The surveillance state is trying out a new tactic: pocket watching.
404 Media reports on how secretive “predictive policing” units in the US Border Patrol are analyzing Americans’ financial activity and using it as a pretext to pull them over — even if they’re not suspected of a specific crime.
Predictive policing, the practice of identifying possible criminal activity by analyzing broader patterns in absence of direct evidence, is highly controversial. Delving into individual citizens’ financial data represents a significant escalation of these tactics.
According to the investigation, the Border Patrol units in question are called Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams (PITT). Rather than conducting stops themselves, PITT units feed their findings to local law enforcement.
