Facebook, Instagram, Twitter Gave User Access for Possible Police Monitoring, Says ACLU
Facebook and its Instagram unit, and Twitter gave Geofeedia, which markets a social media tool to law enforcement agencies as a way to monitor activists and protestors, access to user data, said the American Civil Liberties Union of California in…
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a Tuesday blog post. The ACLU said it obtained records that showed such activities, and the companies acted to curb the access only after the civil liberties group reported findings to them. "Instagram cut off Geofeedia’s access to public user posts, and Facebook has cut its access to a topic-based feed of public user posts. Twitter has also taken some recent steps to rein in Geofeedia though it has not ended the data relationship," wrote ACLU Policy Attorney Matt Cagle. But he said the companies need to do more to protect users. The group learned of Geofeedia's agreements from public records requests to 63 California law enforcement agencies, with emails from company representatives "telling law enforcement about its special access to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram user data." In an email to us, a Facebook spokesman said "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 APIs [application programming interface] in a way that has not been authorized, we will take swift action to stop them and we will end our relationship altogether if necessary.” The spokesman said Geofeedia's access to Instagram's API was terminated. Twitter said in a tweet that based on the ACLU report, "we are immediately suspending @Geofeedia’s commercial access to Twitter data."