I've mentioned this before but I've been a volunteer court watcher for domestic violence court for some years now. Cases where a state surveillance tool or database was used to stalk or harass the victim are completely routine.

Very often it is someone in an administrative role who has access to the tool, and I think they get caught more often because it's easier for automated audits to flag their use as clearly unnecessary. LEOs have a lot of benefit of the doubt on that and, from what I can tell, are pretty much free to do what they want with these tools.

I do follow up on cases, I'm not supposed to participate in court but I can contribute community impact statements about systemic patterns I've observed. I haven't so far ever seen one of the cops in front of another court for this behavior, even when it was clearly documented by an order of protection being granted in DV court.

I assume this problem is far far worse than I can perceive. Victims will only bring this to court with a lot of support and clear evidence, and even then with the offender being police, it's risky and frightening. Our police are automatically placed on administrative leave if served an order of protection, so the local judges are extremely resistant to ever actually granting one.

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CobrastanJorji 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Can you tell me more about what a volunteer court watcher does? That sounds fascinating. What do you do when you see something questionable in a court? Are there broader organizations you raise concerns with or submit statistics to?

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giraffe_lady 9 hours ago | parent [-]

I volunteer for a local organization, most areas have one. Some are specialized around a specific kind of court, others are big enough to be broad and then have specialized training, usually following however your local jurisdiction divides up its courts.

I fill out a form for each session and case and write descriptive notes about what happens in court, including things like language and tone of the judge, conduct of the counsel, etc. I don't evaluate "questionable" myself and I do nothing personally with the notes. They are submitted to the organization and eventually in aggregate make their way into data used by researchers, journalists, law schools, legislators.

	▲	CobrastanJorji 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's super cool, thanks for the information and also thanks for doing that!