[HillaryBriss]

in any case, it's probably best to assume police and other government agencies can access your social network data.

the ACLU may well win a million court cases, but the data is out there.

i don't see an effective way to stop police, as individuals, or as small independently organized groups, from accessing this sort of data, whether legally or illegally. someone will find a way to get that information to the police if the police want it.

[jwtadvice]

> it's probably best to assume police and other government agencies can access your social network data.

A hundred times over. Your social media posts are included in both your credit score and the criminal risk score algorithms used by police to prioritize covert civilian investigations.

The ACLU has spoken pretty powerfully on the use of police risk scoring algorithms and individualized data tracking, but it's the wave of the future with states and municipalities being pressured and incentivized by federal police to adopt the technologies and practices. IIRC it's close to a hundred US cities now that have official per-citizen social media and data surveillance feeds?

[ryandrake]

If only there was some way to not voluntarily post all one's personal data and activities online.

[throwawayReply]

Much of it isn't voluntary.

People are sold a phone to which they provide some details including social media logins and install some apps.

They then carry their phone around with them not realizing that the phone is automatically uploading it's location to various services.

If you were to poll people, "Does having Facebook installed imply your location will be broadcast to Facebook 24/7?", I think you might be surprised to find out that even despite that leading question that people in fact don't realize that.

To use an adroid phone requires a google account to which your location will be transmitted. You can ask google to stop this happening but then you're back to the issue that people need to be aware this is even happening.

In tech circles people are well educated about this particular issue. More widely this is less well known.

[Karunamon]

Much of it is. Facebook claims that the data Geofeedia was accessing was publicly shared, as in, not related to the location pings used by the service to find nearby friends.

That means pictures and posts with GPS data attached (read: willfully created by the user), unless there's some kind of proof that this company had a level of API access that goes beyond the level any other developer can access.

People oversharing is a huge problem.

[ryandrake]

Yea--I would love to live in a world where we aren't all forced to have "social media logins" in the first place!