Analytics firm helped law enforcement track protesters Twitter, FB revoke data access for Geofeedia

WASHINGTON, Oct 12, (AFP): Twitter and Facebook on Tuesday revoked data access for an analytics firm which according to a civil liberties group helped law enforcement track protesters in social movements in US cities.

The announcements came after the American Civil Liberties Union reported that the analytics firm Geofeedia had been marketing its services to US police agencies to help track activists using social media posts and location data.

According to internal documents published by the ACLU, Geofeedia boasted that it “covered Ferguson/ Mike Brown nationally with great success,” referring to the wave of protests in the Missouri community after the police shooting of an unarmed African-American man.

“The ACLU of California has obtained records showing that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram provided user data access to Geofeedia, a developer of a social media monitoring product that we have seen marketed to law enforcement as a tool to monitor activists and protesters,” the civil liberties group said in a statement.

“We know for a fact that in Oakland (California) and Baltimore (Maryland), law enforcement has used Geofeedia to monitor protests.”

The ACLU documents showed Geofeedia claimed to have access to the Twitter “firehose” or full stream of data which can be analyzed and interpreted by location and other factors.

It also said Geofeedia claimed to be “the only social media monitoring firm to have (a) partnership with Instagram.”

Shortly after the ACLU announcement, Twitter said it was cutting off access.

“Based on information in the @ ACLU’s report, we are immediately suspending @Geofeedia’s commercial access to Twitter data,” a Twitter Policy tweet said.

Facebook, which also owns Instagram, said it cut off Geofeedia from access to its “developer” platform after learning the firm violated terms of service for using its API, or application program interface.

“If a developer uses our APIs 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,” a Facebook spokesman said in an email to AFP.