Facebook, Twitter, Instagram cut off surveillance tool used by law enforcement to monitor protestors

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have announced to cut ties with Geofeedia a social media surveillance company after a report claimed it was being used by law enforcement to target protestors.

As reported by Digital Trends in April, Geofeedia was receiving funds through a CIA venture capital firm. Fresh claims by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) state they have uncovered documents where Geofeedia implied it has ‘special access’ to data through ‘arrangements’ with social network portals.

While governments continue to request more and more data from Twitter; the company had been providing Geofeedia data for public posts but in a Tweet it announced that it has suspended Geofeedia’s access to Twitter data.

Based on information in the @ACLU’s report, we are immediately suspending @Geofeedia’s commercial access to Twitter data.

— Policy (@policy) October 11, 2016

In the case of Facebook and subsidiary Instagram, Geofeedia did have access to public posts that included location-based data for Instagram. Facebook provided data broken down by events, hashtags and specific locations – both social media portals terminated the access in September this year.

In its post the ACLU stated that “social media companies and their executives have expressed support for activists, movements, and free speech. Mark Zuckerberg endorsed Black Lives Matter and Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey went to Ferguson,” but added that while the positions are clear, “there is a severe disconnect between these positions and the data access they have provided.”