Secretive DHS 'Predictive Policing' Unit Is Analyzing Americans' Financial Habits, Pulling Them Over (404media.co) 148
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Border Patrol is running secretive predictive policing units that analyze Americans' financial activity and other data, then feed that intelligence to local police who pull people over who are not suspected of any specific crime, but which the government thinks may be worth searching, 404 Media has found. The units, the name of which 404 Media is revealing here for the first time, are called Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams (PITT). In one case, a PITT analyzed the financial activity of a man who was driving across Montana, and local authorities stopped him under the pretense of an obstructed license plate and charged him with a DUI.
404 Media identified one PITT in the Spokane Sector, Washington, which polices the U.S. border with Canada, and another in the Laredo Sector, Texas, which polices the border with Mexico. The findings add to an Associated Press investigation from last year which found Border Patrol was using automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) as part of the same wide-spanning predictive policing program. "The bottom line is genuine probable cause cannot be synthetically generated," Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center For Democracy & Technology, told 404 Media in an email. Here Border Patrol seems to be "using parallel construction to cloak the reason behind its car stops in secrecy. If we can't meaningfully review and evaluate these systems, we can't trust them," he added.
[...] The DHS document obtained by 404 Media shows that Border Patrol is analyzing the financial activity of Americans to find people to pull over. The Associated Press's investigation found the predictive policing program is also heavily using ALPRs to track potential targets' movements. It is not clear how exactly Border Patrol is monitoring Americans' financial activity. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) declined to answer what financial activity the agency was monitoring, and whether it obtained a warrant or not. A CBP spokesperson told 404 Media in an email: "U.S. Border Patrol uses intelligence-informed analysis and planning to support national security operations, allocate resources, and help identify potential threats and bad actors to public safety. These efforts are conducted consistent with applicable law, policy, privacy protections, and oversight requirements."
The statement continued: "For operational security reasons, we do not discuss specific analytical methods, data sources, targeting criteria, investigative techniques, system capabilities, or deployment details. Public disclosure of such information could compromise law enforcement operations and investigations as well as creating safety risks for agents and the public."
Rob Frommer, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, told 404 Media: "The government's increasing use of mass surveillance -- whether that surveillance comes via ALPRs, financial records, or the like -- coupled with predictive policing is a recipe for tyranny. We fought a revolution for the idea that we are citizens, not subjects. Yet schemes like CBP's Predictive Intelligence Targeting Team treat all Americans as if they are potential suspects. This is not just wrong, it's unconstitutional, and IJ will keep pushing courts and Congress to end this attack on Americans' security."
404 Media identified one PITT in the Spokane Sector, Washington, which polices the U.S. border with Canada, and another in the Laredo Sector, Texas, which polices the border with Mexico. The findings add to an Associated Press investigation from last year which found Border Patrol was using automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) as part of the same wide-spanning predictive policing program. "The bottom line is genuine probable cause cannot be synthetically generated," Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center For Democracy & Technology, told 404 Media in an email. Here Border Patrol seems to be "using parallel construction to cloak the reason behind its car stops in secrecy. If we can't meaningfully review and evaluate these systems, we can't trust them," he added.
[...] The DHS document obtained by 404 Media shows that Border Patrol is analyzing the financial activity of Americans to find people to pull over. The Associated Press's investigation found the predictive policing program is also heavily using ALPRs to track potential targets' movements. It is not clear how exactly Border Patrol is monitoring Americans' financial activity. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) declined to answer what financial activity the agency was monitoring, and whether it obtained a warrant or not. A CBP spokesperson told 404 Media in an email: "U.S. Border Patrol uses intelligence-informed analysis and planning to support national security operations, allocate resources, and help identify potential threats and bad actors to public safety. These efforts are conducted consistent with applicable law, policy, privacy protections, and oversight requirements."
The statement continued: "For operational security reasons, we do not discuss specific analytical methods, data sources, targeting criteria, investigative techniques, system capabilities, or deployment details. Public disclosure of such information could compromise law enforcement operations and investigations as well as creating safety risks for agents and the public."
Rob Frommer, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, told 404 Media: "The government's increasing use of mass surveillance -- whether that surveillance comes via ALPRs, financial records, or the like -- coupled with predictive policing is a recipe for tyranny. We fought a revolution for the idea that we are citizens, not subjects. Yet schemes like CBP's Predictive Intelligence Targeting Team treat all Americans as if they are potential suspects. This is not just wrong, it's unconstitutional, and IJ will keep pushing courts and Congress to end this attack on Americans' security."
Well come on bootlickers (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's hear how this is a good thing.
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Let's hear how this is a good thing.
It's possible this might change some minds about government data collection of financial activity.
It would be great if we all someday learned that PITT data analysis was actually based on de-anonymized CFPB data, which constitutes the singular largest and most granular financial surveillance program the US government operates, and perhaps put a large moral panic sized dent in the "consumer protection" narrative.
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Re: Well come on bootlickers (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because until the courts tell you to stop, its basically legal.
Remember when The Wire featured Baltimore cops illegally using cell tower spoofers borrowed from the FBI to illegally surveil baltimores drug trade years before the FBI even acknowledged such devices exist. Good times.
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TDS is defined by wannabe law (cited in Regime Change by Haberman and Swan) as irrational hatred of the YOB. (YUGE Orange Buffoon whose brand I shall not write). I think there needs to be some clarification.
Type 1 TDS is hatred of the YOB. Treatment involves investigating the rational reasons to hate him. Me? I dislike liars, believe there are such things as subjective reality and facts, and I especially dislike people who kill other people for fun and profit and all around incompetence.
Type 2 TDS is love
Re: Well come on bootlickers (Score:2)
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All I can say is it is really hard to put the genie back in the bottle. The data and sources have not been treated as illegal to gather, so they WILL be used... by many different parties.
It is not something anybody who has been here a while would advocate for, but eliminating the problem and threat is a Herculean task.
So when the right wing sees a thread like this (Score:2)
If you leave the right wing echo chamber even briefly then you just can't stay right wing for very long. Right wingers have figured this out and they don't want to give up whatever it is they think they get from being right wing so they very carefully avoid any news or information the challenges their view
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Let's hear how this is a good thing.
What about the brave soldiers on the Floating Fortress Winston Smith.
Re:Well come on bootlickers (Score:4, Insightful)
The proper response, REGARDLESS THE SIDE, is that this is against the constitution. If you lived in and were educated in the USA(also part of the citizenship test), you would know this is so far beyond legal that Putin is proud of it.
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You failed your argument, because you have none.
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You should have seen SlashDot around the turn of the century. People could actually have a decent debate (but, oh the flame wars! They outshone the sun!) Folks from NASA, CERN, the FSF, and GrokLaw were regular posters, Stallman and occasionally Torvalds would stop by.
Now if a post is longer than a sound bite people will just skip it.
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You should have seen SlashDot around the turn of the century. People could actually have a decent debate (but, oh the flame wars! They outshone the sun!) Folks from NASA, CERN, the FSF, and GrokLaw were regular posters, Stallman and occasionally Torvalds would stop by.
Now if a post is longer than a sound bite people will just skip it.
So many here that the Slashdot effect was a actual thing
Re: Well come on bootlickers (Score:2)
"flooding illegals". I pictured a big wave made of people. I've met illegal aliens, but I've yet to witness a flood of them. That would be quite a spectacle.
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"flooding illegals". I pictured a big wave made of people. I've met illegal aliens, but I've yet to witness a flood of them. That would be quite a spectacle.
As a tourist crossing the US/Mexico border, I saw dozens jumping the fence -- was certainly a spectacle. Though from their casual manner and lack of luggage, I expect they were more like a weekly commute than a migration.
The migration situation in the US is insane, and bad for everyone, except those who get the cheap labor. Millions of 2nd-class non-citizens with few rights, reminds me of Dubai.
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Apparently you weren't anywhere near a TV a couple years back during the Biden administration....you could hardly miss a new cycle without seeing the flood of people crossing the Rio Grande and storming the gates, etc coming across.....
It's kinda funny how in the Biden admin, they claimed they couldn't stop it....yet less than a year into Trump #2 ter
Re:Well come on bootlickers (Score:5, Insightful)
You should look up how there are so many people who are here trying to get citizenship, and why the lag of getting them in as citizens is there. (Hint, defunding of the Immigration courts over 20+ years, you can literally see it in statistics).
Immigration is needed for our country, and that is who we are as a country. So its odd you think it is the worst thing.
And lets address your racist comment, you do know that people of all colors have been here well before the 1980s, which BTW, had a way higher crime rate than right now.
Are you even from the USA? Feels like you dont know anything about this country.
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It's par for the course with these people.
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He was keeping in place what Trump had during his first administration. You forget Trump was enforcing mandatory vaccinations and censoring dissent. Now Trump is finally repealing vaccinations so children can finally die. For some unknown reason he's applying more censorship on dissent and now he even has Republicans too afraid to come out and defend free speech like they used to.
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"This is true for ALL cars made in the last 10 years, unless you disassembled your car and destroyed the modem, which also voids your warranty and potentially cripples your car by disabling software updates and subscriptions which are becoming mandatory."
My 2013 car doesn't have a cell connection, but does have a Garmin GPS. That's why I'm liking older cars more and more: no tracking. Regardless, I actually have to retract my statement. I live next to a national forest. Unless I'm mistaken, notably missing
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Re:Well come on bootlickers (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah yes, the censorship that still allowed people to see the lies about ivermectin. Clearly an abuse of power to let people see the lies. And no, the technologies in this story were not used by Biden. So another lie which isn't being censored.
Mandatory vaccinations were for a select group of people: i.e. the military and medical workers. No one else was required to get a vaccination.
But please, continue licking RFK, Jr's boots. He needs all the help he can get.
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Mandatory vaccinations were for a select group of people: i.e. the military and medical workers. No one else was required to get a vaccination.
Don't forget "workers at any company that has a contract with the federal government." It doesn't matter that your job function has no contact with that contract, the threat was "get the vaccine or lose your job, no unemployment insurance for you." This executive order got shot down as unconstitutional at the appellate court level, Biden chose not to appeal to the Supreme Court. Textbook example of fascism.
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Biden chose not to appeal to the Supreme Court. Textbook example of fascism.
Are you saying that: "government does X, courts say no, government stops doing X" is Fascism now?
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You're still a moron. Fascism is not "Anything the government does that's bad", it's a system of corruption and abuse of power.
You may not agree with the vaccine mandate (because you're probably a moron as we've just established) but a vaccine mandate is not an abuse of power, literally the only incentive to do it is for the public good. It's not being done to enrich those in power, it's not being done to damage opponents, or to scapegoat powerless groups. It's not even being done to cement the power of tho
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If you dont want the vaccines, then dont work there. Its not mandated, its your choice, dummy.
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"All private sector businesses with more than 100 employees." not in the USA.
If you dont want the vaccines, then dont work there. Its not mandated, its your choice, dummy.
Yes in the USA, my wife was facing that problem and she works at a privately owned (not public) bank.
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No one was forced to "to be a guinea pig for the mRNA vaccines". The clinical trials were completely opt in with consent forms. Everything outside of the clinical trial was nothing to do with "a guinea pig".
If you think they are it's worth noting that the DSM-4 describes the persistent belief of a debunked idea that lasts longer than a month and is not diagnosed schizophrenia as "delusional disorder". Congratulations, you have a mental illness.
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Had he done those things, you would have heard me complain.
I simply don't remember being hassled to show anyone my vaxination card.
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I had to show it to Fatherland Security at SeaTac Airport before an international flight. That was it, one time. I did see restaurants with signs that said a vax card was required, but I never saw anyone checking.
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Post an article about that if you have evidence to back it up.
Mass fake meds risks us ALL (Score:2)
Hawking fake medicine during a pandemic is equivalent to yelling "fire" in a crowded theater: if too many take it, it can swamp already-stressed medical institutions. Unfortunately, we are obligated to take care of mass Darwin Award candidates who gulp down Bozo Paste on the advice of their clown-cult leaders*.
You can take it to court in the meantime, but in the short term the Prez has emergency powers during pandemics to tell you to STFU.
* Time for another big comet, just not during a pandemic.
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That is not making it better...
Minority Report (Score:1)
Minority Report is becoming a reality in America. And V for Vendetta, and 1984, and Project 2025, and Mein Kampf...
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Re: Minority Report (Score:1)
Did you guys ever actually believe that land of the free stuff? Wow.
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"The land of the free and the home of the brave" sounds like an intentional description of North America before European colonisation given the connotation of "brave" as "native American warrior".
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Dave Mustaine nailed that part already 36 years ago.
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USA is the country with the by far largest amount of inmates and the fifth-largest incarceration rate. Land of the free my arse.
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Yep, hardly "Land of the Free"
I've been saying it for years now - "The Land of the Freak and The Home of dePraved".
Re: Minority Report (Score:2)
It can be pretty hard to get a job that uses your potential and drugs that stabilize mood in the US. I don't think Brqve New World applies at all.
Wouldn't any judge throw out every case? (Score:3)
In Canada, when our RCMP was doing improper eaves dropping on people's communication our Prime Minister was so angry he took their power to do most eaves dropping away completely and create an entirely separate agency. I would assume the USA would function similarly.
Re: Wouldn't any judge throw out every case? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole point of parallel construction is that you find alternative legal bases for bringing in evidence. The fact that the officers can't be trusted has little impact on the evidence being admissable and damning.
fruit of the poisoned tree (Score:2)
Re: fruit of the poisoned tree (Score:2)
In our criminal justice system, the actions of one individual aren't justification to retaliate against every other individual in the class. This concept applies to cops, just as well as women, minorites, or the disabled.
Juries are the final arbiters of whether a cop is trusted or not. Not the judges.
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Assume differently! This is the USA. The only thing the DOJ is doing is protecting Trump from prosecution and maybe going after what he thinks are his enemies.
Trump appointed his own lawyer as the AG after firing Pam Bondi, another one of his lawyers, for not rounding up all of his enemies fast enough and appearing on TV too often, making a fool of herself.
The DOJ is no longer separate from the executive branch in a way that it would or could perform an investigation on members of the executive branch.
https [wikipedia.org]
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ACAB (Score:1)
People wonder why folks say things like ACAB. This is why right here.
99% probably (Score:5, Insightful)
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During the War on Terror, US police were stealing iPhones and iPods from non-locals: Cruelty was the point and adding $100/month to police pay-packets incentivized police to commit more crimes. (Reduced to $50/month after the state government demanded a percentage.)
It incentivized other countries to write similar laws although a stronger legal system (and municipal government having fewer policing powers), meant other countries didn't suffer the daylight robbery that the US did.
Social credit (Score:3, Informative)
Seems like (Score:2)
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Philip K. Dick only got the part about the mutants wrong.
Well they did mention it's "secretive" - so who knows, he might've got that part right too.
Specific criticisms for the lawyer (Score:2)
There are two things wrong with that. One is that citizens are subjects. As citizens, we are subject to the laws of the Federal and State governments. We fought a revolution because the rights the colonists had as British subjects were taken away.
The other is that it is a non-sequitur. The second sentence does n
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"One is that citizens are subjects. As citizens, we are subject to the laws of the Federal and State governments.
As citizens, we are constitutionally supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty.
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I'm not criticizing his presumptive point, just how he said it. I'll pick another nit and say that suspicion is neither guilt nor innocence. I don't have enough information to form an opinion on the question at hand, and I don't consider 404 to be very reliable.
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What does citizenship have to do with it? Does your constitution say that foreigners can be considered guilty until proven innocent?
"I've done nothing wrong, I don't care it." (Score:5, Insightful)
This is another nail in the "I've done nothing wrong, let them look" argument.
The question is not whether you've done anything wrong, but whether the government has done anything wrong. When they refuse to disclose their methodology they are ALWAYS doing something wrong.
The entire point of a free society is that we do not have to nor can we trust the police. Time after time we see they are not significantly better than the general population. If we let them hide their process, it always devolves into an abusive process that targets innocent people and destroys their lives.
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The lie (you've done nothing wrong) is revealed, by the factoid* that the average person commits several crimes every day, unwittingly.
*factoid: Assumed but never really provable
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The issue at hand is that monitoring the behaviors of ANYONE, citizen or not, should require a warrant to show probable cause. Doing a search without that warrant being given first then falls under illegal search. It's not about if people have done something wrong, but more, law enforcement isn't allowed to just search you, your records, or go to private companies to do a search without there being a search warrant FIRST.
This is where ICE is continually breaking the law, because they don't go through t
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Don't need a search warrant to dig though the trash can. People spew their data all over the place, and they just vacuum it all up.
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The entire point of a free society is that we do not have to nor can we trust the police.
It's a good thing we don't live in a Free Society then isn't it? Otherwise, all of this shit would be illegal and the government wouldn't be doing it. "Constitution", "Free", "Rights", are all sooo last century. It's a good thing that the People are irrelevant; otherwise, they would be mighty pissed about what is going on.
DO NOT TALK TO THE POLICE (Score:3)
This is just a kindly reminder to NEVER TALK TO THE POLICE.
Ever.
"I respectfully decline to answer any questions. I invoke my 1,2,4,5 Amendment Rights. I do not consent to any searches. I refuse all roadside exams, and wish to have my lawyer present during any further interactions. BTW, here is my lawyer ... {pushes the button* on my phone}. My Attorney will represent me fully during this interaction, you may address them directly."
* https://www.attorney-shield.co... [attorney-shield.com]
Then STFU.
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The guy who posted is going to start cooperating real quick once they smash his window and smash that phone.
Citing the second amendment is just indicative of his whole scenario being a fantasy.
Who *aren't* they checking? (Score:3)
No one making over $10M/yr.
The surveillance state grows, fascism comes closer (Score:3)
Do something now or regret it for a long, long time. If you survive and do not get "lawfully" murdered at some point. I wonder whether the current US government follows the historical playbooks from Germany. There are indications they do, even if incompetently.
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Do something now or regret it for a long, long time.
Do what exactly? Voting, writing, speaking, all seem to have ZERO effect. I have nothing which motivates politicians nor other citizens. The only items that appear to change anything are money and already existing power. Since I was not born into power, I have none. Since I have no power, I have no significant amounts of money.
Pray tell, what can a citizen do to actually have any hope of stopping this wave of fascism? People at all levels of government appear to be fully captured. My current .sig seems to
Oh boy (Score:2)
I'm usually not one to get riled about this or that policy or agency change. But I read the summary and my first thought was "oh shit." I hope the reality of this is not as bleakly dystopian as it sound.
Authoritarianism is bad (Score:1)
4th Amendment Violation (Score:2)
But hey it's a LEO agency, they'll just investigate themselves and find themselves not guilty of any wrong doing...
Palantir (Score:4, Interesting)
This sounds like Palantir's Gotham at work. All your data is available to LLMs that are used by any agency involved in national security to detect security threats, including narcotics trafficking small amounts of weed.
Future Crime (Score:2)
Pretty sure I saw the movie
this is not legal in any way (Score:2)
Fourth Amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Obligatory Eurythmics (Score:2)
I Did It Just The Same [youtube.com] - 1984 (For The Love Of Big Brother)
ATM use will be a crime soon (Score:2)
For many, using cash from an ATM is how they do crime. They use that cash to buy drugs, prostitutes, and anything else illegal. They also use it to pay for goods and services from individuals to avoid the tax man. Not all cash is used for those purposes, but that's how most of those are paid for which probably allows any cop to believe they have probable cause for a crime just by seeing you use an ATM.
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Does Precrime mesh with the ideals of U.S. justice (Score:2)
“Both the short story and film Minority Report are premised on a Precrime unit that relies on the psychic abilities of human mutants who can predict the commission of crimes before they occur. Advances in technology suggest that the science fiction depicted in Minority Report may one day become a reality.”
Robert H Jackson (1940) Supreme Court justice (Score:3)
"With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him."
Hm. Some might opine that we should have worked a little harder to limit the power of the US federal government early and hard.
Ofc, we wouldn't have become a superpower, and might not have been able to significantly turn the tide of WW2.
Burglars (Score:2)
Burglars case their victim's house.
DHS cases their victim's bank account.
Both may seize their victim's legally owned property.
One uses theft.
The other uses Civil Forfeiture.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=civil+forfeiture&atb=v427-1&t=chromentp&ia=web [duckduckgo.com]
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I never did.
Germans, Swiss, and Austrians have it right - clinging to cash like a Pashtu tribesman clings to his weaponry.
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You can scrub Australia off the list. ATO already treats digital currency as property subject to capital gains tax, but the federal government is pushing the case for digital currency even though the general public has no interest in it.
Issues and Insights, 2026 - The future of money [aph.gov.au]
Money is continuing to shift from physical to digital forms. How can Australia regulate emerging digital forms of money, manage the transition away from cash and assess the case for a central bank digital currency?
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Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, of which the capital Vienna is the most populous city and state.
A u s t r i a [wikipedia.org]
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It has a land area of 7,688,287 km, making it the sixth-largest country in the world, and is the world's flattest and driest inhabited continent.
A u s t r a l i a [wikipedia.org]