You know, my dad always told me to just listen to people... eventually they'll tell you who they truly are.
The hits were all more or less expected, a bunch around their home and the precinct, local supermarkets, etc. But then a weird grouping way out of town. Detective insisted it was a mistake and wanted more data, thinking someone stole his license plate (insert eye roll here).
Anyways, zooming in and looking at the highest density of hits, it ended up being a strip club that he frequented. He got bright red and his buddies didn't stop giving him shit for it all day.
And this was a detective, not a beat officer.
I’m not saying it’s perfect, but scapegoating the company is avoiding the real issue, which is the government policies or the enactment thereof.
The irony to me is that when I was at Palantir they talked extremely openly about all their technology. A ton of it was open sourced, and in depth tech talks were posted to YouTube, but almost no one watched them.
I think people just like writing them off as shady or sketchy because it’s easier than needing to reason about the clear ethical nuance that exists in the government contractor space.
If you’ve never worked with a government agency before, let me tell you, Hanlon’s Razor is in full effect. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
The higher ups know that free reign for their officers to look up anything is a recipe for legal nightmares. The individual officers are often just too dumb to realize that they shouldn’t search for something, and do so out of curiosity. Having blocks in the way like requiring a case number be entered to run a search, and knowing that that search and results are forever associated to that case, cut down a lot on abuse.
Are all forms of abuse the same, or so easily mitigated? No, but I’d like for some system to audit that and at least try to enforce it.