from the turning-roads-into-roulette-wheels dept

DHS Feeding Citizens’ Bank Records To Predictive Policing Units To Find Drivers To Pull Over

Every government does stuff because it can, not because it needs to. But this current administration has been far more opportunistic than most, doing constitutional recon in areas of unsettled law right up until a court rules that it can’t. (In some cases, it continues to do these things despite having lost in court.)

While it’s long been known the government has pretty much unfettered access to financial records (thanks to the Third Party Doctrine), it’s always been hoped that these records are obtained during targeted investigations, rather than just gathered in bulk and fed to whatever algorithm the government has laying around.

Something that definitely looks like a brand new way to engage in legalized theft (a.k.a. “civil asset forfeiture”) is the new normal for DHS agencies. As Joseph Cox reports for 404 Media, the government is feeding bank records in bulk to its predictive policing task force for the sole purpose of increasing the number of pretextual traffic stops.

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. 

Predictive policing has always been problematic, due to its reliance on garbage data generated by biased policing. This takes it a step further, allowing the DHS’s new “targeting teams” to manufacture suspicion of criminal activity by feeding tons of data to a system whose sole purpose is to generate reasons to pull people over.

No one would have known much about this secretive program, but the government gave the game away in court as it attempted to convert a bogus traffic stop into criminal drug trafficking charges against the Montana man.

During discovery in his case, [Kyle] Olson was provided a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document that explained how Border Patrol instigated his traffic stop. Written by Border Patrol Agent Matthew Phelps, the document said Phelps was assigned to the “Spokane Sector Border Patrol Targeting & Intelligence Division (TID) — Predictive Intelligence Targeting Team (PITT).” Olson shared the document with 404 Media.

In his role at the PITT, Phelps wrote he reviews “law enforcement-sensitive databases” to develop intelligence before handing over information to local law enforcement. That intelligence specifically involves reviewing Americans’ financial activity, the document says.

Border Patrol and CBP (Customs and Border Protection) defended their actions in statements to 404 Media, claiming hoovering up bank records and handing them over to supposed predictive policing specialists is nothing more than being smart about hunting down criminals. Given the facts of this traffic stop, it appears the algorithm and its “targeting team” of human backstops are looking for financial transactions that slightly resemble money laundering.

At least that’s what the Border Patrol agent told the court during its defense of the traffic stop:

Phelps says he observed, “information contained within law enforcement-sensitive systems suggesting financial activity patterns commonly associated with illicit narcotics activity.”

But here’s the thing about money laundering. When it’s done well, the “financial activity patterns” will look entirely normal. What appears to be happening here is a bulk collection of financial records getting shoved into a computer, flagging anything that looks “suspicious.” Using these assumptions, DHS agencies are utilizing their access to other databases (including ALPR networks) to find people to pull over… based on nothing more than transactions that appear abnormal to people who are just looking for a reason to accost citizens.

That might mean something if we were allowed to see the parameters set by the government’s PITTs. But we’re not. And when we are pulled over, the officers will rely on whatever pretext seems most believable, rather than tell the truth about their roadside fishing expeditions.

There’s a lot that’s extremely fucked up about this revelation, including the fact that the government is relying on parallel construction to obscure its (ab)use of financial records to generate something that cannot reasonably be called “suspicion.”

But the most fucked up thing is this: the Supreme-Court-created “Third Party Doctrine” makes an assumption almost no actual American citizen would: that anything they voluntarily share with service providers (like credit card companies and banking institutions) is nothing more than the government’s plaything. No one really thinks the government should just be able to scoop up tons of data just so it can run it through some software to see what pops up.

Lots of people assume that if the government obtains their bank records, it’s because it’s engaged in an investigation. But that’s rarely the case. This is the government piling up haystacks and pretending every bit of “interesting” hay is the needle it’s been looking for. Given the truth behind the pretenses of these stops, the ultimate goal likely isn’t capturing criminals, but shaking people down for whatever cash they might have on them.