Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have cut back on access to their data for Geofeedia, a social media monitoring company, after a report from the ACLU today showed how police use Geofeedia to track racial justice protests.

Last month, we broke the news of the Seattle Police Department's quiet, illegal acquisition Geofeedia software in 2014.

The SPD says it no longer uses Geofeedia and instead uses a social media monitoring tool called Babel Street. It has not answered The Stranger's questions about what Babel Street does and how it is used.

But as recently as yesterday, Chief Kathleen O'Toole, in response to questions from Council Member Kshama Sawant, defended the use of Geofeedia and Babel Street, saying they are "no different from, maybe, Chrome or Tweetdeck or Google Alerts—it’s a package that will scan open source public media."

That's not true, according to Shankar Narayan, the ACLU of Washington's Technology and Liberty Director.

"They are fundamentally different," he said, "because they use a much deeper algorithmic dive to draw associations that the other tools aren't doing... The game-changer is the power of the algorithm to collate and mine the data for associations."

Chrome, Tweetdeck, and Google Alerts are free tools. The SPD's contract with Geofeedia cost $14,000 over two years.

The Washington Post picked up the ACLU report today and reported:

A powerful surveillance program that police used for tracking racially charged protests in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo. relied on special feeds of user data provided by Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, according to an ACLU blog post published Tuesday.

The companies reportedly provided the data—often including the locations of users—to Geofeedia, a Chicago-based company that says it analyzes social media posts to deliver surveillance information to 500 law enforcement agencies.

This morning, Twitter said it is "immediately suspending @Geofeedia's commercial access to Twitter data," based on the information in the ACLU report.

Correspondence between Geofeedia and police departments in California, obtained by the ACLU, show that the company touted the ability to "pull private information for Instagram and Twitters," map Instagram posts, and in one chilling document, described activist groups and unions as "overt threats."

Narayan said the news today "points out the concern that we've been bringing up all along—the power of these kinds of tools to chill first amendment activity, including protests like Black Lives Matter. My hope is that Seattle can take a different approach, which is really proactive, in being transparent with the community about how this software is being used."

Today, in response to questions about Twitter's decision to cut off Geofeedia's access to data, the SPD sent The Stranger the following statement:

The Seattle Police Department discontinued the use of Geofeedia months ago. Our department previously used the service in a limited capacity to support criminal investigations. We continue to work closely with the City of Seattle Intelligence Auditor, privacy advocates and city departments to ensure constitutional and effective policing in our city.

This post has been updated since its original publication.