From my Twitter timeline, yesterday’s hearing was a bit of an exercise in tortuous reasoning and side-stepping. I’ll try to find some more write-ups about what happened, but here are two media reports already available:
Ross Todd reports:
Justice Department lawyers urged a federal judge on Tuesday to short circuit Twitter Inc.’s legal campaign to disclose more information about the scope of government surveillance requests.
When companies take on the National Security Agency it has tended to result in bizarre legal proceedings and Tuesday’s hearing was no exception, as U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers maneuvered through novel issues and the government’s legal team refused to acknowledge a basic fact about the case.
Twitter’s First Amendment suit filed last fall is among a handful of cases pending in the region’s federal courts that challenge government gag orders accompanying its national security surveillance requests.
Read more on The Recorder.
Howard Mintz begins his coverage this way:
A federal judge on Tuesday weighed the Obama administration’s attempt to sidetrack Twitter’s legal challenge to the government’s tight lid on national security investigations that reach into the tech industry.
After a lengthy hearing, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers indicated she would rule later in the case, which she signalled raised tough new legal questions pitting the government’s need to protect the secrecy of national security probes against the free speech rights of Internet titans such as Twitter.
Read more on The Santa Cruz Sentinel.