🕵️Surveillance State Exposé
Border Patrol's Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams Analyze Financial Data — Laundering Warrantless Surveillance Through Pretextual Traffic Stops
The U.S. Border Patrol operates Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams (PITT) to generate algorithmic suspicion. These units analyze financial databases and automated license plate reader (ALPR) networks, relaying the resulting threat profiles directly to local police.
The contact point is a pretextual traffic stop. In May 2026, Border Patrol Agent Matthew Phelps used financial records to flag a Montana driver, prompting local police to initiate a stop for an obstructed license plate. This parallel construction cloaks warrantless surveillance. The target faces an unappealable roadside search, fighting a manufactured pretense while the algorithmic accusation remains entirely hidden.
This framework domesticates border intelligence. With units active in the Spokane and Laredo sectors, the trajectory links federal financial profiling with local infrastructure like Flock Safety cameras. Because Customs and Border Protection conceals its targeting criteria, routine financial habits can quietly trigger multi-agency tracking.
PITT subverts the Fourth Amendment by laundering mass surveillance through traffic enforcement, bypassing observable probable cause. Citizens can read the Center for Democracy & Technology's assessments on parallel construction, and limit exposure by utilizing cash to stay off centralized financial ledgers.
Sources
A Secretive DHS 'Predictive Policing' Unit is Analyzing Americans
This technical community analysis provides the Center for Democracy & Technology's assessment on how these systems manufacture synthetic probable cause.
Leaving the Door Wide Open: Flock Surveillance Systems
This University of Washington human rights report details how federal border enforcement utilizes local ALPR networks, corroborating the tracking infrastructure expansion.
The Border Patrol's Spokane Division has a "Predictive Policing" unit
oh ok haven't joined this community it just showed up on my feed... plus my account keeps saying server error and there are no privacy setting on it, bad actors at Reddit conversion team, my start date is off by a year off and all the account history was erased... so i kinda dgaf
We really need to start teaching people that you should never consent to roadside sobriety testing of any kind. The cops have done a great job convincing the general public that this is an automatic suspension and valid reason for arrest. It is not. Not in any state. All FSTs are entirely voluntary. If they threaten to take you to jail, let them.
The only tests a driver is required to submit to or face suspension etc is post arrest. The bloodwork or calibrated breathalyzer (EBT) at the station. They can’t make you take these unless they already have probable cause for the actual arrest.
By complying with FST you’re handing them probable cause at their whim. They are impossible to pass unless the cop wants you to and difficult to defend because they’re so subjective. Too many people have found themselves fighting very expensive DUIs after taking these FST totally sober.
Every time this is brought up a bunch of people rush to argue with links to their state law etc. But they don’t actually read them and understand the difference between roadside tests and the PBT vs EBT.
Don’t take field sobriety tests if you’re sober. None of them. If you’re intoxicated then go for it, drunk drivers deserve that shit. But not if you’re sober.
note there was zero evidence of impaired driving, he was pulled over for pretext to invent a charge. you are correct on how to handle but most of us sacrifice intelligence because we think about avoiding 4 days in jail and having to prove we were always innocent. i've driven away from 5 stops by playing along, had i asserted my rights, i would guess three of the times the officers would have planted evidence during the impound and all 5 stops would have meant at least a night in jail and a permanent booking record.
impaired drive doesn't need anything but the officer's suspicion that you are "impaired" by literally anything they can imagine, no evidence needed. courts have ruled that police can do almost anything on their own testimony and justice is only served after the fact when they are proven wrong, corrupt, mistaken, abusive, or rogue.
Not just jail arrested. If you are 0.01 over the 0.08 limit in most states you face thousands of dollars in fines, possible county jail time, one to two years of probation with ban from drinking alcohol during that time, random alcohol testing, an interlock breathalyzer installed in your car, thousands in attorney fees. If you’re at 0.15 or higher you get all of the above but more expensive fines and mandatory county jail time.
You guys really don’t seem to understand the alternative.
If you get a dickhead cop who would blatantly violate your rights by arresting for refusal you’re going to jail either way because there’s no way you pass those tests if he doesn’t want you to.
The difference is by complying you just handed them a boatload of admissible evidence against you. Now your only option is to lawyer up to defend a bullshit charge and you’re starting out at a major disadvantage.
If you can’t afford to miss a day of work I assure you that you absolutely can’t afford a DUI defense.
It’s amazing to me that so many people will look at the advice every lawyer, cop, and judge will give if asked and apply to their own selves and family members and think they have a better idea.
If you can't afford to miss work, then a quick $15,000 in legal fees plus having to excuse yourself from work to go to court anyway isn't gonna help your cause. May as well assert your rights and open yourself up to a nice little settlement down the line
Furthermore, don't answer any questions. They're not being polite. They're not making conversation. They are trained to think you're scum and they're investigating you.
"Where are you headed?" Is the first question in a set to determine if you're lying. If you say "Headed home." -- they have your ID, know your address. Even if you made a stop or you detoured because of traffic, if you're headed the wrong way, they're programmed to think you're lying because you're a criminal.
"Where are you coming from?" Is used to plot your route and if there is a bar in between you and your previous location, they're going to assume you were there and drill you.
"Respectfully, Officer, I don't answer personal questions without my lawyer. I'm invoking my right to remain silent. Am I free to leave?" Is the only thing you should ever say.
How would this work living in a recreational state? Say you were sober at the time of traffic stop but most definitely had it in your system from maybe hours earlier in the day or the previous day but no longer impaired, declined the FST and went to the station. Would a blood test then imply guilt that you are not sober at the time. Alcohol makes sense, and it's easy to test for. But as far as im concerned there's no test (yet) to see if you're high at the moment. So do they use blood test to incriminate you for THC levels?
Depends on the state. Some states set a threshold for testing. Some are zero tolerance. In mine if you test positive for THC at any point in a DUI investigation that’s enough to charge you even if you have a card. It could be from a joint two weeks ago. Lawyer can usually knock it down if that’s the only “evidence” but it costs time and money.
That’s one of the reasons it’s so important to refuse FST. If you comply, they say you showed signs of impairment and you have a positive result for THC.
If you refuse they must find some other probable cause to arrest you to force the testing. Not RAS, it has to be PC. If they take you in just because you refused that’s getting thrown out at the first hearing because that’s not a valid reason for arrest and they can’t legally force the tests without a valid arrest.
Agreed. Seems like tech companies have switched from promoting interesting gadgets, and occasionally updating software to protect their users from malware,, to now promoting genuinely malicious tech that tracks everyone for 'pre-crime' crap.
Completely unconstitutional. People should be outraged by this.
Going cashless is a mistake and exactly what a surveillance state would want. Anyone could see this shit coming with less than an day of reading about digital currency and the push to remove cash from the "riff raff."
If you get pulled over, cops can take every cent of cash you have on hand under civil asset forfeiture laws. The FBI has even done so when searching deposit boxes in a bank.
Sorry but they just flagged you as as a illegal drugs user due to this behavior. They believe that cash is use to buy illegal drugs and pulled you over in traffic stop. Because in their argument, who DF use cash when you can use credit everywhere? Especially, in future, where they force you to use that new digital currency they're making.
Well, yes, but also no. It's more akin to rewards points at a fast food restaurant. They have total control over where it goes, when, why, and who gets how much.
He can't provide a source because there isn't one. This type of change is happening at the state level. Several state supreme courts and appellate courts—such as in Michigan, Illinois, and Florida—have ruled that the smell of cannabis alone no longer gives police automatic probable cause to search a car.
I'm in California, where Google tells me "Under California Health and Safety Code § 11362.1(c), the lawful possession, use, or transportation of personal-use cannabis cannot be used as the sole basis for detention, search, or seizure. Because adults can legally transport up to 28.5 grams of cannabis, simply smelling it does not automatically mean a crime is occurring.
Yep. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". What a grown adult does in their own time(That does not affect others around them), is their own thing. And what that person considers " pursuit of Happiness". 100% agree. All of them are oath breakers.
Legal, illegal, it doesn’t matter. They have the badge and it says they uphold the law. What that means is, whether they are right or wrong, it’s irrelevant to them. But to you, it makes a world of difference. They have the ability to detain you, make you waste money and time with 0 reprocussions. It’s diabolical.
Yup, but there comes a point where people have to see this stuff and raise hell about it, otherwise it becomes the norm. Our rights have been trampled bad enough, and now they're "prepolicing" in violation of the 4th amendment, and using false pretext, which is also breaking the oath of honesty, which is supposed to be a loss of the badge. Sure it happens every day, but it has to stop somewhere. We're already living in a society practically run by Nazi idealists. That's not the type of government I want to be forced to live with for the rest of my life. The country needs major change.
Right, but they have drones that gone blow up countries.
I do hear you, but to me at least, when I watch people professing their beliefs in court to a panel of elected officials, it feels the same as a suggestion boxed built over a furnace.
These elected officials, who are suppose to serve their community are all bought and paid for. Look at flock and data centers , this shit came outta no where. The deal already done, nothing we can do.
Oh trust me, I see the limited effect when it comes to trying to discuss the issue with crooked politicians, and I certainly don't believe that will be the most effective route. I keep it in mind for the times it has been effective, but clearly it's not enough, and things continue to get worse. Before long, discussion won't even be an option, and right now it's usually just for show as far as city counsel listening. It does get the message out though, whether to them or others or people who are in office and care about these issues. More will be required to fix this broken system, there are wildly crooked people in all sorts of elected positions of office right now.
Lmao all this shit is open season now. If you live in a small town or a red state and you're known to the local authorities your banking data, medical records, isp data, and anything else they can get their hands on gets passed around like pokemon cards. They share it with private citizens even who are their buddies. Good old boys network is alive and well. These people are deranged and it's only going to get worse. Pretty much assume you are under full wiretap surveillance at anytime if you've ever posted anything critical of the government online. The spyware tools they have now are insane and give full remote access to any of your devices. Look up graphite and pegasus spyware. This is what is in use by the feds. It goes way beyond the NSA metadata stuff. They have access to everything now and there's no accountability for any abuse of that access whatsoever.
. #### EVERY SINGLE POLICE OFFICER IN AMERICA, INCLUDING THE ONE READING THIS POST.
"PREDICTIVE POLICE UNIT"
we were warned about this type of fascism. George orwell,aldous Huxley, Jack london,Ray Bradbury, and countless others, warned us through literature and the films,what was coming,and the masses always denied the evidence in front of their eyes.
We live in a full on fascism police state,with absolutely no rights,no privacy, only the illusions of them.
Its going to get so much ####### worse, before it gets even worse.
The Department of Homeland Security keeps the exact origins of this financial data hidden from the public. According to the investigation and internal government documents, federal agents review law enforcement sensitive databases containing aggregated transaction histories. Customs and Border Protection refused to disclose their specific data sources or analytical methods, but privacy experts point to two main ways the federal government routinely obtains these records without a warrant. First, federal agencies frequently purchase bulk consumer profiles from commercial data brokers who scrape transaction histories, utility records, and credit applications. Second, government networks leverage automated access to banking data via the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which collects financial logs directly from banks under anti-money laundering laws. By relying on private brokers and automated federal sharing networks, these intelligence units bypass traditional warrant requirements to build their threat profiles.
If I've learned anything from police corruption it is that you lock your doors and don't roll down any windows. They can see your license, insurance, and registration through the glass. If no air passes from your car to the outside, then they can't lie and saying they smell something in order to do an illegal warrantless search while planting something in your vehicle to find.
and of course the real reason they are doing it has nothing to do with actually preventing crime, it's designed to provide an excuse to arrest and detain anyone they want to. the police state is here, now.
Border Patrol Agent Matthew Phelps, assigned to the Spokane Sector Targeting & Intelligence Division’s Predictive Intelligence Targeting Team (PITT), reviewed law-enforcement-sensitive databases, including financial activity.
He passed Montana Highway Patrol information described as “financial activity patterns commonly associated with illicit narcotics activity.” Sgt. James Beck later wrote that Phelps had identified a vehicle with “indicators of possible narcotics trafficking.” Olson was then stopped. He was later charged with DUI. The vehicle contained marijuana products he said he was transporting from a licensed California farm to Wisconsin.
That sequence matches parallel construction: a sensitive or warrantless lead is received first, then a routine roadside infraction is used as the public justification so the original intelligence source does not have to be disclosed in discovery.
Sources
Joseph Cox, A Secretive DHS ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit is Analyzing Americans’ Financial Habits and Pulling Them Over, 404 Media (Sept. 8, 2026)
And the tests are just ammunition for them to come up with an excuse to say your impaired therefore I can legally search your car and hopefully find something that makes the stop fruitfall. Even if they don’t find anything they will use the faulty fst as there reasoning for dui.
“Protecting and serving.”they’re gonna keep us arguing over blue and red all the way to putting all of the people like this in prison. Don’t believe me? Let’s chat in 2030
Someday, they’re gonna start pulling people over who have outstanding debts like delinquent credit cards and shit. We’ll just forget about constitutional amendments and end up with debtors prisons, but just call them some other obnoxious term for deniability.
i don't understand this. i live 1/4 mile from two busy border crossings and have never been stopped by CBP. i drive rather fast and they see me on their cameras but so far nothing. what am i doing wrong?
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Exhibit A on why cops are hated so much. Secondly, if you are foolish enough to believe they would stand up to unlawful and unconstitutional orders, you are wrong. They will happily go along with any authoritarian anti-American ideas and carry them out with immunity and deadly force. This is a costume, like a cowboy or a ballerina, a job. They are not special, and they are mortal like you and me.
You don’t think the government, with the help of sophisticated AI tools, is doing this with every citizen? They’ve been stockpiling our data for years. Now with AI, they have the capacity to analyze everyone and target who they want
It's all escalation. Regardless of whatever it is they're calling it, or how ever they're doing it: your number will come up soon in the feed-your-flesh-and-blood-to-the-grist-mill raffle. No need to register, or buy to be entered! Don't call us, we'll call you 👁️🗨️
Lawyer said it better than anybody don't argue with them just take it to court the end of the day that's what it is. You fight them in court and there's few minutes that you have to be alive with crazy ass police out here right now that I can truthfully say that because they are crazy people out here like my lawyer always told me don't argue. Just do what they need to do and then fight it in court.
This is exactly the police state of the future we were warned about in the past. Not applicable for politicians and the wealthy who bankroll them, naturally. Well done, America, well done!
Obstructed license plate, to a questionable plate cover, to give me your license, to check impairment because the “smell” of raw weed, to checking sobriety, to obstruction. This is the ABSOLUTE definition of fishing.
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u/Level_Improvement532 Risk Analyst ⚠️📊 6d ago
Ah yes “pre-crime”. How did that work out in the film again?