International microblogging platform Twitter has sued the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI for the right to release more information about government surveillance of its users.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in a northern California court. Under current regulations, Twitter cannot reveal certain information about government requests for users' data relating to national security.
Twitter argues that the restrictions violate the right to free speech, as defined by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The firm said it filed the suit in an effort to force the government to be more transparent about personal data requests.
Several of the largest U.S. tech firms, including Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Dropbox, have been fighting government requests for their users' private data.
The government has said that it will publish the total number of national security requests for customer data annually. But Microsoft and Google maintain that they should be able to break out how often the feds request specific user content, such as email conversations.