Welcome back for another week of What's Next, where we report on the intersection of law and technology. Here's what we've got for you today:

>> Twitter loses a half-decade surveillance battle against the U.S. government.

>> Zoom might be one judge's secret weapon for discovery disputes.

>> Online ticket sellers are the next target in class actions over coronavirus-related refunds.

Let's chat: Email me at [email protected] and follow me on Twitter at @a_lancaster.

Is Twitter's Surveillance Transparency Fight Over?

In 11 pages, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers shut down Twitter's six-year quest to include the government's surveillance requests in the company's 2014 Draft Transparency Report. Largely relying on confidential declarations, the ruling maintains the cloaked mechanisms for national security legal process requests on social media and other U.S. communications companies.

Rogers wrote that Twitter's pursuit of declaratory judgement allowing the social media platform to share information on these inquiries without government approval "merely underscores the tension between the First Amendment and national security and the future impact of the proceedings."

Twitter wanted to include information in its Transparency Report about the number of national security letters and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act orders it has received, as well as a statement about the overall degree of government surveillance on the platform.

However, the government has said even the number of requests is confidential or restricted information. The judge found the government met the standard of strict scrutiny and granted summary judgement based, in part, on classified declarations from three assistant directors of the National Security Branch of the FBI.

"The declarations explain the gravity of the risks inherent in disclosure of the information that the government has prohibited Twitter from stating in its Draft Transparency Report, including a sufficiently specific explanation of the reasons disclosure of mere aggregate numbers, even years after the relevant time period in the Draft Transparency Report, could be expected to give rise to grave or imminent harm to the national security," Gonzalez Rogers wrote. "The Court finds that the declarations contain sufficient factual detail to justify the government's classification of the aggregate information in Twitter's 2014 Draft Transparency Report on the grounds that the information would be likely to lead to grave or imminent harm to the national security, and that no more narrow tailoring of the restrictions can be made."

But the case might not be over, yet.

Rogers did grant Twitter and its Mayer Brown counsel leave to amend its claims under Freedman v. Maryland, to show that the classified portions "do not satisfy the procedural safeguards required for such a prior restraint of speech." But in its current form, the judge decided that the second amended complaint did not offer a challenge under Freedman.

"Nowhere in the SAC does Twitter seek declaratory or injunctive relief requiring the government to comply with any procedural safeguards, such as temporal limitations on prohibition orders, or government-initiated judicial review, required by Freedman," she said.

In a Tweet Monday, Vijaya Gadde, Twitter's legal policy and trust and safety lead, said, "After a six year battle, we're disappointed by the result but twice as committed to the fight. Transparency matters. Protecting civil liberties matters. Especially now. We feel a responsibility to take these stands and we will continue to do so."

Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley.

Come Together Right Now, Over Zoom

At the beginning of a discovery hearing held via Zoom Friday, Facebook's Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher attorneys and plaintiffs counsel from Keller Rohrback and Bleichmar Fonti & Auld were feuding over the discovery process. But by the time U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley was done with them, they were talking about grabbing drinks, virtually, of course.

The hearing sought to iron out lingering disputes in the proposed class action stemming from Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal. After reviewing the parties' status report, Corley described them as "ships passing in the night," with plaintiffs asserting they must chase down Facebook, and Facebook reporting it's getting bombarded by discovery requests.

After a somewhat adversarial start to the hearing, Corley quickly clarified the hearing would not be used as a press conference. She ordered the Gibson Dunn attorneys and plaintiffs counsel to stop sending each other letters and emails, and instead, regularly schedule Zoom meetings.

"Going forward, I might order this in everything," she said. Corley, who is overseeing discovery disputes in the multidistrict litigation pending before U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California, noted that the method is working well in the Juul multidistrict litigation, another case in which she is overseeing discovery.

Gibson Dunn's Orin Snyder suggested that one of the meet and confers be "a cocktail zoom."

The judge praised Snyder's suggestion and said she'd order it if she could. She also called for a bit of empathy during these extraordinary times.

"We're working hard, but we're distracted," she said. "Everyone doesn't know if their law firm is going to be here a year from now, or they have their kids running around behind them and they're trying to homeschool. There are things that are frankly bigger that are happening that we need to be conscious of," she said. "This is an unprecedented time, and we need to be understanding. Keep in mind that everyone is doing their best at this time."

Lawsuits Over Refunds Hit Online Ticket Sellers

Proposed class actions over refunds due to coronavirus related closures have hit universities, gyms, airlines, and theme parks.

Now, Ticketmaster is in quarantined consumers' crosshairs. Last week, a San Francisco man with $600 in Rage Against the Machine concert tickets filed a class action complaint on behalf of other would-be concertgoers who have not received Ticketmaster refunds for their postponed events.

The Gutride Safier law firm in San Francisco, representing the plaintiffs in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment Co., retroactively changed policies on March 14 to no longer refund postponed events, only canceled ones.

Ticketmaster's original refund policy was a primary reason people were willing to pay premium prices for tickets and substantial fees, wrote Gutride Safier's Adam Gutride, Seth Safier and Marie McCrary in the complaint.

"A major component of Ticketmaster's value is that refunds would be available for postponed or rescheduled events. Customers that purchased tickets prior to March 13, 2020, including plaintiff, relied upon this representation at the time that they purchased tickets from Ticketmaster. This statement was a material term of the purchase contracts," they wrote.

Earlier this week, Ticketmaster and fellow ticket merchant StubHub were also named in a proposed class action against Major League Baseball, reports Critical Mass' Amanda Bronstad.

On the Radar

Digital Ears Everywhere Many lawyers are unclear exactly how likely it is for a hacker to eavesdrop on client phone conversations through an Internet of Things device. But Dickinson Wright member Sara H. Jodka said lawyers owe it to their clients to protect their privacy. "Because I don't know and I can't guarantee that privacy to my clients, I will not have that technology on when I am having sensitive client phone conversations," she said. Read more from Victoria Hudgins here.

Big Law Tech Heavy Hitters Call on SEC to Allow E-Signatures "Our clients have indicated to us that the current COVID-19 situation has already accelerated these trends and significantly increased the difficulties associated with detaining manual 'wet' signatures," wrote lawyers at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Fenwick & West and Cooley in a petition to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "Moreover, we believe the massive transition to remote and disparate work environments during these unprecedented times will increase the business trends we were already witnessing and change the way commerce is conducted towards more virtual interactions, including executing transactions and agreements." Read more from Cheryl Miller here.

A Moment in the Spotlight for Bitcoin "It's something of a perfect storm for Bitcoin right now. There are of course lots of different cryptocurrencies out there and crypto assets out there. But this is really a moment in the spotlight for Bitcoin in particular as an asset whose supply is fixed and reliable and not subject to political whims. There's something attractive about that, and we've seen as an industry not only exchange volumes but also real transaction volumes increase significantly over the last couple of months," said Marco Santori, the chief legal officer of Kraken Digital Asset Exchange. Read more from Phillip Bantz here.

Thanks for reading. We will be back next week with more What's Next. Stay safe and healthy, everyone!