Facebook, Twitter accused of providing user data to Police and other security agencies

Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have been accused of sharing user data feeds to the Police through a social media monitoring programme, ACLU reports.

The monitoring programme according to ACLU, was created by Geofeedia which often included user's location and other personal information which it has passed on to over 500 law enforcement agencies. ACLU says that those data are often used in monitoring neighbourhoods, which is contrary to the companies' expressed support for for activist and freedom of speech.

"Neither Facebook nor Instagram has a public policy specifically prohibiting developers from exploiting user data for surveillance purposes," Matt Cagle, ACLU policy attorney for technology and civil liberties, said in a statement. "Publicly available policies like these need to exist and be robustly enforced."

Campaign director for Colour of Change, Brandi Collins also had his take on the matter.
"CEOs Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey have openly courted activists and organizations in the Movement for Black Lives to engage with their platforms,"He said. "This makes each of their involvement with social-media surveillance tools used against black activists all the more disturbing."

The CEO further went on to challenge the social media companies to take steps that would ensure non occurance of such incidence in the future.

"Both companies need to immediately develop publicly accessible policies that prevent these types of harmful deals from happening again in the future," Collins said.

ACLU says that Twitter and Facebook have taken a move to restrict Geofeedia's access to the data streams after being presented with the study's findings. In a tweeted statement on Tuesday, Twitter announced the suspension of the Geofeedia account.

"Based on information in the @ACLU's report, we are immediately suspending @Geofeedia's commercial access to Twitter data," Twiiter said.