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: 3, Touché) by Bogsnoticus on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:32AM
> "Geofeedia said it was committed to the principles of personal privacy.
As opposed to being committed to the practice of personal privacy.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by quintessence on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:55AM
To be fair, it would be hard for a smaller company without an army of lawyers to negotiate what is legal and what is not (I mean if the government is asking, then it must be legal). And even then, you have examples like Quest and Lavabit as to what happens when you say no.
I blame less the companies than the police, who definitely should know better, constantly pushing the bounds. If not jailtime for the police involved, those people tracked should have standing to sue for violations of their constitutional rights.
If the only defense you have against government intrusion is the goodwill of companies, you are already fucked.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @06:39AM
ACLU said Geofeedia had been marketing its services to police agencies to help track activists using location data and social media posts.
No, they're are tools looking to profit from the government machine. "Hey fuck those ignorant goddamn plebs, they chose to put their lives on Facebook hahahahahah! The smart should profit from stupid people being stupid!" Yeah, fuck Geofeedia, even their name sounds offensive once you know they aren't trying to help feed the world...
This is basically some type of "revenge of the nerds" garbage, lots of smart geeks think they know best and have been manipulated by the powers that be to move against the general public that most geeks seem to look down upon... They don't want people to know their dirty secrets, how badly they've sold out their fellow citizens. They are given a glimpse of the upper echelons, yet don't realize they are just being fed the VIP version of the american lie *ahem* DREAM.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday October 13 2016, @11:57AM
It's not so much fuck the plebs; it's more like: "The government has really deep pockets and likes invading privacy. I can make a fuck load of money!" I'm sure when it comes to the plebs, they are pretty much indifferent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:22AM
> To be fair, it would be hard for a smaller company without an army of lawyers to negotiate what is legal and what is not
Since I am not a lawyer it seems super easy to me to require a warrant.
Maybe you could tell me why that's too hard?
(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.
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:58AM
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!".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @08:56AM
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...
(Score: 5, Informative) by Spamalope on Thursday October 13 2016, @10:26AM
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have a policy of price discrimination, maximizing profits and absolutely avoiding anything that would alert their users that the service was gathering information to use against them on behalf of the companies customers. This kind of use would require a higher price, possibly a per-access fee (and the data held only on company servers for deniability/price protection purposes), and an abuse of process court order for PR cover.
The last thing these companies was is for the public to realize that the services are being used to create social graphs of political beliefs so that when a protest against the interests of the establishment becomes effective, the real leaders are already known and it can be instantly suppressed. Done correctly, the followers won't even realize what happened. A disinformation campaign inserting fake damaging info about leaders and sending false communication to start fights and distrust within the leadership may be enough along with blocking key communication to make it seem as though some leaders are being shut out by others. If that fails, the standard planting drugs or kiddie porn or recent ability to sabotage the targets fly by wire car can be effective without raising too much suspicion especially if you plant signs as part of the earlier disinformation.
The possibilities are really Orwellian, and this is letting out that they're being used in exactly that manner.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:28PM
That's a reason why the trend in activist circles is to have protests without defined leaders: If there's a defined leadership, then that leadership is invariably targeted for arrests on trumped up charges directly before the protest.
For an example, on the eve of the Republican National Convention back in 2004, a large group of activists were arrested on the grounds that the PVC pipe they were using to make street puppets could also be used for making bombs. The cases were all thrown out as soon as they could get in front of a judge, but the police made sure that they were in jail during the approved time for the protest, so the protest did not take place.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Thursday October 13 2016, @11:47PM
Another trend in activist circles is to abandon the Internet entirely, and completely forbid social media for all logistical purposes.
You can talk about shit on social media, but when the time comes to get serious about what dates you will be doing what and were, it goes offline. Which is a real boon for myself, since I'm not missing any important communications by not participating in social media.
Many of the activist groups I've been participating with this year approached me on foot, and haven't dealt with me over the Internet at all. Phone calls are the preferred method, and we have training for obfuscation policies where we use nicknames and initials when referring to people. Nobody is ever allowed to mention a date, place, or time over the phone. Just confirmations that plans are underway and to meet at your designated staging location.
When it comes time to protest, we're divided up into groups with our message each with its own captain, ready in stages in case the first group gets nailed by the police. It also helps if your group has lawyers staged in the lawyerpult ready to go.
Interestingly enough, future protests will forbid the carrying of smart phones with their batteries in place. We won't even be tracked during the protest. It takes more leadership and logistics, but it is possible and extremely effective at deterring government surveillance.
Activist circles *have* gotten smarter. We're going offline :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Thursday October 13 2016, @11:14AM
So, is anybody tracking the folks at Geofeedia? Particularly the big-money backers? It would be interesting to see just how much they really care about personal privacy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:01PM
The US is a totalitarian state committing war crimes across MENA and low-intensity genocide against its own population.
(Score: 2) by Username on Friday October 14 2016, @03:17AM
It’s the police’s job to keep an eye on activist and protesters. I really don’t see how looking at an activist’s twitter feed or facebook status and checking to see what’s happening is bad. Anybody can do that, not much twitter can do to stop it. If you didn’t want the police checking your tweets, don’t make them public.
Protests are useless now. The internet has made them irrelevant. Any injustice would be reported, filmed, and on the bbc in about 20 min. Being a road hazard, or stopping me from getting somewhere isn’t going to help. If anything it makes me hate you, and any cause you shove in my face.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Friday October 14 2016, @03:03PM
It’s the police’s job to keep an eye on activist and protesters.
Fuck you in the ass with a chainsaw, you flaming statist authoritarian bootlicking pig, no it's not!
The police exist to help you after you have been the victim of a crime.
This has lately evolved to the absurd idea that the police can prevent crime -- an idea which rationalizes a massive police state with panopticon spying on everyone everywhere. But guess what -- even then people can still commit crime!
Now you have gone beyond preventing crime to saying the police not only can but must impose their chilling eye on the perfectly legal act of protesting an unjust government!!!!!
Have you ever heard of any bad government anywhere in the world, ever? In such a situation, how are the people to overthrow tyranny? It starts by organizing (activist) and objecting (protesters). That is how it is SUPPOSED to work!
It is incredible how far gone we are when any conscious human being can even think the asinine absurdity you wrote. Please DIAF and take those you think like you along for the ride.