( 47 ) episode, Social Networks Need Clearer Terms of Service

Earlier this month, Facebook added language to its Platform Policy for developers that specifically instructed, “don’t use data obtained from us to provide tools that are used for surveillance.”

This clarification followed an American Civil Liberties Union reportlate 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.”

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It’s a terrifying idea. Black Lives Matter movement activists prominently used these services to document and publicize protests. Additionally, people of color, particularly activists, have historically been disproportionately targeted for surveillance by U.S. law enforcement. But Facebook and Twitter shouldn’t have been surprised. Law enforcement monitoring of social media during protests is also not particularly new, and the Snowden NSA surveillance revelations also included evidence of private companies offering social media–monitoring tools to law enforcement, in some cases specifically providing examples of how they could be used for monitoring activists and protests.

Facebook and Twitter ended their relationship with Geofeedia after these allegations came to light, and Facebook’s recent clarification of its terms of service better cements this position as a formal policy. But the incident highlights a larger issue. Geofeedia is hardly the only company feeding social media data into its surveillance tools, selling them to various law enforcement and government authorities, or marketing them specifically for deployment during protests. Incomplete or vague policies governing use of user data leaves room for third parties to abuse their access. And without company disclosure about the steps they take to detect and prevent such abuse, users are left in the dark about how—or whether—their privacy rights are respected.