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Elon Musk’s Request To Have X Display How Frequently The Federal Government Seeks User Data Rejected

X Corp had rolled out a request to the US Supreme Court about how it wished to display the frequency with which the Federal Government resorted to the app to attain user data. This was to shed light on how much the platform was used by government officials for investigations linked to national security.

Now, we’re getting more data on this front including how the leading tech giant that was once known as Twitter could not disclose these stats as reiterated by the US Supreme Court.

The judge blatantly refused to even hear what Musk had to say on this subject, calling it against the law, and also failed to attend to any appeals regarding the situation.

This was regarding a lower court’s decision that had to do with the FBI generating restrictions on what it felt the firm could state in the public eye regarding the situation. It also declined to hear statements from X about how that was a violation of freedom of speech rights that arise from the First Amendment of the American Constitution.

The platform mentioned how the judges needed to hear more on the proceedings to make it clear when and in what manner any tech firms could talk about demands from the government in terms of attaining private information regarding users for the sake of surveillance.

The news was not taken well by X and its legal team who generated a statement on this front. They claim that there are plenty of examples from the past that spoke about how tech apps were under surveillance and that could give rise to abuse by government officials. It might similarly be a massive concern in the public eye.

Meanwhile, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk called the decision beyond disappointing and also felt that not hearing what the company had to say further on the matter was just a major letdown for obvious reasons.

This massive lawsuit was generated in the year 2014 and it was much before we saw Elon Musk grab a hold of Twitter in the year 2022. The latter was after the NSA’s former contractor Edward Snowden was proven guilty of releasing data in the year 2013 regarding the degree to which US spies and surveillance conduct their ordeals.

In regards to the public ordeals related to the findings seen in the Snowden leaks, government officials in the US submitted a filing where they were in agreement to impose relaxed restrictions related to how tech giants could unveil how much user data was attained by the government from the platforms mentioned. This was linked to investigations related to national security.

The new and improved policy was rolled out in the year 2014 where all leading tech organizations were given the chance to disclose big ranges of what was being done instead of the actual figures regarding how the data got received in terms of demands for more data on the national security level.

Meanwhile, in the year 2015, we saw the US Congress generate a law that allowed firms to showcase limited data about how frequently they got data on a national security level as well as the types of orders generated by the FIS Act that deals with foreign intelligence and respective surveillance.

Again, only ranges were allowed instead of real figures to ensure a lot of things were undercover. So what we saw were figures in increments of minimal being 100 and the maximum being 1000.

Meanwhile, the X app did not come into existence until last year. Therefore, they submitted a request to try and have the real figures out there in the open in terms of how often during a six-month tenure government agencies seek data from the app.

The company even went as far as rolling out a report in the form of a draft for the FBI before it generated a lawsuit on this front. However, the FBI mentioned how all data released in the report couldn’t be classified and therefore was not ready for the sake of public release.

Twitter’s case was rejected at that time by the trial judge and now X seems to be instead of the same judgment. Judges feel nothing is being done wrong here and it’s just an act to support the US government’s increased interest in limits on Twitter’s freedom of speech.

We’re sure Musk will not be happy as he has been a leading advocate for free speech since the day he vouched to take on the leading position as the company’s head, transforming Twitter into X where users were promised transparency of the best kind.


Read next: Digital Wallets And Payment Apps From Big Tech Could Face Scrutiny After Top US Watchdog Calls For Greater Surveillance


This post first appeared on Digital Information World, please read the originial post: here

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Elon Musk’s Request To Have X Display How Frequently The Federal Government Seeks User Data Rejected

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