Social Networks Need Clearer Terms of Service

This clarification followed an American Civil Liberties Union report late last year saying that a company called Geofeedia was marketing its social media–monitoring product to U.S. law enforcement as a tool to keep an eye on protests. In an email from Geofeedia to a potential police department client, which the ACLU obtained, the company boasts about how its special access to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter data could be used to monitor protests. Geofeedia said that its system allowed it to have "covered Ferguson/Mike Brown nationally with great success." It could access a vast amount of public posts, potentially in real time, allowing for the company to isolate posts and users in specific protest locations. In a case study document, the company also states that during the 2015 protests in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, police officers were able to run facial recognition technology on social media photos to identify individuals with outstanding warrants and "arrest them directly from the crowds."