Name: EFF and ACLU Ask Ninth Circuit to Overturn Government’s Censorship of Twitter’s Transparency Report
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EFF and ACLU Ask Ninth Circuit to Overturn Government’s Censorship of Twitter’s Transparency Report

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Email updates on news, actions,and events in your area.DEEPLINKS BLOGShare ItCiting national security concerns, the government is attempting to infringe on Twitter's First Amendment right to inform the public about secret government surveillance orders. For more than six years, Twitter has been fighting in court to share information about law enforcement orders it received in 2014. Now, Twitter has brought that fight to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. EFF, along with the ACLU, filed an last week to underscore the First Amendment rights at stake.In 2014, Twitter submitted a draft transparency report to the FBI to review. The FBI censored the report, banning Twitter from sharing the total number of foreign intelligence surveillance orders the government had served within a six-month period. In response, Twitter filed suit in order to assert its First Amendment right to share that information.Over half a decade of litigation later, the trial court judge in April by dismissing Twitter’s First Amendment claim. Among the , the judge spent devoted only a to analyzing Twitter’s First Amendment right to inform the public about law enforcement orders for its users’ information.That single paragraph was not only perfunctory, but incorrect. The lower court failed to recognize one of the most basic rules underpinning the right to free speech in this country: the government must meet an extraordinarily exacting burden in order to censor speech before that speech occurs, which the Supreme Court has called “the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.”As we explained in our amicus brief, to pass constitutional scrutiny, the government must prove that silencing speech before it occurs is necessary to avoid harm that is not only extremely serious but is also imminent and irreparable. But the lower court judge concluded that censoring Twitter’s speech was acceptable without finding that any resulting harm to national security would be either imminent or irreparable. Nor did the judge address whether the censorship was actually necessary, and whether less-restrictive alternatives could mitigate the potential for harm.This cursory analysis was a far cry from the extraordinarily exacting scrutiny that the First Amendment requires. We hope that the hope that the Ninth Circuit will say the same.Share ItHow transparent are police about surveillance technology? It depends on where you look. When it comes to acceptable levels of secrecy around police tools, states have drawn their lines in very different places, resulting in some communities where it is much harder for the public to know what invasive tools...By unanimous vote, San Francisco's public records appeals body ruled last night that the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) violated state and local laws when it failed to respond adequately to EFF's requests for documents about face recognition and the department's relationship with the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC),...Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter highlights the risks to human rights and personal safety when any single person has complete control over policies affecting almost 400 million users. And in this case, that person has repeatedly demonstrated that they do not understand the realities of platform policy at scale.EFF and the the are seeking to unseal a host of court records documenting a patent dispute between Google and Uniloc, a prolific patent litigant.Secrecy pervades the entire record in Uniloc v. Google. When Google filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the parties...Democracy means allowing everyday people to have their voices heard on public matters involving their communities. One of the goals of civic technology is to allow a more diverse group of people to have input on government affairs through the use of technology and the internet. Beth Noveck, author of...SAN FRANCISCO—As part of its ongoing work to ensure that people can know and understand the laws they live under, , a nonprofit organization, on Thursday vindicated its ability to publicly post important laws online in standard formats, free of copy protections and cumbersome user interfaces.The win for Public...EFF is suing the Department of Homeland Security for transparency into its social media surveillance program targeting visa applicants.Each year during Sunshine Week (March 13-19), The Foilies serve up tongue-in-cheek "awards" for government agencies and assorted institutions that stand in the way of access to information. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock combine forces to collect horror stories about Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and state-level public records...For more than three years, EFF has been to court records in a patent case between Uniloc, one of the world’s most prolific patent trolls, and Apple, one of the world’s biggest tech companies. The district court has ruled three different times that the public...Over the last few years, technology platforms have . In one example of this, technology companies have refused to host speech by Palestinian activist Leila Khaled. Khaled is associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group on...Share It

Email updates on news, actions,and events in your area.DEEPLINKS BLOGShare ItCiting national security concerns, the government is attempting to infringe on Twitter's First Amendment right to inform the public about secret government surveillance orders. For more than six years, Twitter has been fighting in court to share information about law enforcement orders it received in 2014. Now, Twitter has brought that fight to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. EFF, along with the ACLU, filed an last week to underscore the First Amendment rights at stake.In 2014, Twitter submitted a draft...

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Naomi Gilens

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EFF and ACLU Ask Ninth Circuit to Overturn Government’s Censorship of Twitter’s Transparency Report

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