9 ms·

Boston police bought spy tech with a pot of money hidden from the public

280 points by authed 5y ago

black_13 5y ago
I really think that when British sat foot in Boston they looked around and said „you keep it“. Of the dysfunctional places in this country thats a topper.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Sounds similar to CIA "black budgets." Civil forfeiture is a dumpster fire. I don't know who thought giving an organization that has the power to extort -with legal backing, would result in anything else.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  > Sounds similar to CIA "black budgets." Good comparison. Other federal organizations have these, too. Many NASA launches have a black project that the public does not hear about. We should probably change the phrasing from black to something else, though.
  - authed 5y ago
    > We should probably change the phrasing from black to something else, though. illegal budget sounds good to me...
klyrs 5y ago
Civil asset forfeiture encourages criminality in police. This, along with qualified immunity, are significant drivers behind the 'defund' movement. Reforming these two policies would be entirely sensible, if the country wasn't so hopelessly polarized.
- syshum 5y ago
  for most political reforms it seems the news media purposely chooses the most polarizing examples of the problem to highlight. Does not matter if police reform, abortion, welfare, or any other topic, the media chooses the examples that will most upset those opposing the reform. This results in nothing getting reform, maintaining the status quo, and the media;s reoccurring revenue stream The nation is hopelessly polarized as a direct result of media propaganda, I have encountered this everyday and when people are giving actual non-sensationalized facts it is very easy to come to compromise policy position.
  - salimmadjd 5y ago
    The same polarizing media conveniently blamed Facebook and Twitter (though to a lesser extent) for all the polarization that they have been fomenting for years. I guess that move wasn’t as surprising for me as seeing the number of people in SV who bought into that narrative. Corporate media should not really be thought of as real journalistic entities. Simple example. How in the world does CNN allow Chris Cuomo to interview his own brother. The fact that no one inside CNN publicly objected to this, walked away, protested, it tells me everything I need to know about the entire organization. I don’t remember anyone at MSNBC making a fuss about it, nor at the Washington Post (Democracy Dies in Darkness).
    - kurthr 5y ago
      Hmmm, yeah no. Whether it's Vanity Fair or other "liberal scions", they're as likely to point out the issues with this sort of self-serving coverage as your favorite hand wringer on Fox News, who themselves are almost entirely "entertainment" and have so much obvious conflict of interest in their coverage... and if the Jan 6 SMS messages are to be believed, simple out right lying. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/02/chris-cuomo-andrew-cuomo-cnn-disclosure/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/02/chris-cuo...
    - zimpenfish 5y ago
      > How in the world does CNN allow Chris Cuomo to interview his own brother. To be fair to CNN, they did ban that from 2013 until it was temporarily lifted in 2020 because "Chris speaking with his brother about the challenges of what millions of American families were struggling with was of significant human interest"[1]. It was definitely a bad judgement call but hardly damning of the whole organisation. [1] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2021/02/19/cnns-chris-cuomo-can-no-longer-interview-brother-gov-andrew-cuomo/4504315001/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2021/02/19/cn...
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  I agree with you. I don't like that being pro police became a cult of letting them do whatever they want. I'm pro police and I believe they should be paid more, get more training, and be held to much higher standard which means relentlessly pursuing and strongly prosecuting corrupt police. It's a betrayal of an entire community in a profession where lives are often at stake. Being pro police also doesn't mean making their job as easy as possible to the detriment of everybody else.
  - syshum 5y ago
    Well IMO one of the problem here is thinking in either "pro" or "anti" group stances. I am neither pro police, nor anti police. I am pro enforcement of laws that protect people from being victimized by others. That is a very narrow statement that does not require me to be "pro police" or "anti police" >> I believe they should be paid more, get more training, and be held to much higher standard This is often a position people take, but if fails root cause analysis. I am not convinced that more training, more pay, and higher standards will fix anything. The root cause is 2 fold first over-criminalization of society, and the use of police to enforce things that should not be crimes in the first place, or should be left to civil enforcement. The second is then giving police more power than average citizen, and I am not just talking arresting power there is a solid case there. However governments pass all kinds of laws written that have specific carve outs for police, this creates a "higher class" member of society that allows the member of this class to believe they are the sovereign and we are the vessels this fly's in the face of governance "For the people, by the people" aka self governance. IMO the law itself creates the logical end result of the policing we have today, unless we change the law the police no matter the pay, training, or standards will still be a problem
    - shakezula 5y ago
      > this creates a "higher class" member of society This is a really good way of describing what people are really angry about. Cop worship in the states is only second to God.
  - tehwebguy 5y ago
    Good reminder to vote your district attorney or equivalent out of office every single election unless they are relentless about prosecuting police who break the law. Weird examples that never go away, you can see instances of these every single day: - Tons of LAPD drive with illegal tints & no tags on their personal vehicles - Tons of NYPD park in the bike lane or on the actual sidewalk There are twitter accounts that follow these easy to spot examples. Harder to track: abuses of power in small towns when no cameras are rolling. DAs have even more leeway in some states than others, for instance in New York felonies can only be charged via grand jury unless waived by the defendant. This gives a DA unilateral power to sandbag any indictment they don’t feel like prosecuting without looking soft on bad cops (see the Buffalo shoving incident) with zero transparency.
- authed 5y ago
  > Reforming these two policies would be entirely sensible, if the country wasn't so hopelessly polarized. I guess it will have to get a lot worst before it gets better...
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  > Civil asset forfeiture encourages criminality in police. If you'll forgive a moment of polemic: In my judgment, civil-asset forfeiture is a crime, full-stop. As a regular citizen without special legal training, it seems like as blatant a violation of the 5th Amendment as one could imagine. Perhaps with more legal training I'd judge it differently. But I'm not ready to give the court system the benefit of the doubt on this. And I would be deeply skeptical of any argument to the contrary. If the SCOTUS can justify civil-asset forfeiture (in its current form), then I don't see how the Bill of Rights offers any protection at all.
  - nescioquid 5y ago
    > As a regular citizen without special legal training... Living in a free society or not, you are fit to judge the rectitude of the law. To suggest otherwise implies a servile relationship of the citizen to the state. All manner of abominable laws have existed and been upheld under all forms of the US constitution. Qualified advocates argued against, and supreme court judges ruled against Dred Scott (7 - 2), for instance. As long as it has existed, the supreme court has been in a crisis of legitimacy, and upholding the appearance of legitimacy has been its prima causa. What separates you and a fine judgement of what is just? Three years of sophistical "scholarship" and two summers of internships?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - hellojesus 5y ago
    It is a violation of the constitution full stop. Also, TSA gets kickbacks from homeland security. If they see large sums of cash in your bags, they will contact the police in order to try and get it taken via civil asset forfeiture, and then they'll get a kickback for it. I plan to start traveling with wads of prop money with a couple hundreds on the outside to get a lel out of the interaction when the cops inevitably show up to try and confiscate it.
- landemva 5y ago
  Qualified immunity was created by USSC. It is widely abused by all levels of government, and can be fixed by legislature.
- indymike 5y ago
  I'm not sure there is any objection to reforming this on either side. Civil forfeiture seems blatantly plain-language unconstitutional.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    If only the legislature could sit down and write single-issue bills with clear bipartisan support... but I'm not sure you're right. The phrase "law and order" seems to shut down rational thought, and there are plenty of politicians on both sides of the aisle who appear to act at the whim of police lobbies. When confronted with the blatant unconstitutionality of the patriot act, Democrats and Republicans alike responded "yeah, but police are using it to fight crime."
    - indymike 5y ago
      > The phrase "law and order" seems to shut down rational thought Insecurity shuts down rational thought. Lew and order only works where insecurity exists. > plenty of politicians on both sides of the aisle who appear to act at the whim of police lobbies. Insecurity gets you unelected.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Libertarians have been talking about it for decades, but it seems lately that even some public outlets have been talking about it. I don't know if it's getting worse or finally coming to public notice.
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
A LOT of police forces operate these black “funds”
sbuttgereit 5y ago
Reasonable time to plug one of the legal civil rights organizations that I try to financially support every year: The Institute for Justice. https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/ https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/ They are consistently fighting these kinds of abuses in the courts and through lobbying.
- tempnow987 5y ago
  I'm also a supporter. I am a bit confused why groups I normally support on the left have this as a somewhat low priority relative to the equity issues. This has an equity component too. The folks most likely to be unbanked, carrying around cash etc are minorities.
  - slavboj 5y ago
    The favored solutions for "equity issues" usually involve jobs for left activists or NGOs - "defund the police" transmutes into "we need half a department worth of various flavors of social workers".
  - landemva 5y ago
    It's a low priority because fundamentally fixing a problem will put the group out of business. It's a tired outrage show. Wake me up when BLM starts demanding the removal of government immunity.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      >It's a low priority because fundamentally fixing a problem will put the group out of business Exactly. They can either go the way of urban democrats and persist by promising to solve problems you never solve (not that republicans have served rural voters any better) or they can go the way of MADD and actually make progress and then see interest wane. They chose the former.
    - alphabettsy 5y ago
      Civil rights groups including Black Lives Matter have been talking about Qualified Immunity for a long time. It’s even on the BLM website.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
One of the luxuries about being a one party state is that you[1] never have to think critically about the means because you always agree with the ends. Massachusetts is going to be one of the last states that has that tough discussion about reining in the enforcement arm of government because it is a) so one sided b) rich enough to paper over problems for a long time. [1] the theoretical average citizen who holds the average beliefs about everything
- dnadler 5y ago
  FYI - Massachusetts has historically had a Democratic legislature and Republican Governor, so it's not really a "one party state", though I think your point still stands. In fact, we had a republican senator not too long ago (Scott Brown).
  - voidfunc 5y ago
    While yes Massachusetts does elect Republican governors and Scott Brown became a senator (mostly because he ran against a lukewarm turd) it is very much a single party state. The legislature has a veto-proof supermajority. The Republican governors are forced to come towards the center to get any part of their agenda accomplished. Everyone knows the Speaker of the House is the most powerful politician in MA.
- desert_boi 5y ago
  All but one state (in '19) was under single party control. https://twitter.com/ncslorg/status/1060137062853160961?lang=en https://twitter.com/ncslorg/status/1060137062853160961?lang=...
dillondoyle 5y ago
Do 5g cell towers or carriers have any tech that would stop these stingrays? Or is there anything consumers can do, maybe a whitelist app or something to authenticate real towers? need to force law enforcement to get warrants.
- mLuby 5y ago
  Can't see why corporations would side with consumers over law enforcement. On the other hand, the very existence of stingrays suggests corporate cooperation isn't enough in some way. Maybe Apple (and/or browser makers) could get away with a blanket "you're not connected to a publicly registered cell tower; proceed with caution" alert, like happens with SSL certs and HTTPS. Apparently there are public databases of known cell towers (e.g. https://opencellid.org https://opencellid.org) some of which are crowd-sourced.
  - dannyw 5y ago
    You can detect stringrays with iPhone apps even by accessing the limited mobile network info you get, the problem is Apple bans these apps for unknown reasons.
  - dillondoyle 5y ago
    Nice thanks for the info.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

280 points by authed 5y ago

I really think that when British sat foot in Boston they looked around and said „you keep it“. Of the dysfunctional places in this country thats a topper.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Sounds similar to CIA "black budgets." Civil forfeiture is a dumpster fire. I don't know who thought giving an organization that has the power to extort -with legal backing, would result in anything else.

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
> Sounds similar to CIA "black budgets." Good comparison. Other federal organizations have these, too. Many NASA launches have a black project that the public does not hear about. We should probably change the phrasing from black to something else, though.
- authed 5y ago
  > We should probably change the phrasing from black to something else, though. illegal budget sounds good to me...

klyrs 5y ago

Civil asset forfeiture encourages criminality in police. This, along with qualified immunity, are significant drivers behind the 'defund' movement. Reforming these two policies would be entirely sensible, if the country wasn't so hopelessly polarized.

syshum 5y ago
for most political reforms it seems the news media purposely chooses the most polarizing examples of the problem to highlight. Does not matter if police reform, abortion, welfare, or any other topic, the media chooses the examples that will most upset those opposing the reform. This results in nothing getting reform, maintaining the status quo, and the media;s reoccurring revenue stream The nation is hopelessly polarized as a direct result of media propaganda, I have encountered this everyday and when people are giving actual non-sensationalized facts it is very easy to come to compromise policy position.
- salimmadjd 5y ago
  The same polarizing media conveniently blamed Facebook and Twitter (though to a lesser extent) for all the polarization that they have been fomenting for years. I guess that move wasn’t as surprising for me as seeing the number of people in SV who bought into that narrative. Corporate media should not really be thought of as real journalistic entities. Simple example. How in the world does CNN allow Chris Cuomo to interview his own brother. The fact that no one inside CNN publicly objected to this, walked away, protested, it tells me everything I need to know about the entire organization. I don’t remember anyone at MSNBC making a fuss about it, nor at the Washington Post (Democracy Dies in Darkness).
  - kurthr 5y ago
    Hmmm, yeah no. Whether it's Vanity Fair or other "liberal scions", they're as likely to point out the issues with this sort of self-serving coverage as your favorite hand wringer on Fox News, who themselves are almost entirely "entertainment" and have so much obvious conflict of interest in their coverage... and if the Jan 6 SMS messages are to be believed, simple out right lying. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/02/chris-cuomo-andrew-cuomo-cnn-disclosure/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/02/chris-cuo...
  - zimpenfish 5y ago
    > How in the world does CNN allow Chris Cuomo to interview his own brother. To be fair to CNN, they did ban that from 2013 until it was temporarily lifted in 2020 because "Chris speaking with his brother about the challenges of what millions of American families were struggling with was of significant human interest"[1]. It was definitely a bad judgement call but hardly damning of the whole organisation. [1] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2021/02/19/cnns-chris-cuomo-can-no-longer-interview-brother-gov-andrew-cuomo/4504315001/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2021/02/19/cn...
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
I agree with you. I don't like that being pro police became a cult of letting them do whatever they want. I'm pro police and I believe they should be paid more, get more training, and be held to much higher standard which means relentlessly pursuing and strongly prosecuting corrupt police. It's a betrayal of an entire community in a profession where lives are often at stake. Being pro police also doesn't mean making their job as easy as possible to the detriment of everybody else.
- syshum 5y ago
  Well IMO one of the problem here is thinking in either "pro" or "anti" group stances. I am neither pro police, nor anti police. I am pro enforcement of laws that protect people from being victimized by others. That is a very narrow statement that does not require me to be "pro police" or "anti police" >> I believe they should be paid more, get more training, and be held to much higher standard This is often a position people take, but if fails root cause analysis. I am not convinced that more training, more pay, and higher standards will fix anything. The root cause is 2 fold first over-criminalization of society, and the use of police to enforce things that should not be crimes in the first place, or should be left to civil enforcement. The second is then giving police more power than average citizen, and I am not just talking arresting power there is a solid case there. However governments pass all kinds of laws written that have specific carve outs for police, this creates a "higher class" member of society that allows the member of this class to believe they are the sovereign and we are the vessels this fly's in the face of governance "For the people, by the people" aka self governance. IMO the law itself creates the logical end result of the policing we have today, unless we change the law the police no matter the pay, training, or standards will still be a problem
  - shakezula 5y ago
    > this creates a "higher class" member of society This is a really good way of describing what people are really angry about. Cop worship in the states is only second to God.
- tehwebguy 5y ago
  Good reminder to vote your district attorney or equivalent out of office every single election unless they are relentless about prosecuting police who break the law. Weird examples that never go away, you can see instances of these every single day: - Tons of LAPD drive with illegal tints & no tags on their personal vehicles - Tons of NYPD park in the bike lane or on the actual sidewalk There are twitter accounts that follow these easy to spot examples. Harder to track: abuses of power in small towns when no cameras are rolling. DAs have even more leeway in some states than others, for instance in New York felonies can only be charged via grand jury unless waived by the defendant. This gives a DA unilateral power to sandbag any indictment they don’t feel like prosecuting without looking soft on bad cops (see the Buffalo shoving incident) with zero transparency.
authed 5y ago
> Reforming these two policies would be entirely sensible, if the country wasn't so hopelessly polarized. I guess it will have to get a lot worst before it gets better...
CoastalCoder 5y ago
> Civil asset forfeiture encourages criminality in police. If you'll forgive a moment of polemic: In my judgment, civil-asset forfeiture is a crime, full-stop. As a regular citizen without special legal training, it seems like as blatant a violation of the 5th Amendment as one could imagine. Perhaps with more legal training I'd judge it differently. But I'm not ready to give the court system the benefit of the doubt on this. And I would be deeply skeptical of any argument to the contrary. If the SCOTUS can justify civil-asset forfeiture (in its current form), then I don't see how the Bill of Rights offers any protection at all.
- nescioquid 5y ago
  > As a regular citizen without special legal training... Living in a free society or not, you are fit to judge the rectitude of the law. To suggest otherwise implies a servile relationship of the citizen to the state. All manner of abominable laws have existed and been upheld under all forms of the US constitution. Qualified advocates argued against, and supreme court judges ruled against Dred Scott (7 - 2), for instance. As long as it has existed, the supreme court has been in a crisis of legitimacy, and upholding the appearance of legitimacy has been its prima causa. What separates you and a fine judgement of what is just? Three years of sophistical "scholarship" and two summers of internships?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- hellojesus 5y ago
  It is a violation of the constitution full stop. Also, TSA gets kickbacks from homeland security. If they see large sums of cash in your bags, they will contact the police in order to try and get it taken via civil asset forfeiture, and then they'll get a kickback for it. I plan to start traveling with wads of prop money with a couple hundreds on the outside to get a lel out of the interaction when the cops inevitably show up to try and confiscate it.
landemva 5y ago
Qualified immunity was created by USSC. It is widely abused by all levels of government, and can be fixed by legislature.
indymike 5y ago
I'm not sure there is any objection to reforming this on either side. Civil forfeiture seems blatantly plain-language unconstitutional.
- klyrs 5y ago
  If only the legislature could sit down and write single-issue bills with clear bipartisan support... but I'm not sure you're right. The phrase "law and order" seems to shut down rational thought, and there are plenty of politicians on both sides of the aisle who appear to act at the whim of police lobbies. When confronted with the blatant unconstitutionality of the patriot act, Democrats and Republicans alike responded "yeah, but police are using it to fight crime."
  - indymike 5y ago
    > The phrase "law and order" seems to shut down rational thought Insecurity shuts down rational thought. Lew and order only works where insecurity exists. > plenty of politicians on both sides of the aisle who appear to act at the whim of police lobbies. Insecurity gets you unelected.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Libertarians have been talking about it for decades, but it seems lately that even some public outlets have been talking about it. I don't know if it's getting worse or finally coming to public notice.

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

A LOT of police forces operate these black “funds”

sbuttgereit 5y ago

Reasonable time to plug one of the legal civil rights organizations that I try to financially support every year: The Institute for Justice. https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/ https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/ They are consistently fighting these kinds of abuses in the courts and through lobbying.

tempnow987 5y ago
I'm also a supporter. I am a bit confused why groups I normally support on the left have this as a somewhat low priority relative to the equity issues. This has an equity component too. The folks most likely to be unbanked, carrying around cash etc are minorities.
- slavboj 5y ago
  The favored solutions for "equity issues" usually involve jobs for left activists or NGOs - "defund the police" transmutes into "we need half a department worth of various flavors of social workers".
- landemva 5y ago
  It's a low priority because fundamentally fixing a problem will put the group out of business. It's a tired outrage show. Wake me up when BLM starts demanding the removal of government immunity.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >It's a low priority because fundamentally fixing a problem will put the group out of business Exactly. They can either go the way of urban democrats and persist by promising to solve problems you never solve (not that republicans have served rural voters any better) or they can go the way of MADD and actually make progress and then see interest wane. They chose the former.
  - alphabettsy 5y ago
    Civil rights groups including Black Lives Matter have been talking about Qualified Immunity for a long time. It’s even on the BLM website.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

One of the luxuries about being a one party state is that you[1] never have to think critically about the means because you always agree with the ends. Massachusetts is going to be one of the last states that has that tough discussion about reining in the enforcement arm of government because it is a) so one sided b) rich enough to paper over problems for a long time. [1] the theoretical average citizen who holds the average beliefs about everything

dnadler 5y ago
FYI - Massachusetts has historically had a Democratic legislature and Republican Governor, so it's not really a "one party state", though I think your point still stands. In fact, we had a republican senator not too long ago (Scott Brown).
- voidfunc 5y ago
  While yes Massachusetts does elect Republican governors and Scott Brown became a senator (mostly because he ran against a lukewarm turd) it is very much a single party state. The legislature has a veto-proof supermajority. The Republican governors are forced to come towards the center to get any part of their agenda accomplished. Everyone knows the Speaker of the House is the most powerful politician in MA.
desert_boi 5y ago
All but one state (in '19) was under single party control. https://twitter.com/ncslorg/status/1060137062853160961?lang=en https://twitter.com/ncslorg/status/1060137062853160961?lang=...

dillondoyle 5y ago

Do 5g cell towers or carriers have any tech that would stop these stingrays? Or is there anything consumers can do, maybe a whitelist app or something to authenticate real towers? need to force law enforcement to get warrants.

mLuby 5y ago
Can't see why corporations would side with consumers over law enforcement. On the other hand, the very existence of stingrays suggests corporate cooperation isn't enough in some way. Maybe Apple (and/or browser makers) could get away with a blanket "you're not connected to a publicly registered cell tower; proceed with caution" alert, like happens with SSL certs and HTTPS. Apparently there are public databases of known cell towers (e.g. https://opencellid.org https://opencellid.org) some of which are crowd-sourced.
- dannyw 5y ago
  You can detect stringrays with iPhone apps even by accessing the limited mobile network info you get, the problem is Apple bans these apps for unknown reasons.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  Nice thanks for the info.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]