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."

Twitter shut off commercial access to Geofeedia on Tuesday after the ACLU revealed that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram data was being marketed by Geofeedia to police as a way to monitor activists and protests. SEE ALSO: Social media companies suspend Geofeedia's access after reported police tracking Facebook and Instagram had also recently severed much of Geofeedia's access to their networks for the same reason. Based on information in the @ACLU's report, we are immediately suspending @Geofeedia's commercial access to Twitter data. But social media surveillance companies are proliferating, and Geofeedia is not the only one that has seen an opportunity in marketing their services to police departments by telling police they could track hashtags associated with Black Lives Matter protests. Media Sonar, whose website says it has "proven" to be a "powerful tool for assessing threats," was found to market their services to the Fresno Police Department, according to results of an investigation by the ACLU published in December, 2015.

SAN FRANCISCO – U.S. police departments used location data and other user information from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to track protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, according to a report from the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday. Facebook, which also owns Instagram, and Twitter shut off the data access of Geofeedia, the Chicago-based data vendor that provided data to police, in response to the ACLU findings. The report comes amid growing concerns among consumers and regulators about how online data is being used and how closely tech companies are cooperating with the government on surveillance. "These special data deals were allowing the police to sneak in through a side door and use these powerful platforms to track protesters," said Nicole Ozer, the ACLU's technology and civil liberties policy director. The ACLU report found that as recently as July, Geofeedia touted its social media monitoring product as a tool to monitor protests.

According to an ACLU blog post published on Tuesday, law enforcement officials implemented a far-reaching surveillance program to track protesters in both Ferguson, MO and Baltimore, MD during their recent uprisings and relied on special feeds of user data provided by three top social media companies: Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Specifically, all three companies granted access to a developer tool called Geofeedia which allows users to see the geographic origin of social media posts and has been employed by more than 500 law enforcement organizations to track protesters in real time. Law enforcement's ability to monitor the online activities of protesters could have a chilling effect on First Amendment rights, the post asserts. "These platforms need to be doing more to protect the free speech rights of activists of color and stop facilitating their surveillance by police," Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director for the ACLU of California, told the Washington Post. "The ACLU shouldn't have to tell Facebook or Twitter what their own developers are doing. The companies need to enact strong public policies and robust auditing procedures to ensure their platforms aren't being used for discriminatory surveillance."

A demonstrator is arrested during a protest marking the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown along West Florrisant Street on Aug.10, 2015 in Ferguson, Mo. (Photo: Scott Olson, Getty Images) SAN FRANCISCO -- Police monitored and tracked protests in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., using data from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram provided by a Chicago company that analyzes social media for law enforcement, according to the ACLU. The data provided to police by Geofeedia included the locations of users. The ACLU said after it alerted the social media companies, Instagram cut off Geofeedia's access to public user posts and Facebook cut off its access to a topic-based stream of public user posts. Twitter suspended the company, Geofeedia, from receiving its commercial data, Twitter said in a tweet Tuesday. In an emailed statement, Facebook said Geofeedia had access to data that Facebook users make public.

Advanced surveillance technology is already intensifying racial discrimination at police departments in the United States, and there's a good chance it's going to get worse. This is a fact well-documented by plenty of extensive reviews conducted by the Department of Justice that have unearthed a tremendous number of civil rights violations committed by officers against minority residents. What's less understood is how surveillance technologies employed by the police intensify the racially discriminatory strategies that already exist. Police use of captured cellphone data, social media monitoring tools, and facial recognition technology has already been called racially biased, and these technologies aren't likely to disappear from departments. One of the starkest examples of police using technology to compound racially biased policing comes out of Baltimore.