You may recall a while back when Twitter made some noise in the GeoInt social media search space by cutting off access to their firehose of data to Snaptrends (See story from Oct 20), this followed a similar blocking of access to Geofedia, another social media harvesting system frequently used by Police and law enforcement. Well, the story continues as it has been reported now that Twitter is blocking access to all law enforcement and cutting off geospatial data access to all law enforcement and intelligence centers!A little background info on these first cases:
“The decision by Twitter to cut Geofeedia’s access last week was prompted by news that the company’s software was being used to monitor activists. Among the search terms used by police to gather intelligence were the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter and #PoliceBrutality. After the Daily Dot reported in September that the Denver Police Department was using Geofeedia, the ACLU said the program likely violated a prior agreement limiting police surveillance; the policy was instituted more than 20 years ago, after the department was caught amassing secret files on citizens who were not charged with any crime.”
Regarding Twitter’s latest effort to limit access by law enforcement, “Our long-standing position has been that the use of Twitter data for surveillance is strictly prohibited,” the company said in a statement, “and we continue to expand our enforcement efforts.”
See also:
- Twitter cuts Dataminr access for law enforcement fusion centers
- Homeland Security fusion centers cut off from Dataminr, a social network monitoring tool