On Monday , Facebookupdated its platform policiesto prohibit mass surveillance on its platform by explicitly blocking developer from using “ information obtained from us to provide puppet that are used for surveillance . ” The move come after free burning pressure from civic right organizations to make it unvoiced for police agencies to follow Facebook and collect data on substance abuser without their noesis .
But give Facebook ’s broad role ofdata mining and anticipation technologiesand the fact that it still give exploiter info to jurisprudence enforcementabout 80 percentof the time , here ’s a more accurate way of putting it : Facebook , amass surveillancetool that yield drug user data to police , is updating its policy so that developers ca n’t build surveillance tools to give data to police . find safer yet ?
Last November , the ACLU revealed that Facebookhad been sharing user datawith Geofeedia , a surveillance party that provided 500 law of nature enforcement means with real - time information on Facebook users . Geofeedia sold itself to police departments as a putz for monitoring militant and protest . With it , cops could geo - locate Facebook exploiter , give chase function of specific keywords and emoji , and even head for the hills their image through face recognition software .
Facebook and Instagram thenbooted Geofeedia from the service , updating its policy both then and now to block such uses . Facebook confirm that the surveillance companyviolatedFacebook ’s secrecy policies , but also noted that Geofeedia only had access to public user information .
Ina blog post , Deputy Chief Privacy Officer Rob Sherman aver the move was to against developer who make and commercialise tools mean for surveillance :
Today we are adding speech to our Facebook and Instagram political platform policies to more clearly explain that developer can not “ practice data obtained from us to leave tools that are used for surveillance . ” Our goal is to make our insurance policy explicit . Over the past several months we have take enforcement action against developers who create and marketed tools meant for surveillance , in violation of our exist policies ; we want to be indisputable everyone understands the underlie insurance and how to comply .
Just to be copiously clear , this does n’t mean cops ca n’t get your Facebook data .
Facebook has not entrust to fighting subpoenas from officers , who can enquire for as much information as they ’d like when gathering evidence . The company complies with almost all constabulary petition for datum . Second , officers are only required to subpoena individual information . Any double , post or statuses that are undetermined to public are completely fair game andcops “ patrol ” suspect ’ societal mediaas openly as they do the street .
And while Facebook is ending one specific type of third - party mass surveillance , it still collects tremendous amounts of information on users , then compiles and sells that data . For example , Facebook uses data to distinguish user ’ subspecies and faith and would likely turn that information over if involve . What happens when they get it wrong ? In November , a journalist with Business Insiderwas marked as linkedto Hezbollah , which was designated a terrorist governing body bythe State Department . Imagine that showing up during an officer ’s on-line investigating . In many ways , Facebook has already ramp up theMuslim databaseit vowed it would n’t last year .
It ’s good that company like Geofeedia are n’t getting easygoing memory access to data , but your Facebook info is — and will always be — seen by more eyes than just your own .
Correction : 2025-03-04 12 premier EST : The former version of this history misstate Facebook ’s original response to the ACLU ’s theme on Geofeedia . Facebook did not refuse Geofeedia violated ship’s company policy before revoking its approach to exploiter data .
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