Texas State Police Gear Up for Massive Expansion of Surveillance Tech
Texas State Police Gear Up for Massive Expansion of Surveillance Tech
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.”
This is something that was going to happen eventually it’s just kind of ironic that it’s a deep red state going for government surveillance like this
Nothing says "small government" and "freedom" quite like mass surveillance.
They need mass surveillance to put down the protests for
freedom... errr to protect freedom (white people freedomrich white people freedom).
Red states have more poor, desperate people with guns so better keep them from getting uppity.
Totally on brand really. Republicans want to eliminate white collar crime (by never prosecuting it) and catch 110% of blue collar crimes.
Big brother in action. Got to keep those women in line. /s
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?
EFF recommendation on Ad Tracking: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/05/how-disable-ad-id-tracking-ios-and-android-and-why-you-should-do-it-now
I'm fairly in tune with my privacy but didn't even know about this one. I assumed I had disabled all this when I setup my phone.
Just used thanks
Will they finally see or hear me say
FUCK GREG ABBOTT
I hope they can, I'm doing it as hard as I can ...
Is there anyway we can open source this technology? I'd love to surveil police and politician phones if possible.
Government know people love to keep track of police and politicians so they are making it illegal.
Weird ass fcking state. Can we pawn this one off to Mexico?
Jesus just bomb them if you hate them that much.
Yeah thats true. I love Mexico. I shouldn't wish a fate like sending Texans upon them.
Make sure to support the government in the next elections so they can spend more public money on "security"
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.
Alt title: Texas to spend $5 mil on software that is easily defeated by not bringing your cell phone to a riot.
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.
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.
Are they? I see ones like
Small government
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.
I just learned you can delete you device id on Android 12 or higher under privacy settings.
Is this the same as the advertising id?
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.
Small government.
Freedom rations are going up this week from 10 to 8!
Don't worry, it's AI. It won't work properly.
This might be good for the false negatives but not for the false positives.
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.
Because Laredo wasn't dystopian enough already.
China is number one. The USA needs to be number one. The USA wants to be China. Illuminati Confirmed.
