In its nine-page filing submitted with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) last week, Microsoft has asked the notoriously secretive US surveillance court to lift a gag order which prohibits the company from disclosing more information about the user-data requests that it receives from the government.

The filing - which was made public on Wednesday - was submitted by Microsoft on June 19, 2013. A day earlier, Internet search biggie Google had also filed a similar motion, challenging the Department of Justice (DOJ)'s gag order.

Similar to the Google motion, Microsoft also said in its filing that it should be allowed "to report aggregate information about [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] orders and [FISA Amendments Act] directives separately from all other local, state, and federal law enforcement demands."

According to Microsoft, the lifting of the DOJ gag order will enable the company to correct the misimpression - reinforced by inaccurate media reports - that it gives the US government the benefit of direct access to its servers and network infrastructure; and, in the process, makes an indiscriminate disclosure of the Microsoft users' personal data to the government authorities.

Drawing attention to the First Amendment, Microsoft said in its filing with the FISC that the restrictions which the DOJ gag order imposes on what the company can disclose amounts to a "content-based restriction on speech."