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Here’s a $75,000 contract Hootsuite sold to Calgary police for social media surveillance in 2023. Not sure why anyone would be interested in that though.

Here’s another contract Calgary police signed in 2024 with Hootsuite. Probably nothing.

Here’s one Calgary police signed with Meltwater for similar services, thinly veiled in pitch documents to include apparent facial recognition services. Anyone know what it could mean? I can’t figure it out.

Psych! Here’s an article explaining why Calgary police wanted these Hootsuite and Meltwater contracts, as well as providing full access to the contracts and correspondence obtained through freedom of information. drugdatadecoded.ca/calgary-poli...

I had to pay Calgary police $1,133 to release these documents, so if you can share it with all your friends it’ll make it all worthwhile. There’s even a paid subscription option in the article if you wanna help that way! drugdatadecoded.ca/calgary-poli...

And if you MUST KNOW, Hootsuite competitor Meltwater boasts about selling all these services to a bunch of other police forces and every ministry of the Ontario government! Is your cop shop listed? Maybe time for an FOI request?

Hootsuite was pushing services to Calgary police in 2015-16, the earliest contract I obtained. CPS appears to have not been happy with them, so switched to Salesforce, then Meltwater, and finally back to Hootsuite. In case you were wondering where they went wrong. drugdatadecoded.ca/calgary-poli...