Geofeedia, as it is alleged, was using publicly available user information to sell to law enforcement agents. We would certainly not know if Geofeedia had a commercial agreement with these social media platform to share data, including private data. We can only rely on the communiqué coming from the social media platforms. I would swallow my head if they incriminate themselves.

But the kink of the matter is how privacy and data protection has become a big issue in our times. We the users have put ourselves in a position where we share so much online, without considering the consequences. Apart from privacy settings, and encryption, the social media platforms have no control on the PUBLIC data we post on their platforms. Even without Geofeedia, the security agents can still have bots, even human data entry operators scoring publicly accessible data from the forums.

We are well advised.

______________________
Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya
twitter.com/lordmwesh

On 13 October 2016 at 13:26, Harry Delano via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Hey Ebele,

That sounds like another "sneaky"‎ case of getting caught with hands in the cookie jar. How long did this go on before you could flag it up..? Did it have to await feedback from a third party for Fb to realize this, or are there internal controls and checks to monitor what each of the API's are feeding into or collecting from the huge amount of data available..?

Some clarity would suffice..

Regards,

Harry

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone

From: Ebele Okobi via kictanet Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2016 20:57 To: Harry Delano Reply To: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Cc: Ebele Okobi Subject: Re: [kictanet] Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Share Data with Location-based Social Media Surveillance Startup

Yes-this is a mess, and this article isn't an accurate report. Basically-this was a private company that set itself up as a developer-same as, say, Candy Crush makers or those quiz things about your friends on FB. As a developer, it got access to API (see here  http://readwrite.com/2013/09/19/api-defined/ for definition) that allowed it to build programs into FB. This allowed it to write programs targeting publicly available information on FB platform. That means-no private chats, no private groups, no data that users haven't made publicly available. The point of APIs in this context is SUPPOSED to be so advertisers (from small business to nonprofits to Andela, etc.) can send ads to targeted users. This group completely violated our policies and used their API access to target publicly available info to send to police. FB has kicked them off our platform. As you can imagine, there are many conversations now about this. But key to know that FB did NOT and does not sell user data; that this was a completely unauthorized use of our developer platform, that  we rectified this as soon as we were notified, that the access was not to user data, but essentially a program that allowed them to target public info on Facebook. It's still unacceptable, and something we are taking extremely seriously.

Ebele Okobi | Public Policy Director, Africa

m. +44 (0) 771 156 1315

10 Brock Street | London | NW1 3FG

ebeleokobi@fb.com

On Oct 12, 2016, at 5:43 PM, Ahmed Mohamed Maawy via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

The ACLU of California has obtained records showing that Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram provided user data access to Geofeedia, a developer of a social media monitoring product that we have seen marketed to law enforcement as a tool to monitor activists and protesters. We are pleased that after we reported our findings to the companies, Instagram cut off Geofeedia’s access to public user posts, and Facebook has cut its access to a topic-based feed of public user posts.

More here: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/facebook-instagram-and-twitter-provided-data-access-surveillance-product-marketed

--

Ahmed Maawy
Executive Director - SwahiliBox / M-Power (CBO)
Curator - Global Shapers Mombasa Hub
Ambassador - Open Knowledge
Director - Startup Grind Mombasa
Software Developer - AJ+ / EveryLayer
(KE) +254 714 960 627
Skype: ultimateprogramer

swahilibox.co.ke
globalshapers.org
www.okfn.org
startupgrind.com
ajplus.net
www.everylayer.com

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