After providing a clearer picture of the diversity of its workforce last week,Twitter followed up with a regularly scheduled transparency report on Thursday. However, the social network launched the fifth edition of the report lamenting that it hasn’t been able to get anywhere in pushing its agenda for further transparency with government agencies. Jeremy Kessel, senior manager of global legal policy at Twitter, explained further in a blog post how Twitter wants to provide more specificity about different kinds of national security requests, among other metrics.
Twitter has grown increasingly frustrated with U.S. government restrictions barring fuller disclosures in its biannual transparency report, which shows a steady rise in global requests for user information, content removal and copyright takedown. The report, released Thursday, indicates a 46 percent increase in the number of government requests for user information between the first half of 2014 and the second half of 2013. The requests are usually associated with criminal investigations, according to Twitter, and have more than doubled since Twitter released its first transparency report in 2012. While the report is now in its fifth edition, Twitter is still eyeing one area for improvement. “One section in particular has been notably absent from our all of our previous reports, including today’s: our disclosures on national security requests,” said Jeremy Kessel, Twitter’s manager of global legal policy. “Specifically, if the government will not allow us to publish the actual number of requests, we want the freedom to provide that information in much smaller ranges that will be more meaningful to Twitter’s users.”
