ACLU Criticism Causes Controversy with Social Media Monitoring Tools
Alleging privacy violations and potentially invasive tracking of activists’ actions, statements and protest plans, the American Civil Liberties Union has taken aim at social media monitoring software that has been used to monitor and analyze social media data from platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. While this software has proven popular for enterprises to monitor brand awareness and reputation, security concerns and potential threats, law enforcement organizations have also adopted it to monitor areas, groups and emerging situations.
Following criticism from the ACLU in October, social media services such as Twitter have taken part in reducing these software services’ access to their data and postings for law enforcement or government clients. As of December 2016, Twitter had also cut off access to its “firehose” of data to DHS Fusion Centers, while highly-filtered versions are still available through different companies.