Government 'blocked' from accessing Twitter data to help spot terrorist plots
Summary
Twitter has denied key Government organisations such as the Police and MI5 access to data on potential terrorist threats, which is a move that ministers fear will make the country less safe. Denying access to the Police and MI5 comes in addition to denying access to the CIA last year. They made this decision to stop user data being used for surveillance. Prior to Twitter blocking this access it is understood that the Government paid a third party company for a tracking service that flagged key terms related to terrorism. Ministers are said to be incredibly angry about the decision and have attempted to have it overturned but been unsuccessful.
Key Statistics - http://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-transparency-report-2017
Twitter's spam tools helped shut down 376,890 terrorist accounts in 6 months
- This is a steep increase from the previous year when 636,248 accounts had been suspended in total between August 1, 2015 and December 31, 2016.
My Opinion
I think that in the short term Twitter has made a good decision to ban Government access to user accounts in a bid to stop their information being used for surveillance purposes. However, this isn't a long term solution in my opinion as with the multitude of platforms I am sure that Twitter is not the only platform that the Government should be wanting access to for users or posts potentially flagged up as terrorism.
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