ten years ago, Internet platform X, then known as Twitter, filed a lawsuit against the government that it hoped would force transparency about abuse-prone surveillance of social media users. However, X’s court battle comes up against an uncomfortable fact: the company is itself in the business of government surveillance of social media.
Under Elon Musk’s new ownership, X had continued litigation until losing it in January. The lawsuit was aimed at overturning a government ban on disclosure of receipt of requests, known as national security letters, that compel companies to hand over everything from user metadata to private direct messages. Companies that receive these requests are usually legally bound to keep the request secret and can usually reveal the number they received in a given year in vague numerical intervals.
In his petition to the Supreme Court last September, X’s lawyers took up the communications privacy banner: “History shows that the surveillance of electronic communications is both a fertile ground for government abuse and a hot political topic of great public concern. . .” After the court declined to take the case in January, Musk responded by tweeting, “Disappointing that the Supreme Court refused to hear this case.”
The court’s refusal to take the case ended X’s legal bid, but the company and Musk had positioned themselves at the forefront of a battle on behalf of Internet users for greater transparency about government surveillance.
However, emails between the US Secret Service and surveillance firm Dataminr, obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request, show that X is in a difficult position, profiting from the sale of user data for of government surveillance at the same time as he was fighting the secrecy surrounding another flavor of state surveillance in court.
While national security warrants allow the government to make targeted requests for non-public data on an individual basis, companies like Dataminr constantly monitor public activity on social media and other internet platforms. Dataminr provides its customers with real-time personalized “alerts” on desired topics, giving customers like police departments a form of social media omniscience. Alerts allow police to, for example, automatically track a protest as it moves from its planning stages to the streets, without requiring police officers to do any time-intensive searches.
Although Dataminr defends First Alert, its government surveillance platform, as a public safety tool that helps first responders quickly respond to unexpected crises, the tool has repeatedly been shown to be used by police to monitor political speech online. protected by the First Amendment and the real world. the protests.
“The whole point”
Dataminr has long defended its special relationship with X as an integral part of First Alert. (Twitter previously owned a stake in Dataminr, though it was spun off prior to Musk’s acquisition.) Unlike other platforms that monitor by scraping user content, Dataminr pays for privileged access to X through the company’s “firehose”: a feed of live and unfiltered of every single piece of User Content ever shared publicly on the Platform.
Seeing everything that happens in X in real time is key to Dataminr’s presentation to the government. The company essentially leases indirect access to this massive splash of information, with Dataminr acting as an intermediary between X’s servers and a host of police, intelligence and military agencies.
While it was unclear whether, under Musk, X would continue to lease its users access to Dataminr — and by extension, the government — emails from the Secret Service confirm that, as of last summer, the social media platform was still very open. the business of government surveillance.
“Dataminr has a unique contractual relationship with Twitter where we have real-time access to the full stream of all publicly available Tweets,” a representative of the surveillance company wrote to the Secret Service in a July 2023 message about with the conditions of the law. enforcement agency oversight subscription. “In addition, all of Dataminr’s public sector customers today have agreed to these terms, including dozens who are responsible for law enforcement at either the local, state or federal level.” (Terms are not mentioned in the email.)
According to an email from the Secret Service on the same subject, the agency’s interest in Dataminr was unclear: “The entire purpose of this contract is to use the information for law enforcement purposes.”
Privacy advocates told The Intercept that Musk’s X-era warnings about government surveillance abuses are at odds with the company’s continued sale of user data for government surveillance purposes. (Neither X nor Dataminr responded to a request for comment.)
“X’s legal briefs recognize that communications surveillance is ripe for government abuse and that we cannot depend on the police to police ourselves,” Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said of the speech , privacy and technology. The project. “But then X turns around and sells Dataminr firehose access to user posts, which Dataminr then passes on to the government in the form of unregulated disclosures and speculative predictions that can falsely ensnare the innocent.”
“Social media platforms must protect the privacy of their users.”
“Social media platforms must protect the privacy of their users,” said Adam Schwartz, director of privacy litigation at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed an amicus brief in support of X’s Supreme Court petition. “For example, platforms should not provide special services, such as real-time access to the full stream of public postings, to surveillance vendors who share this information with police departments. If X is providing such access to Dataminr, that would be disappointing.”
“Excellent in Disagreement”
After a 2016 investigation into Twitter’s use of data for police surveillance by the ACLU, the company went so far as to express prohibition third parties from “conducting or providing surveillance or gathering information” and “monitoring sensitive events (including but not limited to protests, rallies, or community organizing meetings)” using fire data. The new policy went so far as to ban the use of firehose data for purposes related to “any alleged or actual commission of a crime” — allegedly a problem for Dataminr’s crime-fighting clientele.
These guarantees have done nothing to stop Dataminr from using the data it buys from X to do exactly these things. Preliminary reporting by The Intercept has shown that the company has, in recent years, helped federal and local police monitor largely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests and abortion rights rallies in recent years.
Neither X nor Dataminr have responded to repeated requests to explain how a tool that allows real-time monitoring of protests is allowed under a policy that expressly prohibits protest monitoring. In the past, Dataminr and X have denied that monitoring people’s real-time online communications and relaying that information to the police is a form of surveillance because the posts in question are public.
Twitter later softened this ban by noting that surveillance apps were prohibited “Unless expressly approved by X in writing.” Dataminr, for its part, remains listed as an “official partner” of X.
Although the means differ, national security researchers told The Intercept that the goals of national security letters and firehose monitoring are the same: widespread government surveillance with little or no meaningful oversight. Neither national security letters nor social media surveillance require a judge’s signature, and in both cases, those affected are left unaware that they have fallen under government control.
“While I appreciate that there may be a symbolic difference between directly giving the government granular data and having them analyze what they buy from data brokers, the bottom line is still that user data ends up in the hands of law enforcement , and this time without any legal process,” said David Greene, director of civil liberties at the EFF.
“The end result is still that user data ends up in the hands of law enforcement, and this time without any legal process.”
It’s the kind of ideological contradiction typical of the owner of X. Musk has managed to sell himself as a heterodox critic of American foreign policy and big government, while at the same time enriching himself by selling expensive military equipment to the government through his company SpaceX rockets.
“While X’s efforts to bring more transparency to the National Security Letter process are laudable, his opposition to government communications surveillance in that context is clearly at odds with his decision to support similar surveillance measures through its partnership with Dataminr,” said Mary Pat Dwyer. , Georgetown University Law Institute director of Technology Law and Policy. “Scholars and advocates have long argued that the Dataminr partnership is in stark contrast to the platform’s policy prohibiting the use of its data for surveillance, and X’s continued failure to end the relationship prevents the company from being portrayed favorably. trusted as an advocate for the privacy of its users.”
