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According to a new report, it appears that Twitter has decided to not continue providing U.S. intelligence agencies with access to a data mining service. The service is an analytical tool which has access to Twitter’s data, and spy agencies have been working with that service to access the data, but Twitter doesn’t seem too keen on continuing this relationship.

Twitter has a 5 percent stake in a private company called Dataminr. Its relationship with Twitter is unique because Dataminr is the only service which has real-time access to tweets.

The data mining tool is thus very beneficial to companies and news organizations who can keep track of trending events that they might be interested in. It’s also very appealing to spy agencies that want access to as much data as possible.

Since June last year, Dataminr has been associated with In-Q-Tel, a not-for-profit commercial investment organization that’s backed by the U.S. intelligence community. Contract details on USApending.gov reveal that the Department of Homeland Security spent $225,000 so that 50 users could get access to Dataminr. The contract is due to expire in June this year.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Twitter is not looking to renew the contract following increased public awareness with regards to data privacy. Even though the microblogging network hasn’t officially confirmed any of this, if this does happen, intelligence agencies will then have to rely upon other mediums to analyze public Twitter data in real-time.

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