This type of police surveillance will come as no surprise to Australian blogs which post on local and regional protests

CNN.com, 11 October 2016:

The ACLU of California reported that Geofeedia had been providing law enforcement with data -- including locations -- from the social media accounts of protestors. In response, it said Tuesday that Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram had cut off Geofeedia's access to their feeds.

The extent of law enforcement's social media surveillance was discovered through public records requests of 63 agencies in California, according to the ACLU of California. Emails obtained show the tools were used to monitor chatter around "the Ferguson situation," and that Geofeedia told California law enforcement agencies to find out how police in Baltimore used its tools to "stay one step ahead of rioters," after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody.

Geofeedia provided searchable data from public Instagram posts, troves of publicly shared information from Facebook (FB, Tech30) via the Topic Feed API, and public tweets. Information in Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram posts can be used to infer things like location, personal associations and religious affiliation.

The ACLU says Geofeedia and other social media surveillance tools can unfairly impact communities of color. Movements like #BlackLivesMatter began on social media, and Twitter, in particular, is used as a platform for organizing and amplifying protests.

"Communities of color rely on platforms to organize, to persuade, and to spread information," Matt Cagle, technology and civil liberties policy attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, told CNNMoney. "But here, the social networks left a side door open for surveillance by the police."

Law enforcement agencies invest thousands in the tools that aggregate and surveil conversation data --the Daily Dot reported that the Denver Police Department spent $30,000 on these types of tools in May. The ACLU launched an investigation in Denver in response to this report.

Based on information in the @ACLU's report, we are immediately suspending @Geofeedia's commercial access to Twitter data.

— Policy (@policy) October 11, 2016

In an email obtained by the ACLU of California through public records requests, Geofeedia claims "over 500 law enforcement and public safety agencies" use its services.

After the ACLU's report on Tuesday, Twitter tweeted that Geofeedia's access had been revoked.

"In addition to cutting off data access, the social networks should take additional steps to implement clear rules that prohibit the use of user data for surveillance, and oversight measures to ensure developers are not using the user data for surveillance," Cagle said.

The organization is joining with the Center for Media Justice and Color of Change to ask social media sites to commit to better protecting users engaged in political and social discourse.

Malkia Cyril, the executive director of the Center for Media Justice, said that people are using social media to expose human rights abuses, turning these platforms into modern day news outlets. However, the sites aren't not subject to the same kind of scrutiny or standards, she said.

"I wasn't surprised," Cyril told CNNMoney. "But I do think the average user should be shocked and dismayed at the scope and the scale of what the ACLU found."

Australian Infrastructure Developments Pty Ltd still insulting people on social media

In reference to the fact that commercial and recreational fishing form part of the economic underpinning of local town/village economies within the Clarence River estuary, the Facebook page No Yamba Mega Port produced this banner:

Apparently this did not impress the proponents of the Yamba Mega Port scheme, presumably including the public 'face' of this proposal Des Euen.

A reader sent me this last Friday, 29 July 2016:

Which made me wonder what else this company was saying on Facebook that week and, oh dear, Australian Infrastructure Developments Pty Ltd aka AID Australia was back to its old ways - tossing insults.

Which by AID Australia standards is almost polite when you compare it to this use of bad language on 1 July 2016:

Take a bow Twitter in Australia - a large part of the reason Turnbull & Co weren't unconditionally loved by the electorate on 2 July 2016 is your fault!

Excerpt from Sky News Australian Agenda 3 July 2016 interview with Liberal Senator for Tasmania George Brandis:

PAUL KELLY:

Can I just ask, do you think we are seeing deeper changes in Australian politics? We have now gone for a decade and the evidence is that it's very hard for a first-term government to it be re-elected. The electorate seems to be more impatient and more critical. Do you think that's right?

ATTORNEY-GENERAL:

I do, and there are a lot of reasons for that. I think one of the drivers of this is the increasing velocity of events. Another is the trivialisation of political communication through Twitter and things like that. There are a lot of phenomena that sociologists and political scientists will no doubt write about, but I do think that the velocity of events, the increasing accelerating velocity of events and the trivialisation of political discourse have a lot to do with it.

Take a bow, Aussie twerps.

Social media, advertising, trust and dollars

Excerpt from the Australian Newspaper History Group Newsletter No. 87 May 2016:

87.2.1 Reach and effectiveness of social media

British marketing and branding specialist Mark Ritson will give a series of lectures to the Australian Association of National Advertisers that will challenge some thinking about the reach and effectiveness of social media over established media platforms, such as print. Professor Ritson, who is head of Marketing at Melbourne Business School, will conduct four talks over six dates in Sydney and Melbourne, from 24 May. His first lecture is titled "Marketing Deconstructed: Communications – the death of the digital/traditional divide". Prof Ritson believes the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are over-rated by some marketers, who choose to ignore the proven engagement of traditional media. Prof Ritson says the belief in social media as an advertising platform has become fashionable among some marketing executives who blindly denigrate television and print. To back his position on the strength of traditional platforms, Prof Ritson cited data from Nielsen's global trust in advertising survey published last September. The report showed 63 per cent of people trusted TV advertising, and 60 per cent trusted print ads, but only 46 per cent trusted ads served on social networks (TheNewspaperWorks, 18 March 2016).

87.2.2 Online advertising nears $6bn

Australian online advertising spending climbed to $5.9 billion in 2015, a 24 per cent increase from calendar year 2014, according to the latest Interactive Advertising Bureau/Pricewaterhouse Coopers Online Advertising Expenditure Report. The fourth quarter report is a significant result for the online advertising industry which has achieved double-digit growth of at least 20 per cent since 2010. The report examines advertising expenditure across five advertising categories, each of which experienced significant year on year growth:

 Mobile grew 81 per cent this year to $1.5 billion

 Video grew 75 per cent to $500 million

 General display grew 46 per cent to $2.1 billion

 Classifieds grew 22 per cent to $1.1 billion

 Search and directories grew 14 per cent to $2.8 billion.

Outgoing chief executive of the IAB Alice Manners said, "When the IAB first started recording online ad expenditure in 2003 it was at $1.3 billion and today we are poised to break the $6 billion barrier," she said.

Politwoops is gathering Australian politicians' tweets once more

The Age 1 January 2016:

Politwoops will once again be able to collect and publish the deleted tweets of politicians around the world after Twitter announced that it reached a deal with the organisations that run the website.

Twitter revoked Politwoops' access to its API, the back-end code used by developers of other applications, earlier this year. Christopher Gates, the president of the Sunlight Foundation, a transparency group that runs the website in partnership with the Open State Foundation and Access Now, wrote at the time that Twitter's decision "truly mystified" him.

Politwoops has helped shine a light on apparent attempts by politicians to distance themselves from their remarks on Twitter. Perhaps the most notable case was when several politicians deleted tweets praising the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl by captors in Afghanistan after questions arose about the soldier's past actions.

Politwoops Australia can be found here.

NOTE: A word of warning – there is at least one Australian politician’s Twitter account which was comprehensively hacked and the tweets recorded as deleted did not originate from that person, so double check all tweets you may consider quoting.

Twitter: no trolls, bullies, haters or racists allowed

Twitter has updated its abusive behaviour policy:

Abusive Behavior

We believe in freedom of expression and in speaking truth to power, but that means little as an underlying philosophy if voices are silenced because people are afraid to speak up. In order to ensure that people feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs, we do not tolerate behavior that crosses the line into abuse, including behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another user’s voice.

Any accounts and related accounts engaging in the activities specified below may be temporarily locked and/or subject to permanent suspension.

* Violent threats (direct or indirect): You may not make threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism. 

* Harassment: You may not incite or engage in the targeted abuse or harassment of others.

Some of the factors that we may consider when evaluating abusive behavior include:

o   if a primary purpose of the reported account is to harass or send abusive messages to others;

o   if the reported behavior is one-sided or includes threats;

o   if the reported account is inciting others to harass another account; and

o   if the reported account is sending harassing messages to an account from multiple accounts.

* Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories. 

*Multiple account abuse: Creating multiple accounts with overlapping uses or in order to evade the temporary or permanent suspension of a separate account is not allowed.

* Private information: You may not publish or post other people's private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, street address, or Social Security/National Identity numbers, without their express authorization and permission. In addition, you may not post intimate photos or videos that were taken or distributed without the subject's consent. Read more about our private information policy here.

* Impersonation: You may not impersonate others through the Twitter service in a manner that is intended to or does mislead, confuse, or deceive others. Read more about our impersonation policy here.

A message for Lyn

“Thanks for the tweets, Lyn!”

North Coast Voices appreciate your efforts to let everyone know what Australian bloggers are saying.

Kind Regards,

Clarrie Rivers

U.S. citizen and media mogul Rupert Murdoch takes his push for Australian regime change on to Twitter

Twitter becomes too intrusive?

 

Two bright sparks have a page on their website which displays photographs of the geolocation from which selected tweets were sent.

What's happened to Steve's friends?

The former and disgraced Member for Clarence, Steve Cansdell, has resurfaced on Facebook and it would seem he can now hold get-togethers with his friends in telephone boxes. Yes, that's right, Steve has so few friends he can count them on one hand ... one, two, three, four.