I think you have a miss-calibrated idea of how hard/technical/uncommon/expensive this is. This is the IT equivalent of collecting DNA, not Jason Bourne stuff.
Funnily enough the annual National Technical Investigators Association conference is in Seattle this year.
Tacoma PD has at least one Stingray. Tacoma. That's a few orders of magnitude more expensive and complex than a little usb drive.
Want to see the FinFisher price list? https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/docs/DREAMLAB_2011_FinFPric_e... I wonder what the "1x Auto-Exec USB Dongle" or "10x Activated FinUSB Dongles" lines refer to? Why wonder, you can read the catalog.
They have identified a number of western LEO's on that customer list, no American ones yet but FinFisher is just one company and there are FinFisher command and control servers in the US.
Anyway, I'm responding just because I am interested in the subject and not because I think a dialogue is going to happen here and that's not the best use of my time.
I think you have little experience with cops. It's surprising they can figure out shoe laces.
Can someone show me the Seattle PD budget that has in it those kinds of purchases?
Can you show me where they'd at least hide it in the budget somehow? This isn't DOD black ops slush funds, after all.
Maybe these defense contractors do it for free, out of the goodness of their hearts?
I don't make the mistake of thinking that the government or its agencies are the good guys who would never do anything underhanded. But I feel pretty safe believing that they're A) incompetent and B) piss-poor strategists and C) not interested in anything but the current investigation.
The idea that they've Jason Bourned his computer is absurd paranoid blather.