Police use this sort of tactic (parallel construction) all the time, though: they collect evidence in ways not admissible in court, but use knowledge of that evidence to find new lines of investigation and new evidence that can be admissible in court.

Presumably someone could use malware on someone's phone to know who to target with an abortion-related lawsuit, and then use legal forms of investigation to find evidence to prove that they got an abortion.

The trick of course is that the malware can't be traced back to the police. Otherwise, the parallel construction narrative vanishes, as well as potentially a bunch of previous convictions that were constructed using the same technique -- At least until the conservative supreme court neuters the 4th amendment.

This needs to be the case of course, unless you support law enforcement agencies doing unlawful actions to get convictions.

Isn't the parallel construction narrative that it doesn't matter how you got the information as long as after you get it, you can show a way that you could have gotten it?

Even if the method used was illegal, and found to be illegal in court, the evidence is still admissible iirc?

Ever read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon? The WW2 part shows a team going through elaborate measures to create a plausible way that the allies can find out what the Germans are up to without revealing that they can read all of their messages. They would tell a submarine to surface at a particular location at a particular time and report what they see, for instance, and the sub crew would have no idea why, to produce a plausible explanation of why some German action was discovered.

Parallel construction often means they hide how they got the original information from the court and from the defense.

The neat thing is those parts of Cryptonomicon were largely based on things that actually happened:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra#Safeguarding_of_sources

No, that’s not how it works at all. You use illegally gained information to find other avenues to get evidence that on the surface look ok.

For example, you use illegally gained access to messages to find out about a meeting at a particular time. Then when the meeting to exchange contraband is happening, “a concerned anonymous citizen” calls in a tip of suspicious behavior and a patrol cop stumbled onto a bust.

The evidence is not admissible. It is considered 'fruit of the poisoned tree'. Parallel construction only works if you can hide the illegal investigation from the court.

…which is why they work really hard to hide it from the court. That’s the point of parallel construction.

> The trick of course is that the malware can't be traced back to the police

Isn't this even more complicated to prove in the case of private bounty hunters, instead of the police?

> Police use this sort of tactic (parallel construction) all the time

It's really disgusting that we allow this.

We don’t. It’s not legal and has to be hidden by the cops.

It’s like saying that it’s disgusting we allow cops to steal seized property. We don’t, but it happens.

Even when it is discovered, there are zero adverse consequences from the wrongdoers, so it's hard to say that we don't tolerate it.

Parallel construction isn’t illegal.

the Court has never ruled on parallel construction. I think it's probably illegal. there was Harding v. United States, but that was a case where someone was accidentally flagged as having an outstanding warrant. intentionally passing illegally acquired tips is probably illegal, the trick is it's impossible to prove and there's no penalty other than getting evidence derived from the tip stricken from the record.

But lying to the court is, so any related testimony would be illegal, making the scheme as a whole illegal.

We allow it by not stopping it.

Yes! I have no doubt this is exactly what’s happening.

It doesn’t happen “all the time”. The term also applies, and is mainly used, to disguise lawful sources, such as undercover agents.

While there is a problem with US police acting unlawfully, it mostly happens in specific situations. At the federal level, they are much better behaved. And the incentive structure just doesn’t make it worthwhile to break the law

What do you think are the odds we see parallel reconstruction via divine inspiration or psychic detectives in the next couple years?

Getting information through an illegal trawl, is an amazingly effective way of working out how to get related information "legally".

Find out from the phone, that they have an appointment at a particular time and place? It's easy to just be there and photograph them, "as part of occasional surveilance" or whatever.

its trivial for well-funded organizations to get around such legal issues when they use something called “parallel construction”

this is when evidence is collected in nefarious and often illegal ways. it is then given to the organization which will weaponize the information. this organization then launders how they acquired the evidence, obscuring the shady way it was originally obtained.

there is no shortage of instances where different groups (including local police) have laundered how evidence was obtained to get around legality requirements for obtaining evidence.. [various links below]

as the above commenter highlights, it’s about to get even more terrifying as incredibly well funded, incredibly authoritarian groups jump into the fray using religion as their excuse.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intel...

https://www.jurist.org/news/2018/01/hrw-us-authorities-conce...

https://reason.com/2018/01/09/federal-agencies-may-be-regula...

https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-te...

https://www.techdirt.com/2014/02/03/parallel-construction-re...

https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/01/09/dark-side/secret-origi...

https://www.scmagazine.com/news/security-news/fbi-stingray-n...

https://www.wired.com/story/stingray-secret-surveillance-pro...

You make the bold assumption all courts are fair.