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A comment on Police Invested Millions in Shadowy Phone-Tracking Software Won't Say How Used. Parent comment

Re:Police Invested Millions in Shadowy Phone-Tracking Softwa... by alex_young on Sunday January 18, 2026 @06:15PM (#46673187)
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

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Re:Police Invested Millions in Shadowy Phone-Tracking Softwa... by sneak on Sunday January 18, 2026 @08:27PM (#46674034)
Nothing will change until and unless police start suffering severe consequences for breaking the law.

Such consequences will never come from the state.

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Re:Police Invested Millions in Shadowy Phone-Tracking Softwa... by mulmen on Sunday January 18, 2026 @09:17PM (#46674355)
> Such consequences will never come from the state.

Seattle’s consent decree directly contradicts this.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-returns-fu...

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Re:Police Invested Millions in Shadowy Phone-Tracking Softwa... by greyface- on Sunday January 18, 2026 @09:39PM (#46674490)
The idea that the SPD consent decree constituted "severe consequences", or was successful at all, is a joke.

https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2026/01/video-cops-rallie...

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Re:Police Invested Millions in Shadowy Phone-Tracking Softwa... by thephyber on Monday January 19, 2026 @06:35AM (#46677823)
Department insurance policies are the only thing that seems to scare departments into improving policies and behaviors.

Insurers who threaten to drop departments have immense leverage that city managers, city elected leaders, and voters don’t.

There aren’t a lot of departments who go bankrupt, but the few that do make a crying show of it and they are a great to show departments who flout reform.

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