Flying Under-The-Radar (The City of Mesa AZ Does This Too) > Options 1, 2 and 3

San Diego PD Uses Police Charity To Buy Off-The-Books Phone Cracking Tech

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the getting-the-goods-without-all-the-hassle dept

Fri, Oct 9th 2020 1:45pm — Tim Cushing

A law enforcement agency looking to dodge oversight has a few options. First, there's the 1033 program, which allows agencies to pick up useful things like guns, bullets, armored vehicles, grenade launchers… and… um… filing cabinets, I guess. Going this route means spending federal money rather than local money. So, if you're not spending local tax dollars, you really don't need to ask permission.

Another accountability dodge is the discretionary spending allowed by civil asset forfeiture. Law enforcement agencies directly profit from property seized and are given a lot of latitude on spending those dollars. City/county oversight is rarely involved. Very few localities have implemented strict reporting on seizures so the money flows from victims through cop shops and into the hands of cop tech purveyors.

There's a third option: use private money . . .Donors with deep pockets and minimal concerns about the people they're bypassing pay for surveillance tech and other law enforcement goodies. Again, because no public money is involved, the public is left out of the equation. This happened in Baltimore, . .The same thing is happening elsewhere. Lots of private companies and individuals are buying stuff for police departments, allowing them to circumvent accountability measures. Some of these "private" concerns should be considered public, considering their narrow focus. As ProPublica reported in 2014, the Los Angeles Police Foundation -- a "private" charity -- asked for $200,000 from Target Corp. to buy the Los Angeles Police Department data analytics software from Palantir. It also purchased several automatic license plate readers for the department. No public oversight was involved since it was "private" money.

Joseph Cox reports on more of this public/private bullshit for Motherboard

THE CONCLUSION: "No one's arguing police departments shouldn't have access to tools like these. But if they're using these to perform their public duties, they owe it to the public to inform them about their acquisitions and allow their oversight to do its job. Forming a bunch of "private charities" specifically to provide police departments with off-the-books tech is a spectacularly lousy way to engage in public service."