Texas police invested in phone-tracking software and won’t say how it’s used
texasobserver.orgWhy 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.
J6 was a completely standard use case to confirm someone’s location in the Capitol with the location data from providers. It wasn’t some novel or breakthrough use, and not everything in life is a slippery slope so it’s completely rational to approve of a technology to convict those involved in a crime and decry more advanced and less legal means purely for surveillance of people who haven’t committed any crimes.
I've heard a lot more recognition for Apple refusing to comply with unlocking iPhones over the years than any of these other cases.
This might just be the bias of the groups you are in (myself included).
I think there's also the bias in that it's normal to comply in the first place, and there'd be no fanfare about it.
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.
>they'd just take a bit longer to have identified the members of the insurrection
They'd have had to enjoin more parties, probably to include state agencies. Any party can push back, stall or blow the whistle if they feel something wrong and risky to them is happening. Which is exactly the opposite of what the feds want. They want to act unilaterally, on anything and everything.
Without getting too political, the US is observably turning agencies over to their own people for exactly reasons like this, the feared "deep state".
I suspect we're about to see all kinds of abuses of information in the US.
appeal to emotion
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.
The comment I responded to didn't have any data. You don't have any data, not for the US and not for any imaginary country that is better than the US at holding police accountable.
> police commit crimes at a rate of 0.0001 per capita. That's absurd
Once again, Care to share comparative data with other countries? I will.
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?para...
There is no utopia, all developed countries are more-or-less the same here.
> elucidate your opinion in the future please, if it wasn't your intent, well, next time just please don't post
Thanks for the high-brow discussion and critical thinking that HN is famous for lol.
You posted a comment without critical thinking or data and ended with a personal. Great job on the privileged angry thinking!
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
OK, now do prosecutors :)
Was that suspicious? I thought his face was plastered all over the news.
"Without" regulations? As early as 2006 we discovered that phone carriers were subject to regulations forcing them to install back doors for government surveillance. Many near the 2002 Olympic games had their phone calls listened to by human ears (NSA) without warrant. And that's just a random example. This has been going on much much longer.
Regulations are made or dismantled in an effort to funnel money into regulators own businesses or investments and to combat their political opponents, all under the premise that it's for the good of society. (And, in some cases it has been.)
This shouldn't be news to anyone. What's shocking is that this is still shocking to people.
>"to verify reasonable suspicion that you already have”
Translation: "Sprinkle some crack on him and let's get the hell out of here."
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.
I didn't know about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
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
Thinking on it, I suspect it's a case of a larger number of smaller techniques. Cops aren't very good at keeping secrets so it can't be something that is widely pervasive, but every department has their stupid little trick
It’s all about delivery. Cops don’t deal with it directly. Their department does through a vendor on a branded portal where they upload information and it does its thing.
It’s no different than any investigative portal they use in their eyes.
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.
I believe the argument is that in order to have the Letters of Marque be useful, it must have been the case that captains had these types of weapons.
So, to fit it into your analogy, I think it is more like the permission to establish a national postal service implies that the government in the past had not outlawed literacy. There is no need for the government to provide services where the only possible users are already breaking the law.
That said I’m not actually sure I believe this because ships have always been a bit weird legally, going about in international waters far away from any law enforcement… it wouldn’t surprise me if there was some specific cut out for weapons that were only to be used at sea or something…
> it must have been the case that captains had these types of weapons.
Some did, but that doesn't mean states couldn't (or didn't) have laws touching on it.
Similarly, I own and use a car today... but that doesn't mean "the state can't have safety requirements for vehicles", nor does it mean "the state can't bar a legally-blind 20-time DUI convict from driving."
> your analogy
I have a much better/closer one to offer. Consider that tomorrow the Federal legislature could grant a letter of Marque and Reprisal to someone who... Is a convicted murderer held on (state) death-row.
Does that possible wrinkle mean the original Constitution actually banned States from running their own prison systems all along? Does it mean only the federal government is allowed to sentence anybody to carceral punishment?
Obviously not, that'd be an insane conclusion... Yet the only difference here which realm of state law was "getting in the way." If a state can't have gun control because of an M&R letter, then it can't have prisons either.
The point is that they implicitly expect private entities/individuals to be able to own and deploy "go toe to toe with the the state equivilent" quality units (though I don't think they expected the same quantity at that quality).
>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.
That's an even worse argument because it's seemingly trying to both to do an motte-and-bailey and strawman at the same time. The motte and bailey comes from seemingly trying to present as sympathetic of an argument as possible. I mean, who's against reevaluating old laws? Strawman comes from the fact that from all the 2nd amendment supporters I've heard, nobody thinks it should be kept because we shouldn't be second-guessing the founding fathers or whatever. All their arguments are based on how guns aren't that dangerous, or how it serves some sort of practical purpose, like preventing state oppression or whatever. Whatever these arguments actually hold is another matter, of course, but at least "the 2nd amendment only applies to muskets" argument doesn't rely on a misrepresentation of the 2nd amendment proponents' views.
You've reduced this discussion to meta-debate (again, it seems) and it's stifling productive conversation.
The State Guards are the militias
For example the Texas Guard:
https://tmd.texas.gov/army-guard
Not that I’d ever want them near anything useful but that’s the answer
Incorrect, that would be the:
https://tmd.texas.gov/state-guard
;) they are NOT the National Guard. They are the militia of Texas. (Texas State Guard aka TXSG). Subordinate to the state gov, only.
However TX considers it more complicated than that:
The Organized Militia: Consisting of the Texas Army National Guard, the Texas Air National Guard, and the Texas State Guard.
The Unorganized Militia: This consists of all "able-bodied" residents of the state who are at least 18 but under 45 years of age and are not members of the organized militia.
Pretty sure we used the same link and you’re explaining it as though I’m wrong
Smdh
Yours goes to the Texas Army National Guard page.
Mine goes to the TXSG (Texas State Guard)
The root subdomain is for the Texas state guard…
> where are the well regulated militias?
They keep getting arrested because some fed informants show up and convince them to kidnap a governor of whatever before they can become "Well regulated".
This is really strong passive voice. I have to wonder if they were actually on track towards the "well regulated" part if some feds were able to convince them to kidnap a governor.
It was mostly a joke, since these sorts of groups have always, like going back 40+yr, been magnets for law enforcement who always seem to push them to do illegal things.
Second, the incident I'm referencing is well documented. You should look it up. It's basically the "feds radicalize then arrest muslim man, pat themselves on back for catching terrorist" playbook but for white people.
Yes, /s, they're advocating for it to be more of a work-in-progress document, and not considered something final in its current state.
The last pull request got accepted into main in 1992 after being stuck in the per review stage for no less than 202 years. The latest one out of 4 that still remain open ("no child labour") celebrated its 100th year anniversary 18 months ago because for some reason 15 states rejected to approve it and 2 of the states haven't even bothered to address it. 12 of the 28 that gave their approval also rejected it initially but then changed their opinion down the line.
There's definitely an argument to be made here, though.
I think everyone can agree that if the founding fathers knew about modern warfare they would probably feel different about a variety of things. Or, at least, consider them more carefully.
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.
Don’t trust the cops, don’t trust the wealthy. Cops will abuse you, wealthy will exploit you.
It isn't black and white.
Deploy trust circumstantially.
The increasing fraction of “zingy catchphrase” HN comments compared to actually nuanced takes is depressing. Feels like a horrible mix of Reddit and tumblr
Yeah we’re not supposed to talk about how “HN is turning into Reddit”, but it already has. For years now. A typical comment here has been indistinguishable from a typical Reddit comment for many years, with the exception that humor is a lot less common here (although even that has changed a ton.)
The argument is that “HN is turning into Reddit” has been said since the beginning of HN… but that doesn’t make it wrong. To me the transformation is already complete. Regression to the mean is unavoidable.
Its the inevitable result when you allow politics to enter a forum. It used to be posts that were overtly political were considered off-topic, but that has become more normalized. Hell ignoring this post, the top story right now is "American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis" which is just another political post masquerading. I wish we would just ban politics or maybe find a middle-ground like allowing overtly political posts one day a week. It's probably too late to save HN though, the community has already normalized these posts.
It's very cult like and no doubt a result of people unconsciously (or not) absorbing the endless spam of Bluesky screenshots (that always follow the mindless catchphrase/black and white logic pattern) you see on every other popular "social media" platform.
It’s not safe to trust someone implicitly because they have a uniform and/or a badge.
No it isn't black and white, but there sure isn't a whole lot of gray either.
Isn’t this type of software illegal?
If I went to try and sell it , I’d be arrested.
But who's gonna arrest the police? Seems like more and more people are testing/stretching the limits of what's actually enforced.
Similarly, hearing about the Eppstein files makes me sick:
- deadlines? not met - limited redactions? full documents redacted - redactions explained? not at all
I highly doubt that…
This is like asking Google why they banned your account for fraud. Secrecy is important for slowing down bad actors.
Transparency is also important for slowing down bad government actors.
Pre-crime: powered by Grok Analysis
You remember those cookie notices that you clicked on? Whatever you ”chose” to click, this kinda thing is where your data ended up getting ”processed”, irrespective of your ”privacy choices”.
> Tangles scrapes information from the open, deep, and dark webs and is the premier product of Cobwebs Technologies, a cybersecurity company founded in 2014 by three former members of special units in the Israeli military.
If I had a dime for every time a sketchy "cybersecurity"/surveillance software ended up being developed by an Israeli firm...
Title too long for submission. Original title:
Texas Police Invested Millions in a Shadowy Phone-Tracking Software. They Won’t Say How They’ve Used It.
Truly a "why say many words" title!
"Texas Police Won't Say How Used Shadowy Phone-Tracking Software Millions Spent On"?
My bet is they couldn't get past the InstallShield wizard.
Once again, using a computer system to launder a conclusion someone has already made
Don’t tread on me, huh?
One day we will need to rip our freedoms back from these demons.
We’re all just characters in a sim game played by the rich and powerful. Now it’s 24 / 7 surveillance. Eventually it will be 24 / 7 control.
The race is between the rich trying to achieve a level of surveillance based omnipotence such that rebellion/revolution/dissent/protest/etc are fundamentally impossible...and the US populace gaining class consciousness. I don't have high hopes for the second one winning.
I want people to think about that for a second though. Imagine in a decade cops have such a technological edge in both surveillance and force that you cannot even begin to protest billionaires enslaving you let alone stage a political revolution.
You get it. I’m also concerned that we’re past the point of no return.
We're already past the point of no return IMO. It's why people are having fewer kids.
I personally don't think we are, a few hundred people were able to storm the capital, many were eventually arrested but if they had more numbers and pressed a coup wasn't off the table. The issue is the level of needed "right time, right place" is increasing and Americans are too comfortable right now to take the risks necessary.
They do surveys where they ask these questions. That's not a common answer.
And in fact, it's possible the latter is a direct and explicitly desired outcome of the former
This headline is unfortunate. It will just feed people who suffer from mental illness with believes "see, police can track my phone and listen to me". I am so tired of irresponsible media misrepresenting what article is about in such a way to gain clicks, without thinking of the suffering this might cause.
The exacerbation of schizophrenic symptoms is a problem that pales in comparison to the infringement of our civil rights.
I hate the concept. But this is not the right case to test the tool against.
>I hate the concept. But this is not the right case to test the tool against.
To which case are you referring? TFA doesn't appear to refer to any ongoing litigation associated with the "Tangles" software.
Or are you referring to warrantless geo-fence tracking as a poor use case for the software?
> which case are you referring?
The example given at the top of the article. We want Tangle or whatever used idiotically to strike down its use in federal court.
Tracking the population without cause is never the right use case for anything.
Transit and traffic planners would be foaming at the mouth for real commute data like this instead of just fixed point count data.
Transit fare collection systems in many metros already log tap on / tap off location data and make it accessible to planners (and police).
Google has it
AFAIK they're moving their stuff to be on device
https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleMaps/comments/1diivt3/megathr...
Trust is really low that this will not be shadow-mined anyway. There’s far too much money to be made. This reads like greenwashing to me. Makes someone on the board feel good but in reality, fingerprinting and location data is still completely identifiable.
>Tracking the population without cause is never the right use case for anything.
Agreed. Which is why I submitted this in the first place. But AFAICT, it's orthogonal to GP's comment. Or not. Which is why I asked for clarification.
the example at the top of the article isn’t exactly the best example to show people why this software shouldn’t be allowed. they could go to the liquor store, and ask them to pull cameras, and with a warrant if needed. it just seems more powerful to say this software is useless and wasting taxpayer money.
but also, who is supplying location data to tangles? saying the ‘dark web’ is not helpful or informational, and honestly if the cops are just buying location data there’s nothing illegal about the search, because it’s not a search. you willingly provided your location data to this company who is then selling it, your beef is with them to stop selling your data if it’s not in their privacy policy. it smells like they’re just using social media and claiming they have this huge database on peoples locations. this sounds like a huge nothing burger to me.
basically: don’t use sketchy apps that sell your location to data brokers or just turn off your location data for that app.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/location-data-broker-g...
If it's on the dark web isn't it also possible that it's hacked phone records? Seems like a nice way to bypass getting a warrant. Step 1, make sure hackers know you're in the market for phone company data. Step 2, hackers do their thing and sell it on the dark web. Step 3, police use intermediate tool like Tangles to "obtain probably cause" and "verify reasonable suspicion" based on the hacked records and focus their searches, all without any judge's say-so.
didn’t it say fresh receipt? how would tangles have live data from hacked phone records? also, yeah in that your phone company is at fault for violating your privacy.
Agree that using hacked sources is unethical and shouldn’t be done, but is there an actual law against law enforcement using hacked data? reporters can legally publish hacked sources.
You have to love when the media describes something as "shadowy." They're not even trying to hide their bias.
Whereas you’re happy to air yours. I guess that’s something.