Facebook to Devs: Stop Using Data for Surveillance

Facebook's user data is the company'due south lifeblood, sustaining the advertizement platform of the earth's largest social network. But it's not simply advertisers who want that data: spies and law enforcement agencies would too similar to become their hands on it. Facebook on Monday fabricated information technology a fleck harder for them to get it.

A new update to the company's developer rules prohibits the apply of Facebook data in surveillance tools, something that Facebook said was already against its policies merely non explicit enough. The update explains that developers cannot "use data obtained from us to provide tools that are used for surveillance," according to a Facebook post from Deputy Chief Privacy Officer Rob Sherman.

"Our goal is to brand our policy explicit," Sherman wrote. "Over the past several months we accept taken enforcement action against developers who created and marketed tools meant for surveillance, in violation of our existing policies; we want to be sure everyone understands the underlying policy and how to comply."

Although Sherman did not specifically mention police force enforcement utilise of information as a catalyst for the updated policy, he said Facebook had been working with the American Civil Liberties Matrimony and other advancement groups to address surveillance on social media. The groups hailed the alter, explaining that it would protect users against mass police surveillance of activists and protesters.

"When engineering companies permit their platforms and devices to be used to conduct mass surveillance of activists and other targeted communities, it chills democratic dissent and gives authoritarianism a license to thrive," Malkia Cyril, Executive Director of the Heart for Media Justice, said in a statement.

An ACLU investigation last fall found that police force in Baltimore and Oakland, Calif., used analytics and search tools from Geofeedia to monitor protests. Geofeedia's analytics software used data from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, all three of which suspended Geofeedia's access before long after the investigation.

While Facebook is making it harder for third-party developers to conduct surveillance on its users, it is nevertheless subject to the same subpoenas and other similar requests for data that come up directly from law enforcement agencies themselves. Those requests have increased sharply in recent years.