Slashdot Mirror
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.
Did you ever hear the story of the boy who cried wolf?
Because there's a similar story about the right wing partisan that cried "Clintons committed another crime".
If Bill Clinton admits to sexually assaulting women, as Trump did, or else he's prosecuted and found guilty, we'll believe that he did and treat him as dirt. But until then, the number of proven false accusations of everything from real estate fraud to murder makes it impossible to take any allegations against him seriously.
Right now the only allegation of sexual impropriety made against Bill Clinton that's been shown to be true is an affair with a consenting woman. That makes him a dick in terms of his treatment of his wife. It does not make him a rapist. And it certainly doesn't make his wife a criminal.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Twitter have multiple APIs. The Gnip API is probably what's meant here; it's a paid API that provides a filtered feed of the entire stream of tweets.
The regular Twitter REST API is more limited, but it's available to anyone with a working Twitter account, so it's basically impossible for Twitter to block access by technical means.