£90,000 social media surveillance contract due to end

BRISTOL City Council’s contract with a firm that uses “big data software” to live-monitor social and online conversations was due to end yesterday.

And opposition councillors are now asking whether authorisation was needed for the “surveillance”, which they say was “covert” until it was revealed earlier this year.

The council has said anyone can “review” social media posts and it is not illegal.

The authority hired social media insight and analysis company Impact Social to harvest and analyse social media chatter about itself and the city’s elected mayor in March 2018.

But the 30-month, £90,000 contract did not come to light until February this year, when it emerged the council was paying the firm to conduct “online and social media analysis” of the online accounts linked to itself and Marvin Rees.

Information released under Freedom of Information law showed the council had access to a live dashboard of “all social media data” relating to the council and Mr Rees and was receiving monthly reports about “what people in the city are thinking and feeling”.

At the time, the council said it was a cost-effective way of “listening” to the public and it had considered the requirements of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

But some members of the public expressed concerns the surveillance breached privacy, and opposition councillors accused the council of wasting taxpayers’ money on “social media spying”.

Now Green councillor Clive Stevens has sought answers about whether the council needed - and gained - authorisation for the surveillance.

Sarah Sharland, the council’s RIPA monitoring officer, told the meeting social media monitoring would amount to “covert surveillance” if it was done covertly and in a “planned investigatory manner”.

Cllr Stevens asked: “So, if you had a software that was looking at social media posts over a period of time and reporting back, that would certainly be covert surveillance.”

Ms Sharland said: “If it had been done covertly and in an organised ongoing way, then yes.

“But if you can get it overtly because it’s public information, you wouldn’t need to do the covert surveillance.”

Asked about the need for non-RIPA authorisation after the meeting, a council spokesperson said: “As the legal representative in the meeting stated, the review of social media posted in the public domain is public information and therefore any person or organisation that reviews publicly made social media posts are in no way contravening any law.”

The council did not confirm whether the current contract with Impact Social would expire yesterday and whether it was planning to renew it.