Twitter cuts off US intelligence agencies from key analytics: WSJ

San Francisco

TWITTER Inc has cut off US intelligence agencies from using a key analytics service for surveillance, according to The Wall Street Journal, the latest example of a Silicon Valley company clashing with the government over user privacy.

Twitter said its partner Dataminr sifts through public tweets to sell information to newsrooms and government agencies, but the company has never been authorised to sell that data to intelligence agencies for "surveillance purposes". The Wall Street Journal said Dataminr had been providing information for surveillance for two years.