A powerful surveillance program that police used for tracking racially charged protests in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., relied on special feeds of user data provided by Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, according to an ACLU blog post published on Tuesday.
The companies reportedly provided the data — often including the locations of users — to Geofeedia, a Chicago-based company that says it analyzes social media posts to deliver surveillance information to 500 law enforcement agencies. The social media companies sought to restrict Geofeedia’s access to the streams of user data in recent weeks after the ACLU discovered them and alerted the companies.
The popularity of Geofeedia and similar programs highlights how the rise of social media has given governments worldwide powerful new ways to monitor crime and civil unrest. Authorities often target such surveillance at minority groups or others seeking to publicly air political grievances, potentially chilling free speech, said the ACLU’s California affiliate, which unearthed Geofeedia’s relationship with social media companies through a public records request of dozens of law enforcement agencies.
“These platforms need to be doing more to protect the free speech rights of activists of color and stop facilitating their surveillance by police,” said Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director for the ACLU of California.
Geofeedia did not have immediate comment when contacted on Tuesday. Twitter tweeted in a statement, “Based on information in the @ACLU’s report, we are immediately suspending @Geofeedia’s commercial access to Twitter data.”
Facebook, which owns Instagram, said in a statement: “This developer only had access to data that people chose to make public. Its access was subject to the limitations in our Platform Policy, which outlines what we expect from developers that receive data using the Facebook Platform. If a developer uses our (user data) in a way that has not been authorized, we will take swift action to stop them…”
Most users of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram know the social media services as platforms for sharing thoughts or images with friends. But companies such as Geofeedia and others collect and analyze social media data to help their own customers track emerging online trends. Specialized data streams from social media companies can provide access to faster, more exhaustive collections of posts than otherwise are publicly available.
Civil libertarians have grown increasingly concerned that the rising power of government surveillance technology is prompting a spike in the monitoring of African-Americans and other minority groups through video surveillance, social media and the tracking of cellphone calls.