However, law enforcement agencies can track potential threats by making a formal request.

If there were any lingering doubts as to Twitter’s intentions of keeping spies and the police at a distance from its platform, it has cleared them up now: through its blog it has issued a warning to developers that it will not tolerate and/or allow public programming kits or Gnip data for surveillance purposes, irrespective of whether you are a law enforcement agency or a regular programmer.

Just because many tweets happen to be public, it does not necessarily mean it is alright to harvest them, said Twitter.

TO this end, it has promised an “expanded” effort to crack down on developers who use the data for surveillance purposes.

Getting caught would result in either partial access to the platform or a total ban.

Its reason for this being tough is in fact pretty simple: Twitter is wholly devoted to “social justice,” which means it will not allow officials who track publicly available data to scoop up people’s names or track protestors and otherwise curb the freedom of expression.

However, its doubtful whether this crackdown will stop authorities from collecting data of potential troublemakers or those it wants to track. With Twitter adopting this stance, law enforcement agencies may have to resort to the old-fashioned way of searching or make a formal request.