Commentary

Twitter Escalates Battle With U.S. Intelligence Agencies

Twitter has been battling the federal government over its national security policies since at least 2014, when the company sued for the right to disclose information about the "National Security Letters" that it receives from the government.

The authorities send those letters to companies like Twitter in order to obtain information about their users. Twitter contends that it has a free-speech right to disclose information about the letters.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected Twitter's free speech argument, ruling that companies have no right to disclose "classified national security information."

Rogers gave the company until May 24 to attempt to revise its allegations and try again.

In the meantime, the company appears to be escalating its conflict with intelligence officials: Twitter has told Dataminr to stop providing information to U.S. intelligence agencies, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Dataminr examines real-time information on social media sites and then provides analyses to media organizations, government agencies and the financial industry, among others. Twitter, which owns 5% of the company, gives it access to all public tweets via a firehose.

The Journal adds that Dataminr, valued at $700 million, uses "sophisticated algorithms and geolocation tools to unearth relevant patterns."

For its part, Twitter says it never authorized outside companies to sell data to an intelligence agency for surveillance purposes, according to Ars Technica.

The intelligence community hopes Twitter will reconsider, according to the Journal. “If Twitter continues to sell this [data] to the private sector, but denies the government, that’s hypocritical,” John Inglis, a former deputy director of the National Security Agency, reportedly said.

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