Twitter has released two letters sent by the FBI to the company, asking for confidential users' data. The revelation has been made following the expiry of a gag order imposed on the microblogging website. The letters were sent in September 2015 and June 2016.
Twitter issued a statement saying that the company was prohibited from notifying the concerned accounts. It was also barred from publicly disclosing the existence of such notice.
The letters asked Twitter to reveal the "name, address, length of service, and electronic communications transactional records for all services, as well as all accounts," related to the concerned accounts. The communications further ordered Twitter not to "disable, suspend, lock, cancel or interrupt service" to these accounts.
Elizabeth Banker, associate general counsel for global law enforcement at Twitter, stated in a blog post that Twitter continues "to believe that reporting in government-mandated bands does not provide meaningful transparency to the public or those using our service."
Twitter is not the only company served with gag orders. Various organizations including Google, the Internet Archive, and Cloudflare have also been subjected to similar orders. Google shared similar National Security Letters in December last year. The company had contested the gag orders in a court case. A similar revelation was made by Yahoo as well.
Twitter also stated that it is not satisfied with the restrictions imposed on its right to have an open conversation about such national security requests received by it. The company currently has a court case for seeking transparency in this matter. The next hearing for the case is scheduled for February 14.
The microblogging site explained that it offers a very limited set of data in response to such requests. Following the lifting of gag order, Twitter shared the details of the orders and the account data revealed to the FBI.