DHS’ Secretive ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit Pulling People Over

0:00The Wired newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wired's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance? Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

0:57and this found the company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to the best comments. Gain access to that content at 404media.co. Also, do remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can watch all of our episodes, including this one. Subscribe at youtube.com slash at 404media.co. I'm your host Joseph and with me are two of the other 404 Media co-founders. The first being Sam Cole. Hey. And the other being Jason Kepler. Hello, hello. We survived our party just about.

1:40We will talk about that a bunch more in the subscribers section at the end of this episode. But it was a lot of fun. Let's save the chat until then. Jason, do you want to take us through this first story? Yeah, quickly, if you are in LA, we're doing a live podcast with The Intercept on Thursday at The Loved One at 7.30pm. We'll drop a link to RSVP for that. I think there's only a few spots left. So if you want to come to that, please do. All right, let's talk about this story that you did, Joseph. It's called, A Secret of DHS Predictive Policing Unit is Analyzing Americans' Financial Habits and Pulling Them Over.

2:23That's a bit of a long headline. It's a good one, though, because there's a lot going on here. So I guess we'll get to the specifics, but what is the new, what is this? What's going on here? Yeah, the new thing here is that DHS, or more specifically Border Patrol, is running these secretive predictive policing units that analyze Americans' financial activity and other data, sends that information to local cops, or rather really the names of these people. Local cops then find a pretense to pull them over. They're not suspected of any sort of particular crime. You know, there's not probable cause here.

3:06They're not going after somebody because, oh, they trafficked XYZ amount of drugs or something like that. They pull them over, not suspected of a particular crime, because DHS thinks they're probably worth searching. And they probably, maybe, have stuff on them that would be of interest to DHS. So there's all of that stuff. And one of the really big things that we've revealed in this article is simply the name of this unit, or rather units, and we'll explain that in a bit. And these are called Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams, or PITT. I guess we can say PITT for short. The thing is... It's a different PITT.

3:52Yeah, yeah, yeah. The thing is, it's not like I can really go to, I don't know, a DHS podcast and see how they pronounce it. Do they say PIT? Do they say P-I-T-T? Because when you Google, or rather before we publish this article, when you Googled predictive intelligence targeting team, literally nothing came up. And I thought that was very, very interesting. and one of the reasons why we're revealing the name of this predictive policing unit. Yeah, so this again, no one knew what they were doing here, but this came to you through a guy named Kyle Olson. Who is he and what happened to him? Yeah, so Kyle Olson was driving from, I think, California to Wisconsin.

4:45he works on a cannabis farm in California and he was taking some edibles, some oil, some marijuana back to Wisconsin. Right. And I'm not an expert in all of the state laws around marijuana and cannabis. What I'll say is that he believes that what he was doing was legal. I also think it's neither here nor there, right? Because it's much more about DHS didn't have probable cause or suspect of a particular crime, that sort of thing. And we'll get to that. But he was driving, as I said, from California to Wisconsin. He has his dog in the back. He has a black SUV. there's some luggage racks on the back that's sort of attached to the rear bumper and then eventually when he's crossing through montana i believe that is when a state police officer pulls him over so he's pulled over and uh like why why did he think they were stopping him or Like, what did, what originally happened here?

6:06Olsen sent me a bunch of body cam footage from the police and also sort of his dash cam footage, you know, a camera in his own SUV. And that includes a rear camera. And I watched that. And you see the cop car, the Montana, I think, Highway State Patrol. They pull out onto the interstate. They follow Olsen for a while. Eventually, they put their lights on. They pull Olsen over. And then in the body cam, this sergeant, Sergeant Beck, I think, goes up to the side of Olsen's car and he says, Hey, nothing major. We're just pulling you over because your license plate is a little bit obstructed. The sergeant thinks there's a cover on the license plate, like a glass cover sort of thing that's shielding it.

7:03He also thinks that those big luggage racks might be obstructing it as well. But crucially, that is the given pretense and the given reason for the stop. And Sergeant Beck says it quite explicitly, like, hey, just so you know, this is the reason we're pulling you over is because you have an obstructed license plate. Right, but that's not why he was pulled over. Like, as you later found out, the entire reason we're doing this story is he was flagged by the pit, this predictive intelligence team. So how did he find out about it? And then how did you kind of, what gaps were you able to fill in? Yeah, so Olsen's case has progressed, right?

7:50He has been charged. He's been charged with a DUI because they took his blood at the time. and I think he was allegedly under the influence of cannabis, so I'd have to double check that. But he was charged with a DUI and then later charged with possession with intent to supply because of the edibles and the marijuana and stuff in his car. So that case has been going on and as part of that, he's been given discovery, right? Which is, hey, here's the evidence that the state or the authorities have against you. And in that, he was given a very, very interesting DHS written document. And it actually lays out the real reason for this stop, which is that Border Patrol is running this predictive intelligence targeting team.

8:41An officer, a Border Patrol agent from one of those teams in the sort of Washington state sector, was going through Americans' financial data. and other information. They identified Olsen as a potential person who was engaging in narcotics trafficking. They then took that information and then they provided it to Sergeant Beck, specifically the cop who then pulled Olsen over. So in other words, the license plate stop was a pretense. It was just a reason to get him over at the time. The real reason that Olsen was stopped was because of a DHS predictive policing unit that is analyzing all of this data, pinpointing vehicles and people and thinking, hmm, they look interesting.

9:34We should probably pull them over. And I don't know, it's pretty rare for us, I think, to see a document like this. We'll talk about other really, really crucial reporting on DHS predictive policing in a moment. But having a document like this, DHS says, yes, I'm analyzing the data, and then I thought this person was doing this. They're not suspected of a crime, but then I gave it to the cop and they pulled them over. I mean, it's a really, really crazy document. When I... Because the turnaround of this article was pretty quick, right? I mean, that's the benefit of how we operate. We can move quite quickly.

10:13We're still very careful and diligent. We don't have a ton of bureaucracy, right? So we can do that. I got this document who, to be clear, Olson gave it to me. I then showed it to you, Jason. What did you think when I showed you this document? Well, I think let's tell people specifically what it says because it's called a memorandum of investigation. And so it's a DHS document that explains a bit about the investigation in here. And it's from someone in the Spokane sector. of Border Patrol Targeting and Intelligence Division, which I guess oversees this PITT group. And he wrote that he reviews, quote, law enforcement sensitive databases and then uses that to develop intelligence that they hand over to local law enforcement, which you've said.

11:07But it specifically says that, quote, information contained within law enforcement sensitive systems suggesting financial activity patterns commonly associated with illicit narcotics activity. And then they basically asked them to like use, to interdict this person. So pull them over. Yeah. Then in the actual like report detailing the stop, Beck wrote, quote, it was relayed to me by U.S. Border Patrol targeting analyst Matthew Phelps that he had identified a vehicle that had indicators of possible narcotics trafficking. So this again, it's like DHS is using unknown, like we don't know which government databases, we don't know which financial information to tell local cops like what to pull people over for because they think that they may have possibly committed a crime.

12:06That is really wild. It's just a really wild thing to do. That's not how typically the justice system works in America, right? Like, you don't pull people over on a hunch. You pull people over because they have committed or are suspected of committed a specific offense, right? And of course, you know, it's very convenient in this case that the license plate did look to be obstructed. I don't think that was a lie. You know, like, I think it was probably obstructed. But like, if that hadn't been the case, how would this cop have pulled over Olsen at DHS's behest? You know, like, you can pull somebody over for a license plate obstruction and then maybe, oh, wow, you just find all of this weed as well.

12:56But it's antithetical to how the justice system usually works, when it's actually the other way around. Well, I mean, I think the case, it's like maybe they would have pulled him over for going one mile an hour over the speed limit or something like that, or a rusted taillight or whatever. It's like, as we sort of have learned, it's like, it doesn't really matter what he was pulled over for. This reminds me of the story I did about Flock a few weeks ago related to Flock being used as a pretext to pull someone over for weed. Because in this case, the details are also somewhat sparse, but it's like this guy was pulled over for an obstructed license plate and he was charged with DUI.

13:44He was charged with intent to distribute, but it's not clear that that's the crime that DHS was actually looking for. I think that from what we can tell, it doesn't seem like he had kilograms of weed or anything like that. Like it was, he had some amount of weed. Weed is not legal in Wisconsin. And so it's like, it's, you know, it's unclear whether like this led to the type of crime that DHS was expecting. He doesn't seem to be, he's not a big time drug trafficker. I'll say that, you know, If that's what DHS is looking for, this Olsen guy doesn't appear to be that on the available evidence yet.

14:33But when I sent you the document, what did you think? I just immediately thought this is crazy. I think that we've written a lot about predictive policing in general, which is a term that is controversial because often it's tied to surveillance systems, to AI systems. And the thought of predictive policing is literally like minority report pre-crime vibes where it's like, well, the patterns of your behavior, we've detected that you are going to commit a crime and therefore we are going to intercede before this crime can be committed. Or I guess in this case, it's like our databases, our intelligence suggests that you may have committed a crime.

15:22we don't know exactly what that crime is but we are going to find a reason to pull you over and I mean it seems to me that like this is happening more often at the border although I'm not exactly sure um but yeah I mean I thought like this is crazy it's very dystopian it's sort of like uh there have been companies that have tried to do this before there's one called predpol which is like predictive policing literally um that's based on just like crime statistics in a neighborhood essentially um and i actually don't know this current status of this but this is the u.s government doing it the federal government working with local police it's just like a very insane thing um but yeah do you get a sense of like how widespread this program is so So there was some really, really important reporting somewhat recently from the Associated Press where two reporters there did a massive project where they, I mean, they revealed the Border Patrol was doing predictive policing in the first place.

16:27And that was very much focused on automatic license plate readers, like we've spoken about a million times. But these were a little bit different in that, if I remember correctly, it's a very long investigation that people should definitely go read. It's linked in our story. But in some cases, these were Border Patrol license plate readers hidden in traffic cones and traffic bollards and that sort of thing. And it created this network of license plate readers that Border Patrol were looking at to then predict, hmm, this vehicle is going to be suspicious based on where this person has gone and where they appear to be going and their past movements and all of that sort of thing.

17:13So that's an amazing investigation. They traveled all over the country to do that, definitely go read it. And now we're adding, oh, it's not just license plates. they're looking at financial data as well, which to be honest, to me, is like even wilder. Like, we kind of know that license plates are being used all the time. Again, Flock, Axon, Motorola, Focada, whatever. They're all over the place, right? But the idea that federal agencies are somehow just like, you know, panning for gold through financial data to then find somebody to be like, hmm, let's pull them over is crazy. And this isn't, I don't think this is in the document we got, but I imagine that this person, yes, looked at, sorry, this Border Patrol agent looked at financial data.

18:03Presumably, they also did look at license plate data to identify Olsen's vehicle in the first place. I think that's sort of just a given as well. Yeah, I mean, for this, this also raises some questions for me about federal efforts to police weed in places where it's legal, which we don't need to get so far into. But I think that a big part of the legal weed industry, which obviously federally still illegal, has been that they haven't been able to access bank banking stuff. and that had, I know that the weed industry has developed ways of using the banking system a little bit. And this raises questions for me of like, well, if they're using the banking system in any way, or if there's like tons of cash being withdrawn, things like that, like, I don't know, is this an effort by the feds to police weed in a different way?

19:01I think we don't have enough info about how this is working to say much more than that. But the fact that this guy was ultimately pulled over on weed charges is pretty interesting to me. And are we aware of anyone else that this has caught? Yeah, so... Well, I'll say first that there seems to be other PIT teams, PIT units, whatever we're calling them now, P-I-T-T's or whatever. But like this one focused on one of the north of the border. But then if you go through court records of a related case, which I'll get to in a minute because that actually answers your question. But you go through those, there's a bunch of text messages between law enforcement agents and Border Patrol agents.

19:50If you take one of those phone numbers and then you type them, if you take one of them and you put them into WhatsApp, the profile photo of that apparent border patrol agent is like a law enforcement patch, you know, where they have all of these symbols. Maybe it's a physical thing they put on their bag or their uniform or whatever. And it says tech ops PITT relating to a sector down south by the Mexico-US border. So already now, we've identified two PITTs, the one in the north related to the Olsen case, and then one down low thanks to this WhatsApp profile. I would say that Customs and Border Protection, which is sort of the one above Border Patrol, they have 20 sectors.

20:43And I did ask Customs and Border Protection, well, do you have like a pit in every single one of these sectors? And they didn't answer that. To go back to your question about who else this has impacted, This is mentioned extensively in the Associated Press report. It was also covered and obviously represented by the Institute for Justice, which is this sort of civil rights litigation organization, which has done a ton of stuff on automatic license plate readers. In that case, a cop pulled over somebody who was just like straight up innocent. They hadn't done anything and they ransacked their vehicle.

21:22They went through all of it. And then this target victim was sat in the passenger seat of a cop squad car talking to the officer who pulled him over. And he basically spilled the beans. Sort of like, yeah, this is based on intelligence and I'm looking for the big fish, blah, blah, blah. And that lawsuit, because this person who was unfairly pulled over sued, that opened up this whole new world of, oh, okay, there's something going on here. And that's how I got the phone number for this other PITT team. And I imagine how the Associated Press sort of learned of it in the first place, potentially.

22:05Maybe speaking out of turn there, I'm not actually sure how they figured it out. But yes, the point is, the case we spoke about and covered the Olson case, yes, he was charged with a DUI and then charged with a possession with intent to supply alleged crimes not proven in the court of law, not a perfect victim by his own admission when I've spoken to Olsen, you may think, well, the program is doing its job then because it's getting these people moving weed. Okay, well, what do you think about the innocent guy who was pulled over and didn't have anything at all? And just very briefly, I do think that there's too much emphasis sometimes in coverage or from the public of the need for a perfect victim.

22:48Like, I think that some people may only care about this story, or maybe some outlets would only cover this story. If it was a purely innocent person pulled over because of Border Patrol's predictive policing, I kind of, like, don't care. Like, it doesn't really matter. Sure, maybe this person was, maybe they are guilty of the DUI and the other charges, whatever. This was a vehicle for revealing more details about the predictive policing units, And I think ultimately that's what's important here. Yeah, agreed. Should we leave that there? And then after the break, Sam is going to ask you a bunch of questions about a new piece of AI fashion.

23:30We'll be right back after this.

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28:59All right, we are back. Sam, do you want to take this one, the Jason ring? Yes. So Jason, as the fashion experts on the team, let's get into fashion. Actually, I think, Joe, you're more fashionable than I am most of the time. I appreciate that. You guys are mogging me constantly. So yeah, this headline is, this digital camouflage shirt confuses AI-powered surveillance cameras. Yeah, so we've heard like adversarial fashion a bit in the past. It's something that's been around for many years, but you had the chance to kind of go and experience this particular project in person. So yeah, do you want to just kind of walk us through what happened when you went and checked out this?

29:51It's a shirt based on the headline, as we know. But yeah, what did you see? What happened when you like put it on and stood in front of a camera? Yeah. So essentially this shirt is, it's like made up of a bunch of blobs and we can talk about how it was made in a second, but it's like green and black and pink and red. It stands out. Like it stands out a lot. It's like Dan Flashes. That's the thing. I think this is why it resonated with people so much is because the pattern is so complicated. So yeah, if you don't know, please look up the, I think you should leave skit about Dan Flashes because it's exactly that.