You were probably preoccupied with Thanksgiving matters last week, which is why you likely missed this little tidbit from the Boston Globe:
The FBI recently signed a deal that will give it access to monitor Twitter’s “firehose” — every tweet posted publicly each day, roughly 500 million of them.
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The FBI, like anyone else, has been able to track some publicly-posted tweets all along, but Twitter’s public-facing interface provides users access to only a small slice of tweets at a time, while beneath the surface millions of tweets fly back and forth.
Access to the far more comprehensive firehose data stream is restricted by the social media company. The FBI recently agreed to a deal with the company Dataminr, which already has firehose access. … the FBI said the deal will allow the agency to “directly access the full firehose” and to “search the complete Twitter firehose, in near real-time, using customizable filters.”
The deal will also allow the FBI to change those filters to “reflect changes in investigative priorities,” according to the document, which was posted this month on a federal website that details government contracts with businesses.
The ACLU, among others, is concerned about the FBI’s newfound access. In addition to looking like Twitter is lax on its own rules regarding its data and government surveillance, the FBI’s move has raised privacy concerns and is, quite frankly, kinda scary.