> 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.

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.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

Was that suspicious? I thought his face was plastered all over the news.

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?

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.

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.

Truly a "why say many words" title!

"Texas Police Won't Say How Used Shadowy Phone-Tracking Software Millions Spent On"?

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.

>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?