Social networks shared protestors’ data with US police

By Barry Eitel

SAN FRANCISCO

Facebook, and Instagram supplied data about protesters to law enforcement agencies across the country via a social media monitoring program, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a report published Tuesday.

The Geofeedia software was given access to user data in order to monitor the activities of protesters in Baltimore, Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere. The same demographic information used by marketing companies and advertising agencies was then passed on to 500 law enforcement agencies. The data, more in-depth than what users make available publically, was used to target activists in racially-tinged protests in several cities.

The report was published Tuesday by Matt Cagle, and civil liberties policy attorney at the ACLU of Northern California.

“Social media monitoring is spreading fast and is a powerful example of surveillance technology that can disproportionately impact communities of color,” Cagle wrote. “Using Geofeedia’s analytics and search capabilities and following the recommendations in their marketing materials, law enforcement in places like Oakland, Denver and Seattle could easily target neighborhoods where people of color live, monitor hashtags used by activists and allies, or target activist groups as ‘overt threats.’ We know for a fact that in Oakland and Baltimore, law enforcement has used Geofeedia to monitor protests.”

In response to the ACLU’s report, Twitter and Facebook said it would stop providing special access to Geofeedia.

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

Facebook, which owns Instagram, said the social networks have terminated their relationship with Geofeedia because it did not use the data for marketing purposes.

"Geofeedia will continue to engage with key civil liberty stakeholders, including the ACLU, and the law enforcement community to make sure that we do everything in our power to support the security of the American people and the protection of personal freedoms," Geofeedia CEO Phil Harris said in a statement, adding that the firm is committed to "both the letter and the spirit of the law when it comes to individual rights.”

While most social media users are aware they are sharing a certain amount of data publically, the ACLU said it was worried users may not be aware how companies like Geofeedia can exploit social network data to pinpoint information such as location via a user’s smartphone.