From Nasdaq:

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected Elon Musk’s X Corp’s request to consider whether Twitter can disclose how often federal law enforcement seeks information about users for national security investigations. X argued it was critical for the justices to take up the case to establish clear standards for when and how tech companies can speak about government demands for confidential information.

The dispute dates back to 2014 before Musk acquired Twitter, prompting X to file a lawsuit to challenge the government’s restrictions on what Twitter could say publicly about surveillance demands. The U.S. government relaxed its restrictions in 2014 to allow companies to disclose in broad ranges rather than exact figures how often they received national security-related demands for information.

Congress enacted a law in 2015 allowing companies to disclose limited information about national security letters and orders they received, but only in broad ranges rather than exact figures. Twitter, formerly called X, wanted to disclose the exact number of times the government served it with national security orders seeking information, but the FBI concluded the information was classified and could not be publicly released.

A trial judge rejected Twitter’s lawsuit, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling in March 2023. The decision held that the “government’s restriction on Twitter’s speech is narrowly tailored in support of a compelling government interest.” The justices declined to hear X’s appeal of the lower court’s ruling, facing concerns from tech companies about free speech rights in such cases.



Read more: US Supreme Court rejects X Corp’s surveillance disclosure challenge