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posted by janrinok on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the trust-no-one dept.

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have revoked access to their data to an analytics firm accused of selling information that allowed US police to track activists and protesters.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said Chicago-based Geofeedia had allowed police to "sneak in through a side door" to monitor protests.

Geofeedia said it was committed to the principles of personal privacy.

It comes amid growing concern about government access to social media.

ACLU said Geofeedia had been marketing its services to police agencies to help track activists using location data and social media posts.

The group said it had seen internal documents in which Geofeedia said that it "covered Ferguson/Mike Brown nationally with great success," referring to protests which erupted in 2014 after an unarmed African-American man was shot dead by police.


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  • (Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:58AM

    by Fluffeh (954) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:58AM (#413783) Journal

    I'm looking at you here Google (and the six folks that still post on Google+ hehe) but it seems that anything Google does along with these sort of companies, everyone else will follow suit.

    Let's hope that this serves as a tough lesson to the little companies trying to peddle their wares to agencies when the original owners of that data say "No way!".

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:56AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:56AM (#413809)

    original owners of that data

    Not to play devil's advocate but who would that be? Who would be the current owner? I mean people have signed all their rights and probably their firstborn as well to these lovely Megacorps that provide these "free" services...