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Facebook, Instagram, Twitter Block Tool For Cops To Surveil You On Social Media (vice.com)
On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of California announced that, after the organization obtained revealing documents through public records access requests, Facebook and Instagram have cut off data access to a company that sells surveillance products for law enforcement. Twitter has also curbed the surveillance product's access. Motherboard reports: The product, called Geofeedia, is used by law enforcement to monitor social media on a large scale, and relies on social media sites' APIs or other means of access. According to one internal email between a Geofeedia representative and police, the company claimed their product "covered Ferguson/Mike Brown nationally with great success," in reference to the fatal police shooting of a black teenager in Missouri in 2014, and subsequent protests. "Our location-based intelligence platform enables hundreds of organizations around the world to predict, analyze, and act based on real-time social media signals," the company's website reads. According to the ACLU, Instagram provided Geofeedia access to its API; Facebook gave access to a data feed called the Topic Feed API, which presents users with a ranked list of public posts; and Twitter provided Geofeedia, through an intermediary, with searchable access to its database of public tweets. Instagram and Facebook terminated Geofeedia's access on September 19, and Twitter announced on Tuesday that it had suspended Geofeedia's commercial access to Twitter data.
How dare people monitor what people post publicly?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
1) form new shell company
2) make website that throws up stupid quizzes and such with topics that appeal highly to people you want to monitor
3) hoover up every ounce of data you can suck out of the FB API
4) sell results to law enforcement, advertisers, etc etc
5) profit! (notice the lack of "?" yeah, me too.)
If discovered and rejected/blocked by FB, restart at step 1), with the bonus of having the existing databases to plug the new website into.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The API *IS STILL THERE*
So they've stopped one "nefarious" company...
That company has proven the APIs make it possible to collect and collate data on behaviors and intents. What's to stop governments with shell companies from using it in the same fashion?
How about political parties?
Shops using the data to more accurately target spam hacks at you? I'm sure you've had a few spam calls as of late.
Ooo - lookit us, we're so protective of your rights BS. If they really care they'd shut down the APIs altogether.
This is the online equivalent of driving a patrol car around watching for people that need to be spoken to. People driving weaving back and forth in a lane are exercising their rights. When stopped, they are sometime found to be DUI. People often post things on Facebook that are the equivalent of "Lets go do some crimes". Post publicly ... walk down the street ... uh what exactly is the difference?
People driving weaving back and forth in a lane are exercising their rights.
You don't have a constitutional right to create dangerous driving conditions. There's a difference between driving with the flow of traffic at 75MPH and weaving in-and-out of traffic at 75MPH. The latter behavior will get you pulled over and ticketed.
Exactly the point I was making. You have a right to drive ( this is actually a privilege, not a right ) . Doing so on public streets will expose you to scrutiny, sometimes you may be found to be dangerous. This is why we have police patrolling not simply waiting in a depot to be dispatched.
It's almost as if the entire social media ecosystem is designed to gather up data relating to your behaviors, decision making, and skillset into a neat little package for the highest bidder. Say it aint so!
Its curious how every time a revelation like this surfaces, the masses act all slighted and surprised. Why else would facebook insist on you using your real full name? Is there ANY other legitimate reason? If it was just advertising as they claim, my name could easily be CONSUMER42234564.
Has anybody else noticed how far these services have wormed their way into our various social systems? From our senators live tweeting while in session to FB running the second presidential debate by proxy, does the scope of the surveillance really surprise ANYBODY anymore?
The only way to win is not to play, but the breadth of the social media reach is making that next to impossible.....
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
All this behavior, the hoovering up of seemingly inconsequential data, is all about Parallel Construction. LEOs seemed to be fascinated by the technique right now. The way things work these days is: Someone reports a crime. LEOs decide who did it. Having evidence is optional at this point. They sift through all the data they have on the selected person(s) until they arrive at some reason to make life really hard for that person(s). So hard, that the accused confess and plea to the originally reported crime. Case closed.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Is that why Bill Clinton never admitted his? His actual assaults on multiple women, not merely kissing them without a prior written and notarized permission?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It says that Twitter announced "Tuesday that it had suspended Geofeedia's commercial access to Twitter data."
Does that mean it still has non-commercial (e.g., NOT for resale)? Just saying they seem like the sort who might use the non-commercial feed for commercial purposes..
http://www.hawknest.com/
Aehm, no? If they restricted themselves to the things they should legitimately do, they would have to sack half their people and give up all their new shiny toys. That is not going to happen...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.