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Facebook, Instagram, Twitter Block Tool For Cops To Surveil You On Social Media (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the privacy-woes dept.

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.

7 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by OverlordQ · · Score: 5, Funny

    How dare people monitor what people post publicly?

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
    1. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      They can monitor it, just not with API access with vendor permission. Not just everyone gets API access so this would be considered implicitly "sanctioned" activity. This isn't the same thing as a person reading things through a browser and connecting dots. The blowback from being associated with officially sanctioned government monitoring is not good for these services since the trust level is lower and eroding quickly.

      In reality, this is all PR. I am sure they provide these tools directly to LE, for a fee, and they don't this company because a) the bad PR and b) someone else selling services they can offer

    2. Re:Why? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How dare people monitor what people post publicly?

      It's OK for the police to track your movements via fake phone towers, because you're publically transmitting that data anyway.
      It's OK to place audio-bugs around the city to listen in on people walking around, because they're in a public place.
      It's OK to have license-plate readers on every road to track people's travel habits because they're out in public.

      We're all out "in public" or say things "in public" where the public could overhear us, or see us. That doesn't make tracking or bugging the general public OK. It's one thing to casually over hear someone, or read what a stranger posted. It's an entirely different animal to go out and track an individual or a group of individuals and monitor their every move and utterance. Even in public we have an expectation not to be stalked.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    3. Re:Why? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Informative

      "joshing around guy talk"

      Admitting sexual assault is not "joshing around guy talk", unless we're talking about the guys on your cell block.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re:Why? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Do you by chance know the who/what/when & where of this 'admitted' sexual assault?

      Yes.

      http://reason.com/blog/2016/10...

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. Sadly, easy to fix: by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?
  3. Ok... and... ? by the_skywise · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.