Twitter reports a surge in government data requests

Twitter on Monday released its twice-yearly transparency report, showing a surge in government requests for users' Twitter information.

The report, which discloses the frequency with which government agencies from around the world ask Twitter to hand over data on specific users, said total requests rose by 40 percent, to about 2,871, compared with the company’s last report, in July. The latest requests came from more than 50 countries.

Since Google first began disclosing such government requests for data four years ago, many major tech companies, including Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft have followed suit.

"These reports shine a light on government requests for customers' information," Jeremy Kessel, senior manager of global legal policy at Twitter, said in a company blog post. "Providing this insight is simply the right thing to do, especially in an age of increasing concerns about government surveillance."

The most requests for Twitter, according to the company's latest report, came from the government of Turkey, which has often clashed with the microblogging company.

In 2014, anonymous Twitter users posted leaked recordings to Twitter that implicated Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country's prime minister, in sweeping corruption allegations just weeks before local elections were to be held. Mr Erdogan was able to block the service throughout Turkey for a time, before the nationwide ban was deemed unconstitutional.

Twitter said it did not comply with any of Turkey's requests for user data. Transparency reports gained more attention after Edward J. Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, leaked a cache of sensitive documents detailing the government agency's surveillance operations both at home and abroad. Technology companies were top targets of NSA interest.

Tech companies have fought to ease strict laws that prohibit the firms from detailing the number of national security letters, a kind of subpoena that the FBI can issue without court oversight, and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court requests they have received. Previously, these companies were not able to even acknowledge they had received these requests at all.

Last year, a coalition of tech companies including Apple, Google and Facebook, known as Reform Government Surveillance, reached a settlement with the Department of Justice, allowing tech companies to disclose how many data requests they have received from the government in groups of 1,000.

Twitter, however, did not participate in that agreement, and has gone one step further. In October, Twitter sued the American government in an effort to provide more detail about the data requests the company received from government officials.

"We've tried to achieve the level of transparency our users deserve without litigation, but to no avail," Ben Lee, a vice president for legal matters at Twitter, said in a company blog post last year. After the lawsuit, the American government publicly filed a redacted version of Twitter's draft transparency report. Though that report remains heavily edited, language Twitter used indicates that the company received a "relatively small number of national security requests," it said, affecting only a few "millionths of one percent" of Twitter's overall users.

“It is important that we be able to share our version of the surveillance story that so many others are trying to tell now,” the company said in its report. “Forcing Twitter to use only government-sanctioned speech is wrong and unlawful. It is harmful to the public’s trust in Twitter, and it violates Twitter’s First Amendment right to free speech.”

- The New York Times News Service