Geofeedia
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About
Geofeedia is a social media intelligence platform which tracks the geolocation of posts made on various social media platforms in real-time. Geofeedia has been controversially used by United States law enforcement to monitor political activists, drawing criticism from civil rights groups.
History
In July 2011, Geofeedia was founded by entrepreneurs Scott Mitchell, Phil Harris and Mike Mulroy.[4] By 2014, the intelligence platform allowed clients to view social media postings in a defined geographic area in real-time (shown below). In October that year, Geofeedia published a blog post[6] revealing that the they closed a $3.5 million Series A round of financing, and that the fast-food chain McDonald's, the computer technology company Dell and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department were using the company's software.
Surveillance Controversies
On April 13th, 2016, the San Francisco Bay Area news site East Bay Express[2] published an article titled "Oakland Cops Quietly Acquired Social Media Surveillance Tool," reporting that the Oakland Police Department had been using Geofeedia to monitor "large public gatherings, possibly including political protests" since 2014. On September 19th, The Daily Dot[7] reported that they had obtained documents under the Colorado Open Records Act revealing that the Denver Police Department was using Geofeedia (shown below). That day, both Facebook and Instagram cut off Geofeedia's access to the platforms.
Denver P.D. – Geofeedia paperwork by Dell Cameron on Scribd
On September 22nd, the American Civil Liberties Union of Norther California published a blog post on Medium,[3] reporting that Geofeedia was marketing itself to police as a tool to track protesters at demonstrations in Fergusion, Missouri (shown below).
On October 11th, 2016, the ACLU posted a report on their official blog,[1] alleging that Geofeedia was being used to identify and arrest activists protesting Freddie Gray's death during the 2015 Baltimore Riots. That day, Twitter suspended access to Geofeedia. Meanwhile, Geofeedia CEO Phil Harris released a statement defending the software, claiming the company is "committed to the principles of personal privacy, transparency and both the letter and the spirit of the law when it comes to individual rights."[8]
Search Interest
External References
[1] ACLU – Facebook Instagram and Twitter Provided Data Access for a Surveillance Product
[2] East Bay Express – Oakland Cops Quietly Acquired Social Media Surveillance Tool
[3] Medium – Police use of social media surveillance software is escalating and activists are in the digital crosshairs
[5] VentureBeat – Geofeedia geolocates your social media postings
[6] Geofeedia Blog – Geofeedia
[7] The Daily Dot – Denver police spent $30k on social media surveillance tools
[8] Mashable – Social media companies suspend Geofeedias access
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