Twitter is suing the US government for the right to be transparent

Twitter is sick of US government-imposed secrecy. After months of attempted negotiations, the company has filed a lawsuit on Tuesday, alleging that the restrictions imposed by the government, which regulate what Twitter can publish about national security related surveillance requests, violate its First Amendment rights.

Twitter, the world’s largest microblogging platform, on Tuesday sued the U.S. government, alleging that the Justice Department’s restrictions on what the company can say publicly about the government’s national security requests for user data violate the firm’s First Amendment rights. With its lawsuit, the San Francisco-based firm is seeking to go further than five other technology companies that earlier this year reached a settlement with the government on the permissible scope of disclosure at a time of heightened concern about the scale of government surveillance.