VIENNA (dpa-AFX) - American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU of Northern California revealed that data from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were shared with Geofeedia, a social media intelligence platform. ACLU also accused that Geofeedia marketed these data to law enforcement agencies to monitor activists and protesters.
Subsequent to the alert by ACLU Instagram has cut off Geofeedia's access to public user posts and Facebook has severed access to a topic based feed of public user posts.
ACLU said it wrote to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to stop providing data access to developers who have law enforcement clients. In a letter signed by Nicole Ozer of ACLU of California, Malkia Cyril of the Center for Media Justice and Brandi Collins of Media and Economic Justice, Color of Change, the union requested the social media companies to adopt clear and transparent public policies that prohibit data to facilitate surveillance. It has also asked to institute human and technical auditing mechanism to effectively identify potential violations, both by the developers and their end users.
ACLU noted that speaking against police violence or government overreach could land one in surveillance database. The union accused that Police in Oakland and Baltimore have used Geofeedia to monitor peaceful protests.
'Social media monitoring is one of the most visible examples of surveillance that disproportionately impacts communities of color and low-income areas,' ACLU stated in its letter to social media giants.
Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
© 2016 AFX News
