Twitter Admits to Increased Demand by Federal Government for Information on Journalists and News Outlets — US Government Tops the List

Twitter reported a massive increase in government legal demands for information on journalists and news outlets.

According to the social media company, governments worldwide have made 47,572 demands on 198,931 accounts — and the United States accounted for 20 percent of all global requests.

The United States government made the most requests out of any in the world.

“We continue to see a concerning trend toward attempts to limit global press freedom, with an increase in government legal demands targeting journalists, as well as an overall increasing number of legal demands on accounts – both represent record highs since reporting began,” Twitter wrote in a blog post.

The latest numbers represent an increase of 103 percent in legal demands from governments targeting verified journalists and news outlets since the last reporting period.

In fact, it represents the most demands they have seen in the last ten years.

The company says that they “narrowed (meaning we disclosed some information but not all information demanded in the request) or did not disclose any information in response to 60% of global government information requests.”

However, when responding to the US government, the company says that they complied, in whole or in part, with 69 percent of the information requests.

Twitter says that they have “objected to 29 US civil requests for account information that sought to unmask the identities of anonymous speakers.”

Of those 29 requests, Twitter filed lawsuits over two of the cases. They succeeded in convincing the court to apply First Amendment protections to one of the users, and the other case remains pending.

“This update comes at a time when government requests for account information and content removal continually hit new records, including demands to reveal the identity of anonymous account owners,” the report explains.

The post continued, “this is why we continue to advocate for greater transparency from governments themselves about how these powers are used. People who use our service should know that we take a principled approach to how we handle government requests and legal demands and how we share information about people who use our service.”

Twitter said that they were not reporting on any other requests for information “deemed to be related to national security processes” because of limitations imposed on us by the U.S. government.

“We have been fighting for more transparency around this process for years, and continue to fight this issue in our court case, Twitter v. Garland, and are currently awaiting a decision on appeal,” the post said.

In an effort to provide transparency about data and information regarding government requests, the company noted that they upload legal requests directly into the Lumen Database, a project by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

“We encourage the public to explore this site to get a sense of the day-to-day queries we receive from governments and other entities around the world,” Twitter wrote.

Twitter has been working with the American left for years now in silencing conservative voices.

A federal judge has permitted Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office to conduct an investigation into Big Tech collusion with the Biden Administration.

We previously wrote about the lawsuit filed in May by the states of Missouri and Louisiana against ALL of the MAJOR GOVERNMENT PLAYERS in Big Tech Censorship, including Joe Biden, Jen Psaki, Anthony Fauci, the CDC, the NIH, the Department of Homeland Security, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and many others.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/06/missouri-attorney-general-files-landmark-lawsuit-biden-colluding-big-tech-evidence-gateway-pundit-plays-major-role-case/

The lawsuit alleges, and we all know this is true, that the Biden administration conspired with – and at times outright coerced – Facebook, Twitter, Google, and every other major tech monopoly, to enforce speech and thought conformity on the internet.

See a copy of the lawsuit here .

The Gateway Pundit provided a large amount of evidence of Big Tech’s censorship of the prominent news website to Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s Office, and AG Schmitt filed the evidence with the Court.

We later wrote about a whistleblower who dumped a cache of internal documents from the Department of Homeland Security into the lap of Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Chuck Grassley of Iowa.  The documents confirm that DHS has maintained an ongoing “disinformation” censorship program, targeting anyone with COVID vaccine concerns and 2020 election fraud concerns – and anyone else thinking Wrongthink.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/06/update-explosive-whistleblower-documents-support-missouri-ag-gateway-pundits-lawsuit-biden-regimes-conspiring-big-tech-censor-free-speech/

In the lawsuit, the Biden Administration has fought tooth-and-nail to stop Attorney General Schmitt from getting justice not only for citizens of Missouri, but also for all of us in the US, and to stop actually Fascist (that is governmentally sponsored, Big Tech) censorship of our speech and thoughts.

AMAZINGLY, the federal judge in the suit guaranteed that AG Schmitt could conduct a critical series of investigations into no less than five (5) tech companies of his choice. 

Eric Schmitt’s office can see documents and depose executives!

This is a massive development that we will be following and Gateway Pundit will be bringing you updates.

As of now, Attorney General Schmitt of Missouri has chance to blow this whole fascist censorship campaign wide-open.

We wish him and the Attorney General of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, Godspeed in their investigation.

This is the best chance we have to uncover the truth.

Dear Reader - The enemies of freedom are choking off the Gateway Pundit from the resources we need to bring you the truth. Since many asked for it, we now have a way for you to support The Gateway Pundit directly - and get ad-reduced access. Plus, there are goodies like a special Gateway Pundit coffee mug for supporters at a higher level. You can see all the options by clicking here - thank you for your support!

 

Thanks for sharing!