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The FBI Got Its Hands on Data That Twitter Wouldn't Give the CIA (theverge.com)
The FBI is using a tool called Dataminr to track criminals and terrorist groups on Twitter, according to documents spotted by The Verge. In a contract document, the agency says Dataminr's Advanced Alerting Tool allows it "to search the complete Twitter firehose, in near real-time, using customizable filters." However, the practice seems to violate Twitter's developer agreement, which prohibits the use of its data feed for surveillance or spying purposes. From the report:"Twitter is used extensively by terrorist organizations and other criminals to communicate, recruit, and raise funds for illegal activity," the FBI wrote in a contracting document. "With increased use of Twitter by subjects of FBI investigations, it is critical to obtain a service which will allow the FBI to identify relevant information from Twitter in a timely fashion." [...] Earlier this year, Twitter revoked API access to a tool called Geofeedia, citing the same clause in the Developer agreement, after a reports showed the tool had been used by police to target protestors in Baltimore. Facebook was also a Geofeedia customer, and used it to catch an intruder in Mark Zuckerberg's office. This isn't the first time Dataminr has run up against Twitter's anti-surveillance clause. In May, Twitter revoked CIA access to Dataminr, a move that was taken as part of a larger ban on US intelligence agencies using the product.
It's worth noting that the two organizations have different legal restraints. So it is possible for the FBI to have access legally via a court warrant which the CIA, not being a law enforcement agency couldn't get. This also indicates that illegal cooperation between agencies is a serious risk.
Unless you sincerely advocate for abolition of the CIA and FBI, you should help them do their jobs. They are paid with our taxes — Twitter's included — the easier it is for them to access messages, the less money they require.
The tweets captured by the firehose are public anyway. The API simply eases access to it, so why cripple the lawmen of your own country?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
lick it and stick it! even Q couldn't resist a taste!
It infuriates me to no end that people think it's hip or somehow cute to take a word, remove a vowel, and think it's somehow now some hip creative name for their stupid service or tool. Dataminr. I'd like to find who ever came up with that and let them meet the Analizr, I'll leave what that tool would do as an exercise for the reader.
Now that Twitter is selling access through Dataminr rather than directly, now they can let all kinds of unsavory parties get access and if anyone complains, they can say "We can't cut off an entire company over a few rotten eggs! What about all of their customers who did nothing wrong? Maybe you should complain to them. It's not really our business anyway!"
Meanwhile if anyone complains to Dataminr they can just say "Fuck off, we'll sell to whoever we want TYVM," and not only is Twitter safe from any PR consequences, but so is Dataminr since the least terrible set of customers they cater to is a bunch of abominable ad-monsters.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The data is too sensitive and the potential for privacy violation is too high for the FBI or CIA to be given access, but it's perfectly fine for hedge funds, advertisers, newspapers, and, well, any other asshole with a checkbook?
Really?
As someone that believes we should be free from government intrusion, I am happy that Twitter basically told the FBI to pound sand. Those that would trade liberty for security get none and deserve neither. Thomas Jefferson said it best.
Talk about a tempest in a teapot - - - Twitter is so totally open, with it's datastream virtually wide open, that this issue is basically just a 'news bleep' that just isn't news.
Give me a break - so the CIA (or whomever) can access the 'firehose' at Twitter - well, so can just about anybody else.
Besides, Twitter not only gives access to this data, they also data-mine the stream for advertising and sales purposes.
ANYBODY using Twitter (or any other 'social media') that expects any kind of effective data security is so totally out of touch with reality that there is just no realistic communication with them. With the openness of the social media craze, I have very little sympathy for any of that crowd that gets hammered with loss of password / name / credit card data / etc from breaches in the social media's systems - since the social media orgs are basically setting themselves up as targets for any script kiddie that wants to 'give it a whirl' using any of the vast number of hacking / cracking tools available off the web. When you get to the level of state sponsored intruders, the social media orgs are just plain old 'low hanging fruit'.
redneck geek
"The FBI signed a contract" is not the same as "The FBI got the data". You must be new to government contracting.
Because I trust our Lawmen even less than I do the terrorists.
At least I know what to expect from a terrorist. :|
Their website states they provide information for gov, finance and tech companies. Last year I interviewed the company and they gave me a question of designing a system to fetch and analyze the keywords in tweets at different time frequency...
So, you would have the police abolished, right? Fine, at least, you are self-consistent so far. But Twitter's management, it is safe to assume, does not — and yet, they don't want to cooperate with them either.
Non-sequitur.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
And by old I mean at least by several months, if not almost by a year. Because I have read it. Somewhere. Probably at Techdirt.com
Twitter is used extensively by terrorist organizations and other criminals such as the F.B.I.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
No one bothers to use twitter anymore. What *it* really is, is a tool for intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
reports showed the tool had been used by police to target protestors in Baltimore.
If they would stop oppressing the people, there would be less resistance to the use against actual "bad guys". They only have themselves to blame.
In other words you'd be foolish to think that anything you do on the internet would include any expectation of privacy or anonymity, no matter what steps you take or what assurances you may have been given.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
There are fictional games on-line where you can kill people, but only extremely weak minded liberals complain about them. Here E.A. created an on-line game where you can steal the other players "money". Not real money, but pretend in-game money. Seem to me that the F.B.I. just doesn't understand that it is part of the game.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
They're not required to cooperate with them.
You can require the government to be there, but not aid & abet them destroying the 4th amendment.
This is a criminal copyright violation and also a RICO violation since it was a conspiracy among several.
Every time Twitter shuts down a feed used for surveillance, the FBI will simply set up another one or two or three under a cover name. Not really much point in trying to prevent it; what's tweeted to the public is going to be available to the government.
and they just bought it from a company who is selling them and fbi is stupid enough to pay for it.
getting "realtime analysis" isn't all that great that it's meant to be.
also, twitter is kinda weird - providing developer access to firehose and then .. well. damn, the only use of it is realtime analytics AND REALTIME ANALYTICS IS SURVEILLANCE GODDMAADNFDSAF.
you ever wondered how twitter managed to be so big without managing to make a cent of profit while their service logic is 100x simpler than facebooks is? because it was always headed by idiots.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.