DPS plans to spend millions in taxpayer dollars on a controversial software, used first as part of Governor Abbott’s border crackdown, to “disrupt potential domestic terrorism.”
In June, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) signed an acquisition plan for a 5-year, nearly $5.3 million contract for a controversial surveillance tool called Tangles from tech firm PenLink, according to records obtained by the Texas Observer through a public information request. The deal is nearly twice as large as the company’s $2.7 million two-year contract with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Tangles is an artificial intelligence-powered web platform that scrapes information from the open, deep, and dark web. Tangles’ premier add-on feature, WebLoc, is controversial among digital privacy advocates. Any client who purchases access to WebLoc can track different mobile devices’ movements in a specific, virtual area selected by the user, through a capability called “geofencing.” Users of software like Tangles can do this without a search warrant or subpoena. (In a high-profile ruling, the Fifth Circuit recently held that police cannot compel companies like Google to hand over data obtained through geofencing.) Device-tracking services rely on location pings and other personal data pulled from smartphones, usually via in-app advertisers. Surveillance tech companies then buy this information from data brokers and sell access to it as part of their products.
WebLoc can even be used to access a device’s mobile ad ID, a string of numbers and letters that acts as a unique identifier for mobile devices in the ad marketing ecosystem, according to a US Office of Naval Intelligence procurement notice.
Wolfie Christl, a public interest researcher and digital rights activist based in Vienna, Austria, argues that data collected for a specific purpose, such as navigation or dating apps, should not be used by different parties for unrelated reasons. “It’s a disaster,” Christl told the Observer. “It’s the largest possible imaginable decontextualization of data. … This cannot be how our future digital society looks like.”
Should gather Abbott's device id and his families, and post all of their data in a constant stream of location, search results, and such. Soon as his and his families families data is being posted they'll rethink it as a privacy issue.
I know what you mean by /s but seriously that's gotta be one of the drivers behind this decision. If Republicans control the state after the next gubernatorial election I could totally see a new law to punish the patient of a abortion (it just targets doctors for now).
Remember that one time in Batman where they built a mass surveillance program using phones and decided it was so morally objectionable they immediately destroyed it after?
Device-tracking services rely on location pings and other personal data pulled from smartphones, usually via in-app advertisers. Surveillance tech companies then buy this information from data brokers and sell access to it as part of their products.
WebLoc can even be used to access a device’s mobile ad ID, a string of numbers and letters that acts as a unique identifier for mobile devices.
As if you needed more reasons to use an ad-blocker.
This is why I'm so adamant about privacy. The govt has already been caught several times buying up data from data brokers for "predictive policing". They've been using it in Pasco County, FL to harrass people day and night into either committing a crime so they can arrest them or leaving town. Once you put that data out there, there's no getting rid of it.
And they'll "catch" just enough "criminals" (read: non-white people) to give Fox News some metrics they can blow out of proportion for the gullible, rural rubes.
In my phone it said "Advertising ID". Just deleted mine. Really annoyed this was on by default. Are Linux phones a thing yet? I'm tempted to get the most basic bitch phone for work (they'll never support a rooted phone or things like that) and a different personal phone that I have TOTAL control over.
So they only needed to say that all this shit is completely depersonalized and so on for the time being, until they did this like thieves they are.
Typical.
It's also really funny when people say "oh but it's a democratic country with institutions and rule of law doing this, so it's fine", because this is how a country stops being that. Well, people don't say this about anything in USA, they usually say this about the EU.
This is why we the humanity can't have nice things.
Because when we build a nice thing, some jerks decide that we can break it and still have it, because we "already have it". Completely illogical, but all proponents of government control against freedom and rules-based order against humanism are like that.
Every fucking top comment in this thread are all jokes.
We're officially reddit, there isn't any more intelligent discourse here about important topics, it's all just fucking memes and jokes and 'lol the world is fucked'
Every one of you disgusts me, you are 75% of the reason they KEEP getting away with this shit.
Because they know ALL you will EVER do is meme and joke.
This is sarcastic, but it's as much of a joke as Stephen Colbert - it's touching on something pretty real. Not sure what's wrong with pointing out hypocrisy.
How dare people cope with something horrible by making jokes. Everyone knows it's impossible to make those jokes while simultaneously being horrified by and pushing back against the thing they're joking about.
Texas law enforcement doesn't need a language model to blame false positives on. They can false positively shoot whomever they want with no reprocussion.
That is the more likely scenario sadly, and the cops will say "don't blame us those kids got killed, we just listened to the AI" and some judge will say "yea, that's ok . the officer did what he was told like he is supposed to, unlike that bus of kindergarteners who didn't lie down and put their hands behind their heads when commanded"
But after they install cameras everywhere and after a bunch of misses despite surveillence on everyone they actually get someone the amount of self back patting and chest puffing will be off the charts.
Do you think that's the only fucking time they'll use this?
We are in the middle of the most dangerous liberty encroachment in our living memory and literally none of you are thinking beyond your own little frameworks and by the time we get some advocacy on this it'll be too late.