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National security concerns just won out over Twitter's attempt to be transparent about surveillance:
Six years ago, Twitter sued the US government in an attempt to detail surveillance requests the company had received, but a federal judge on Friday ruled in favor of the government's case that detailing the requests would jeopardize the country's safety.
If Twitter revealed the number of surveillance requests it received each calendar quarter, it "would be likely to lead to grave or imminent harm to the national security," US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers concluded after reviewing classified information from the government. See below for the full ruling.
"While we are disappointed with the court's decision, we will continue to fight for transparency," Twitter said in a statement Saturday.
(Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Tuesday April 21 2020, @12:41AM (2 children)
So, they're not going to take this to the supreme court?
Or did they already take it to the top court, so secret we can't know what was discussed, and far more top than the Supreme court?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 21 2020, @10:18AM
I think appeals in the secret court system are handled by your jailers. You might appeal for extra pudding with dinner, or some such, but you're not going to get it.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 21 2020, @01:39PM
Every single one of the secrets I enumerated (using strong static typing) has been a public scandal in the last 20 years.
There were arguments over having secret laws and secret interpretations of laws. I remember one of the counter arguments to secret laws were that it people knew about the law, they would avoid the bad behavior that violated the law. So if I knew there was a law against jaywalking, I might not jaywalk. As for secret interpretations, a similar argument was that if the bad guystm knew how the law would be interpreted, they would alter their behavior to evade the laws while still doing bad-thingstm.
It is well known there are secret courts. FISA court, for example. By secret, I mean the mere existence of, if not also the operations of these courts. Thus secret court orders, warrants and trials thus follow.
We already know about secret arrests of people who are black-holed to gitmo or even worse facilities. We know of secret CIA torture. This is the secret convictions, prisons and enhanced interrogation techniques -- which we all know about.
There have been scandals about secret evidence. The prosecution could secretly present their secret evidence. But because the evidence was secret, the defense could not have access to it. Because it is secret! I'm not thinking of Stingray, but this almost falls into the relm of what I'm talking about. I'm thinking about "omg it would reveal sources and methods if the defense knew how we obtained and manufactured this evidence against the defendant!"
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.