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1 American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, Northern California: Letter Social Media Surveillance 1 (2023)

handle is hein.brennan/acluntnc0001 and id is 1 raw text is: BRENNAN ERCA CML BERTIES UNION C EN TER Northern I (R I I( California December 12, 2023 BY EMAIL: electronicfilings@ftc.gov Ms. April Tabor Secretary of the Commission Federal Trade Commission 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20580 Dear Commissioners, Social media companies have repeatedly promised, going back half a decade, that consumers' social media information will not be used for law enforcement surveillance. Despite those promises, developers of social media surveillance tools' still claim that they have access to data from Meta (formerly Facebook)2 and/or X (formerly Twitter), and they sell their services, data, and products to law enforcement. Law enforcement at both the federal and local levels have recently purchased surveillance software from these vendors. Those developers' claims raise serious questions about whether Meta and X are complying with their binding commitments to protect user privacy. The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU NorCal), the Brennan Center for Justice (Brennan Center), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) submit this letter to request that the Federal Trade Commission seek further information from X and Meta to determine whether the companies' privacy commitments are being honored as the law requires. Recent developments raise additional concerns about the capability of both Meta and X to meet their commitments to the FTC. Both X and Meta are undergoing challenges, reducing the size of their workforce, and considering whether changes to their business models are appropriate.3 Some of those changes could implicate the promises made by the platforms ' For purposes of this letter, a developer of social media surveillance tools or a surveillance vendor is a private entity that collects user information from social media platforms, and sells that information, or inferences about it, to law enforcement agencies. 2 This letter uses the corporate names used by the companies at the time the events described took place. That is, this letter uses Facebook before November of 2021 and Meta after and uses Twitter before July 2023 and X after. This letter also uses Facebook to refer specifically to the Facebook social-media product, particularly when it is important to distinguish it from Instagram, another Meta product. 3 See Mike Isaac, Facebook Renames ItselfMeta, N.Y. TIMES (Nov. 10, 2021), https ://www.imes.com/2021/10/28/technology/facebook-meta-name-change nml; Katie Paul, Facebook 1

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