agencies squirming with dumb chills as senior policy makers articulate Twitter's threat to US national security or law enforcement objectives. On the other hand, I'm hopeful these stupid decisions lead to a new generation of US policy makers who will learn something from their bosses mistakes.
One thing I don't quite understand - why these companies won't move to other countries with better privacy? Is it only because of huge bureaucratic and logistical effort that would be required, or are there some laws which prevent "emigration" of companies, or is it that they would have to provide such data anyway, if they want to operate in US too (but then at least people in other countries would be beyond US gov's harassment)?
Don't be surprised that the government prevails and the first amendment is furthermore whittled away at in an every increasing desire for our government to prove it's illegitimacy.
While this is a valiant cause, I don't know what this buys Twitter in the long run. If they have the ability to disclose exact numbers, the only number that would really have any impact is 0. It would be interesting to know what, if any, this number would have on their business.