Government records obtained yesteryear the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed that the big applied scientific discipline corporations gave "special access" to Geofeedia.
Geofeedia is a controversial social media monitoring tool that pulls social media feeds via APIs in addition to other agency of access in addition to thus makes it searchable in addition to accessible to its clients, who tin search yesteryear location or keyword to chop-chop honor lately posted in addition to publicly available contents.
The society has marketed its services to 500 law enforcement in addition to world security agencies equally a tool to rail racial protests inward Ferguson, Missouri, involving the 2014 law shooting acquire out of Mike Brown.
With the assist of a world records request, the civil rights grouping institute that Geofeedia had entered into agreements with Twitter, Facebook, in addition to Instagram for their users' data, gaining a developer-level access to all 3 social networks that allowed them to review streams of user content inward ways that regular users of Earth cannot.
The Denver Police Department lately signed a $30,000 annual deal with Geofeedia.
Here's what the major tech giants offered Geofeedia:
- Facebook allowed the society to utilisation its "Topic Feed API" that allow Geofeedia obtain a "ranked feed of world posts" centered to a greater extent than or less specific hashtags, places or events.
- Instagram provided Geofeedia access to its API (Application Programming Interface) that is a feed of information from users' world Instagram posts, including their location.
- Twitter provided Geofeedia with "searchable access" to its database of world tweets. However, Twitter added additional contract price inward Feb to attempt to safeguard farther against surveillance, in addition to when institute Geofeedia all the same touting its production equally a tool to monitor protests, Twitter sent Geofeedia a cease in addition to desist letter.
The ACLU is concerned that Geofeedia tin "disproportionately demeanor on communities of color" yesteryear monitoring activists in addition to their neighborhoods.
Nicole Ozer, technology, in addition to civil liberties policy manager for the ACLU of California said: "These particular information deals were allowing the law to sneak inward through a side door in addition to utilisation these powerful platforms to rail protesters."
However, inward reply to the ACLU report, Geofeedia posted Tuesday an article justifying its commitment to Freedom of Speech in addition to Civil Liberties, releasing the next statement:
"Geofeedia has inward house clear policies in addition to guidelines to preclude the inappropriate utilisation of our software; these include protections related to gratuitous spoken language in addition to ensuring that end-users exercise non try to inappropriately position individuals based on race, ethnicity, religious, sexual orientation or political beliefs, alongside other factors."Facebook said inward a contention that Geofeedia entirely had access to publically available data, piece Twitter said it was suspending access shortly.
The ACLU is encouraging social media companies to adopt clear, public, in addition to transparent policies prohibiting developers from exploiting user information for surveillance purposes.
