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Seth Trueger @mdaware.org · 9h

Although additional details of the system were not revealed at trial, subsequent reporting by 404 Media revealed that Schott most likely was identified by a federal predictive policing unit working out of a so-called fusion center in Laredo that used artificial intelligence to identify him as a likely criminal.

“Homeland Security, DEA, everybody’s there,” Dep. Joel Babb, who pulled Schott over, said in a pre-trial deposition. “And they have a lot bigger toys than a license plate reader.”

fter receiving the WhatsApp message, Babb waited for Schott’s truck to appear, eventually pulling him over for crossing the yellow shoulder line. Schott’s dashboard camera showed him staying inside his lane and the deputy later admitted it was just a pretext to look inside the vehicle.

“The beautiful thing about the Texas traffic code is there’s thousands of things you can stop a vehicle for,” he later testified.

After detaining Schott for more than an hour, and doing more than $7,000-worth of damage to his truck during their search, Bexar deputies’ interrogation and search turned up nothing. Yet Molina wrote on his report that they had seen specks of marijuana leaves. If so, nothing was ever collected or tested or mentioned on any body camera footage, Molina later conceded.

The interdiction team was so unsuccessful that Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar had joked about it. While the deputies made hundreds of stops, “I would rib them about not being very effective at drug interdiction, not finding drugs very often,” he said in a deposition.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app

“This is what mass surveillance looks like when it reaches the shoulder of the highway…An AI-powered camera flagged Alek’s plate. An anonymous law enforcement agent decided his completely ordinary trip looked suspicious. And a deputy went out and found a violation that never happened.”

houstonchronicle.com

Texas driver wins lawsuit over surveillance-triggered traffic stop

Jury rules in favor of driver in a case that uncovered unsettling facts about how a vast and secretive network is being used to track people across Texas.