Texas police invested in phone-tracking software and won’t say how it’s used
texasobserver.org337 points by nobody9999 16 hours ago
337 points by nobody9999 16 hours ago
Why are they comfortable saying this?
> Generally, Boyd said his office uses the software to find “avenues for obtaining probable cause” or “to verify reasonable suspicion that you already have”—not as a basis by itself to make arrests.
As if that's not a massive violation of our rights in and of itself. This is my fundamental problem with the internet. As much as stories like these gain traction, as many millions of redditors protest these increasingly common stories (for example, the suspicious nature of Luigi Mangione being 'reported' in that McDonalds), nothing will change.
Perhaps this is the part of the criminal justice system I am most suspect of. Is this what happens in a country with less regulation?
> Why are they comfortable saying this?
They receive recognition for the results. Phone data was used in a large fraction of the cases against rioters in the 2021 capital attack. The Powers That Be were grateful that law enforcement were able to use phone data to either initially identify attackers or corroborate other evidence, and ultimately put people in prison. The justice system makes cases with this every day, and the victims of criminals are thankful for these results.
Tools like this are substantially different than time/location Bound geofences with warrants served to providers like were used in the Jan 6 investigations. And even those are under SCOTUS scrutiny for 4th amendment concerns.
Results compel expectations, and every "success" unlocks more latitude. A rational person cannot admire headlines that trumpet the wonderful achievements of digital dragnets in one case, and then suffer "concern" when more aggressive techniques are employed elsewhere: there are powerful incentives involved, as any thinking person should know. J6 was a big unlock for state surveillance; the results were met with gushing praise and no friction was incurred. Now, new bounds are being pushed and the tools proliferate, as the fine distinctions you cling to are blithely forgone.
I've heard a lot more recognition for Apple refusing to comply with unlocking iPhones over the years than any of these other cases.
I don't like being devil's advocate on this because I am strongly against the invasion of privacy at that point in the investigation, but without that data, they'd just take a bit longer to have identified the members of the insurrection. There's varying degrees of data you can glean from cellular networks as well, right down to "it was definitely this person, the phone logs show a FaceID unlock at X time" and that action can be inferred by network logs, all information that carriers have retained for over two decades.
What it does become is a data point in an evidential submission that can strengthen a case that could otherwise be argued back as a bit flaky. It's similar to DNA evidence in that it's not actually 100% reliable nor is the data handled forensically at every stage of collection, but it's treated as if it is.
I think it's weighted too heavily in evidence and should not be used as a fine-toothed comb to sweep for "evidence" when it can be so easily tainted or faked. At the same time, I'd love to see the current members of the pushback against ICE using this data fallacy against future prosecutions. "Yeah, I was at home, look" and actually it's just a replay of a touch or face ID login running from a packaged emulator, or whatever signature activities meet the evidential requirement.
The interesting part here is that they are apparently no longer even trying to use parallel construction [0] to cover this stuff up. They somehow feel confident that just saying we have this technology, we don’t say how we use it, but we wind up on the right trail and then gather some evidence down the road we wound up on somehow.
Seems shaky at best. Smells of hubris.
Nothing will change until and unless police start suffering severe consequences for breaking the law.
Such consequences will never come from the state.
Department insurance policies are the only thing that seems to scare departments into improving policies and behaviors.
Insurers who threaten to drop departments have immense leverage that city managers, city elected leaders, and voters don’t.
There aren’t a lot of departments who go bankrupt, but the few that do make a crying show of it and they are a great to show departments who flout reform.
> Such consequences will never come from the state.
Seattle’s consent decree directly contradicts this.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-returns-fu...
The idea that the SPD consent decree constituted "severe consequences", or was successful at all, is a joke.
https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2026/01/video-cops-rallie...
They’re comfortable saying this because the US doesn’t have the rule of law, as evidenced by laws not applying to police.
you link to a page with convicted police numbering in the tens in a nation of 340 million people, with a police force on the order of a million. I wouldn't believe you in a second if you said that the police commit crimes at a rate of 0.0001 per capita. That's absurd. You're basically verifying the claim that the police are not held accountable for breaking the law. Great work. If that was your intent, please do more than post a link, and elucidate your opinion in the future please, if it wasn't your intent, well, next time just please don't post, it's not a useful contribution to the discussion in this forum.
Those are the ones that were high profile enough to warrant a Wikipedia page, it's not exhaustive. Here's a more comprehensive database: https://policecrime.bgsu.edu/
You're still citing arrested, not charged and convicted though. Those are all different, with no guarantee of the officers facing repercussions beyond a brief arrest. While those are still consequences, they have to be consistently applied (which they don't seem to be for police officers in America) or have consequences for consistently poorly behaved officers
>"to verify reasonable suspicion that you already have”
Translation: "Sprinkle some crack on him and let's get the hell out of here."
An underappreciated point here is: fund/subscribe your local papers. They are willing to do work and investigations that national outlets just don't have the capacity or stomach for. The more concentrated/centralized journalism is the higher the risk it can get censored/leveraged.
Sounds a lot like 'parallel construction'.
All of us who grew up with Law & Order are wondering why this dude is bragging about planting poisoned fruit trees.
Yeah seems like that's quite explicitly the goal. The question is, what means or method are they trying to hide and is it hyper illegal or just something they don't want to be pubic knowledge?
Both. It’s both hyper illegal and they don’t want you to know how they do it. It’s Pegasus 2.0
I didn't know about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
It turns out it's actually fine if your data is on offer to the government from a third party.
The Constitution was meant to be permanently fixed and extremely literal about only the technology available from centuries ago, it was not meant to describe general concepts nor intended to be updated to ensure those same rights are retained along with changes in society.
>The Constitution was meant to be permanently fixed and extremely literal about only the technology available from centuries ago, it was not meant to describe general concepts nor intended to be updated to ensure those same rights are retained along with changes in society.
/s?
I can't tell because people unironically use the same reasoning to make the "2nd amendment only apply to muskets" argument.
That isn't the muskets version of that argument I have heard.
The version I've heard is that the firearm technology when the second amendment was ratified was very different than today and that makes it worth evaluating if we want to amend it again.
Similarly the military landscape looks very different as well such that there's a very different risk of foreign armies taking ground and citizens everywhere needing to be ready to hold ground until the more official military forces can arrive.
If we want to get really pedantic about 2A where are the well regulated militias?
Even if someone really is saying the thing you're claiming, 2A doesn't mention muskets at all or any other specific technology so that would be a really dumb thing for those people to say.
When the second amendment was ratified, privately owned warships were a regular thing for the wealthy.
They would absolutely not have a problem with modern weapons.
They would probably have allowed private ownership of missiles launchers with the right authorization.
They were pretty clear that the average person should have the same capability as the state. They were a different breed.
I think nuclear weapons would be the one piece of tech that would make them think twice.
claims like these require a source
Source for what?
That Thomas Jefferson would be cagey around nukes?
Or sources that Privateers were a thing?
Tanks for all! /s
The founding fathers denied the right to bare arms to Catholics (and I’d wager lots of other religions), Native Americans, slaves (unless their owners explicitly allowed them), and we inherited English Common Law which limited carrying guns in populated areas.
Until Heller in ~2008, the right to bare arms (as a national right) was widely agreed to mean a collective right (eg. The militias), not an individual right.
We are in a weird place at this moment where the tide turned and lots of jurisprudence is being switched. Also, with ICE / DHS acting as unprofessional as they are, I wouldn’t be surprised to see lots of Dems advocate for more individual gun rights.
When the second amendment was passed, a "well-regulated militia" was already a thing people did, required and defined by the Articles of Confederation.
On one hand, it was controlled by the state, which also had to supply materiel, and not just random citizens making a group. Upper ranks could only be appointed by the state legislatures.
On the other hand, the weaponry the militia was expected to use included horse-drawn cannons, much more than just "home defense" handheld stuff.
P.S.: In other words, the second amendment was designed purely to block the new federal government from disarming the states. I assert that any "Originalist" saying otherwise is actually betraying their claimed philosophy.
If it never created a private right before, then it was wrongly "incorporated" by Supreme Court doctrine, and States ought to be free to set their own gun policies.
We’re obviously failing the expectations of the founding fathers if we don’t have civilian owned HIMARS.
I'd argue the modern equivalent would be anything you can mount/move with a pick up or a trailer. So a machine-gun, but not a howitzer.
Either way, those "field pieces" were the property of the state, that it was expected to supply by the AoC treaty, rather than something individuals were expected to bring along.
The Constitution explicitly states the government may grant "Letters of Marque and Reprisal" to private citizens.
What are those private citizens attacking enemy ships with exactly - strong words?
Was... was that nonsense supposed to be some kind of "gotcha"?
Giving the federal government the option to deputize individuals as international agents does not even remotely suggest that States were agreeing to completely abolish all their local gun-laws for all time.
That's like claiming the permission to establish a national postal service somehow bars States from having DUI laws, because any drunkard could maybe suddenly be hired as a postman.