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Supreme Court rejects decade-old Twitter First Amendment case
The company, now X, sought greater transparency rights.
In the wake of those disclosures, social networks won the option to report how many demands agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation had made, but — thanks to government nondisclosure requirements — only in extraordinarily broad ranges. Twitter sought to publish the exact number of requests it received within a six-month period, arguing that redactions demanded by the FBI overstepped the First Amendment. In March, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel concluded that “Twitter has a First Amendment interest in commenting on matters of public concern involving national security subpoenas,” but its request “would risk making foreign adversaries aware of what is being surveilled and what is not being surveilled.” The American Civil Liberties Union called the decision “disappointing and dangerous,” arguing that “not only did the panel’s decision conflict with decades of Supreme Court precedent, but its reasoning could enable broad restrictions on speech concerning our interactions with the government.” The company, at that point owned by billionaire Elon Musk, similarly argued to the Supreme Court that this would “substantially erode” previous First Amendment precedents.
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