Twitter Bars Spy Agencies From Analytics Service

According to an unnamed senior US intelligence official, Twitter has taken the move to cut off intelligence agencies from having access to its analytics service. In the past, the service had allowed intelligence agencies in the United States to sift through Twitter's entire posting-output, in order to help with potentially dangerous events. Following multiple examples of tension between the tech industry and the American government, Twitter has said that its “data is largely public and the US government may review public accounts on its own, like any user could”. The analytics tool itself is run by the private company Dataminr, who Twitter have a 5% stake in, and are the only company that Twitter allows to access its data in this manner. However, Dataminr recently told intelligence agencies that Twitter had ordered them to stop selling the data to them for data protection reasons. 

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