A powerful surveillance program that police used for tracking racially charged protests in Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, relied on special feeds of user data provided by Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, according to an ACLU blog post published Tuesday.
The companies reportedly provided the data – often including the locations of users – to Geofeedia, a Chicago-based company that 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 about looming public exposure.
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. “The ACLU shouldn’t have to tell Facebook or Twitter what their own developers are doing. The companies need to enact strong public policies and robust auditing procedures to ensure their platforms aren’t being used for discriminatory surveillance.”
Geofeedia and Facebook did not have immediate comment when contacted Tuesday morning. Instagram is owned by Facebook. Twitter tweeted in a statement, “Based on information in the @ACLU’s report, we are immediately suspending @Geofeedia’s commercial access to Twitter data.”
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 cell phone calls.
“Facebook and especially Twitter have built their brands on the backs of Black users. CEOs Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey have openly courted activists and organizations in the Movement for Black Lives to engage with their platforms. This makes each of their involvement with social media surveillance tools used against Black activists all the more disturbing,” said Brandi Collins of Color of Change, an online racial justice group, in a statement Tuesday morning.
She added: “While we’re glad both companies have cut off Geofeedia’s access to user data, both of these companies only did so after these secret deals were made public. Both companies need to immediately develop publicly accessible policies that prevent these types of harmful deals from happening again in the future.”
Before the social media companies limited access, Geofeedia was using specialized data streams for police surveillance. In one email discovered by the ACLU, a company employee boasted that it had a “confidential legally binding agreement with Facebook” for data. Another email said users of Geofeedia could “pull private information for Instagram and Twitters.”
Neither claim could be independently verified.
Because social media posts increasingly provide location information from users’ smartphones, surveillance systems can map out areas of looming unrest or political activism. Geofeedia documents made public by the ACLU made references to tracking protests in Baltimore in 2015 after the killing of a black man, Freddie Gray, while in police custody and also to protests in Ferguson in 2014 after the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man.
The ACLU said the social media companies had sought to close Geofeedia’s access to the special data feeds. Facebook and Instagram closed off Geofeedia’s access on Sept. 19. Twitter imposed contractual limits in an attempt to block Geofeedia from using posts for surveillance. Twitter also sent a cease and desist letter on Monday to Geofeedia, the ACLU said. On Tuesday, Twitter announced it would block the feed to Geofeedia altogether.
The civil liberties group said that social media companies should go farther in implementing public policies and other restrictions to keep their posts from being used for government surveillance. Without specialized data feeds, outside companies could still implement programs to “scrape” social media data as it becomes publicly available, but that approach would be less effective and also would violate the terms of service for some companies.
In addition to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, the Geofeedia documents found by the ACLU show that the company also analyzes data from Vine and Periscope, as well as VK and Weibo, popular social media services in Russia and China respectively. It is not clear if any of those companies provide special data feeds to Geofeedia.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Craig Timberg, Elizabeth Dwoskin
