ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for feeding surveillance company user data

David Kravets:

The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday outed Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for feeding a Chicago-based company their user streams—a feed that was then sold to police agencies for surveillance purposes.

After the disclosure, the social media companies said they stopped their data firehouse to Chicago-based Geofeedia. In a blog post, the ACLU said it uncovered the data feeds as part of a public records request campaign of California law enforcement agencies. Geofeedia touts how it helped police track unrest during protests.

In one document, Geofeedia hailed its service because it paid for Twitter’s “firehose” and because it is the “only social media monitoring tool to have a partnership with Instagram.”

“Geofeed Streamer is unique to Geofeedia and has numerous uses (Ie: Live Events, Protests—which we covered Ferguson/Mike Brown nationally with great success, Disaster Relief, Etc),” said one document (PDF) that Geofeedia sent to a police agency, which was then forwarded to the ACLU.

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