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February 6, 2014 08:43 pm GMT

As Twitter Releases New Transparency Report, Its Considering Legal Options To Defend First Amendment Rights

twitter-appTwitter today has published its latestTransparency Report, a list of information and takedown requests, as well as copyright notices. The report breaks out for the first time how Twitter is faring on a country-by-country basis — useful considering that these days some 75% of its users are outside the U.S. — and indicates that information requests are up by 66% in the last two years. But Twitter is also using the release to drive home a point it’s been making for some time now: current rules do not allow Twitter to be as transparent as it would like to be. Twitter says that it is weighing up taking its fight for more disclosure to the courts. “We areconsidering legal options we may have to seek to defend our First Amendment rights,”Jeremy Kessel,Manager, Global Legal Policy, writes in a blog post introducing the new Transparency Report.It comes on theheels of Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Yahoo and Microsoftlast week revealing data about its own NSA information requests. The importance of more transparency is two-fold for Twitter. First, the company has been a strong defender of freedom of speech and how it might apply to user-created content on its platform. In certain scenarios, where instances of bullying have been exposed, it’s been hands-off almost to a fault. So there is a matter of principle for the company here. Second, there is an issue of trust here. Allowing a users’ account information and content to be accessed and potentially used by third parties, and not be disclosed to other users, is a slippery slope that undermines Twitter’s relationship with users. Yesterday’s quarterly earnings (Twitter’s first as a public company) pointed to how the company has to pick up the pace with user growth (something the market continues topunishit for today); backdoor tactics by others certainly will do nothing to help that proposition. Twitter would not be the first to get legal: Yahoo is among those who have been outspoken on this point. Some might argue that this has played a part in the agreement reached between the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the five larger internet companies over how to disclose in aggregate information about FISA orders). While there have definitely been some moves made by the U.S. Department of Justice to allow for more disclosure on government requests, it doesn’t go far enough to be relevant to companies like Twitter, the company believes. “These

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