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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.
(Score: 2) by deathlyslow on Thursday October 13 2016, @11:43AM
It's not like the police did anything illegal. They contracted with a company to do what they could not. And that is aggregate what a bunch of idiots, who should have had the sense to keep their mouths shut if they didn't want people to know what they were doing, said. If you consider social media to be private you are sorely mistaken. If you have a public profile then anything you say can and will be scraped. You have no presumption of privacy. I mean come on. You say get a warrant. I say why? The LEO said hey can you help us look at this public postings and make sense of it, they said sure. No warrant needed. A search warrant is needed to search for evidence in cases where the police either have asked for and been denied access or have reason to believe that asking the person for permission would cause them to destroy/hide evidence. You can't post something for the world to see and then complain about people seeing it. Oh yeah IANAL, obviously.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:17PM
Kinda like posing as members of a church and having sex with some of them to spy on them doesn't require a warrant either. If they cared about their privacy they wouldn't have let any undercover informants in to their lives, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:13PM
This is clearly against the principle of the first amendment. Saying "you have free speech, but if you say something that the government doesn't like, it's going to track you" will stifle dissent and gut the protections of first amendment. Hopefully this will end up in front of a judge with a lick of sense and it will be ruled correctly.
(Score: 2) by deathlyslow on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:17PM
I agree with that. Legal and right are two totally different things. I wouldn't hold my breath though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:01PM
I'm sorry but of course the government should investigate people who say things "the government does not like." If you start talking about killing people you need to be looked at. The question, as in all human endeavors, is the judgment of what qualifies as deserving of investigation. Its one of the reasons the racists are so desperate to portray BLM as a violent movement, just like they tried to make the civil rights protests in the 60s appear to be violent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:27PM
If you start talking about killing people you need to be looked at.
You only need to be looked at if what you said was actually illegal.