Justice Dept. wants Twitter's First Amendment lawsuit tossed

People were tweeting about everything from education to Ebola on Election Day. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File) more >

The Justice Department wants a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit by Twitter that claims the social media companys First Amendment rights were violated, The Hill reported Monday.

Twitter said it tried to publicly release information on the number of orders it gets from the government to turn over customer information, but it was blocked by the government from doing so.

The DOJ argued that the department acted on national security concerns.

The additional material that Twitter seeks to publish is information that the Government has judged is properly protected classified national security information, the disclosure of which would risk serious harm to national security, the agency wrote in a brief.

But Twitter said its rights are being violated by not being able to publish the information and announced in October that it would sue the federal government.

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Justice Dept. wants Twitter's First Amendment lawsuit tossed