A federal judge in Oakland has turned back a Justice Department request to knock out a case brought by Twitter Inc. seeking to publish information about the number of requests the social media company receives as part of national security investigations. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on Thursday denied the DOJ's motion for summary judgment finding that government didn't present evidence to show how Twitter's disclosure of the number and type of national security legal process it received in the latter half of 2013 would pose a threat to the United States.

“Merely declaring a view that more granular reporting would create an unacceptable risk does not make it so, especially in light of the government's acknowledgement of the strong public interest in the information,” Rogers wrote.

In Thursday's ruling, Rogers also ordered the government to move forward with providing security clearance to Twitter's lawyers, Andrew Pincus and Lee Rubin of Mayer Brown, so that they can review classified material relevant to the case. The judge, however, didn't foreclose the possibility of another summary judgment motion from the government in the future once the record in the long-running, slow-moving case is further developed.