Twitter has called for greater freedom to report government security requests as part of its latest transparency report.
The report discloses only those national security requests that are permitted by the US Department of Justice (DoJ), which Twitter says hampers "meaningful or sufficient transparency for the public".
"Allowing Twitter, or any other similarly situated company, to only disclose national security requests within an overly broad range seriously undermines the objective of transparency," said Jeremy Kessel, Twitter's global legal policy manager in a blogpost.
Twitter's latest transparency report contains two years of data covering government requests for account information as well as copyright associated requests including takedown notices.
Over the last two years requests for account information have increased 66% impacting over 6,400 accounts out of Twitter's 230m active users, and coming from more than 45 different countries. The US government accounted for 59% of the requests.
'Violates our First Amendment right'
The US DoJ recently reached an agreement with various communications companies, including Twitter, to allow the disclosure of national security requests of user data in very large ranges. The disclosure of certain types of requests is still prohibited.
"We think the government’s restriction on our speech not only unfairly impacts our users’ privacy, but also violates our First Amendment right to free expression and open discussion of government affairs," said Kessel.
Twitter believes that transparency on the usage of data and government requests is essential for building and maintaining user trust, as well as defending free speech.
"We have pressed the US Department of Justice to allow greater transparency, and proposed future disclosures concerning national security requests that would be more meaningful to Twitter’s users," said Kessel. "We are also considering legal options we may have to seek to defend our First Amendment rights."
Twitter joins a long line of technology companies railing against government restrictions on the disclosure reports, including Google and Yahoo. Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Yahoo all released transparency reports highlighting US surveillance requests on Monday.
• It was revealed in November 2013 that the US government topped Apple's list of global user data requests
