FBI Uses Dataminr Tweet-Mining Tool to Track Terrorist Activity

The FBI revealed its contract with analytic firm Dataminr to track terrorist or any other illegal activity in Twitter, stressing the need for having "an advanced alerting tool," media reported.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — According to The Verge, Dataminr, which is partly owned by Twitter, was hired by the FBI last week and it would provide its tool "to search the complete Twitter firehose, in near-real time, using customizable filters."

"The use of social media platforms, like Twitter, by terrorist groups, intelligence services, and criminal organizations to further their illegal activity creates a demonstrated need for tools to properly identify the activity and react appropriately. With increased use of Twitter by subjects of FBI investigations, it is critical to obtain a service which will allow the FBI to identify relevant information from Twitter in a timely fashion," an FBI contracting document said.

Despite the fact that Twitter is extensively used by criminal organizations to communicate, recruit and raise funds for illegal activity, the FBI-Dataminr contract violates a key clause in Twitter’s Developer Agreement, forbidding use of the provided data to "investigate, track or surveil Twitter’s users,"

In May, Twitter reportedly banned CIA access to Dataminr, stressing that it would never authorize "Dataminr or any third party to sell data to a government or intelligence agency for surveillance purposes."

Dataminr was founded in 2009 with a mission to search for newsworthy events through real-time tweets.