Tag: pre crime

A Secretive DHS ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit is Analyzing Americans’ Financial Habits and Pulling Them Over

Border Patrol is running secretive predictive policing units that analyze Americans’ financial activity and other data, then feed that intelligence to local police who pull people over who are not suspected of any specific crime, but which the government thinks may be worth searching, 404 Media has found.

The units, the name of which 404 Media is revealing here for the first time, are called Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams (PITT). In one case, a PITT analyzed the financial activity of a man who was driving across Montana, and local authorities stopped him under the pretense of an obstructed license plate and charged him with a DUI.

404 Media identified one PITT in the Spokane Sector, Washington, which polices the U.S. border with Canada, and another in the Laredo Sector, Texas, which polices the border with Mexico. The findings add to an Associated Press investigation from last year which found Border Patrol was using automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) as part of the same wide-spanning predictive policing program.

“The bottom line is genuine probable cause cannot be synthetically generated,” Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center For Democracy & Technology, told 404 Media in an email. Here Border Patrol seems to be “using parallel construction to cloak the reason behind its car stops in secrecy. If we can’t meaningfully review and evaluate these systems, we can’t trust them,” he added.

Predictive policing is a highly controversial practice that police departments and federal agencies are increasingly turning to. The practice is designed to find people who may have committed crimes, but at the moment, no evidence of them doing so exists. Broadly, law enforcement may analyze data — such as a person’s movements, where they are at a certain time, or the roads they drive — then create or find another pretense to pull them over.

At around 9:30pm one night in May, Kyle William Olson was driving his black Chevy SUV on Interstate 90, with his dog Ducky in the backseat, according to police reports and an interview Olson gave to 404 Media. In Olson’s vehicle were marijuana edibles, marijuana cuttings, and butane hash oil. He works on a licensed cannabis farm in California, where he had picked up the weed, and was transporting it home to Wisconsin, he told 404 Media.

Olson drove past Sergeant James Beck of the Montana Highway Patrol who was sitting in his police car along with a colleague. When Olson passed, Beck noticed the vehicle’s license plate was obstructed by what he described as a tinted cover and the luggage holder, according to a police report. Beck pulled out, caught up to Olson, and pulled him over.

“Nothing major,” Beck said once he approached the passenger side window and exchanged pleasantries with Olson, according to bodycam footage. Beck said Olson’s license plate was “a little bit obstructed.”

“Just so you know, that’s our reason for stopping you,” Beck said. In the end, the officers demanded Olson step out of the vehicle, they tested his blood and charged him with a DUI. Authorities later charged Olson with possession with intent to distribute because of the marijuana in his vehicle, Olson told 404 Media.

But that wasn’t the real reason for stopping Olson.

During discovery in his case, Olson was provided a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document that explained how Border Patrol instigated his traffic stop. Written by Border Patrol Agent Matthew Phelps, the document said Phelps was assigned to the “Spokane Sector Border Patrol Targeting & Intelligence Division (TID) — Predictive Intelligence Targeting Team (PITT).” Olson shared the document with 404 Media.

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Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists

Job postings and interviews with senior security officials at Anthropic show that the frontier AI lab is building out an extensive monitoring system to keep tabs on activists who oppose the rapid development of artificial intelligence.

In addition to monitoring activists in the vicinity of Anthropic executives and keeping tabs on protests near physical Anthropic assets, the firm is also implementing a “pre-crime” approach, attempting to predict incidents before they happen. In some cases, that also means reporting suspects to police before a crime occurs. Anthropic did not respond to the Prospect’s request for comment.

Anthropic’s plans to surveil dissent are at odds with the firm’s efforts to cast itself as the responsible alternative to OpenAI. At the beginning of the year, the Department of Defense and Anthropic engaged in a high-profile dustup over Anthropic’s refusal to allow the military to use its tools for mass domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons. That tension seems to have eased as Anthropic hires for “national security sales” positions, seeking to restart military contracts. The increase in threat monitoring of domestic opponents fits with a renewed focus on national security.

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Welcome To Black Mirror: Pre-Crime AI, Shock Gloves, and Robot Dogs

We live in a world where much of our popular media is, to some extent, an extension of a pervasive propaganda apparatus rife with subliminal messages and predictive programming, inundating the populace with subconscious sensory overload effective for sedating the citizenry all too keen to live vicariously through the stories of fictional heroes fighting tyranny and oppression while doing nothing to emulate those actions in the real world.

All the while, the real world is beginning to resemble more and more of a fictional dystopia; Orwell’s 1984, Hunger Games, Black Mirror, take your pick.

It’s no secret that the second Trump administration is working to build what can only be described as a fascist police state upon the foundations of decades of Constitutional erosion, and encroachment of police militarization on everyday life built up by previous administrations both Republican and Democrat alike.

And as technology continues to advance, accelerating in tandem with the implementation of technocracy, the tools of this tyranny only become more sinister.

Previously, The Free Thought Project has reported extensively on the numerous abuses and Gestapo tactics of agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and it’s more militant subordinates such as ICE running rampant through America’s streets.

Our continuing series on ICE abuses has already thoroughly documented the unprecedented wave of violence committed by ICE officers throughout the country, ranging from mass detentions of American citizens without due process, to rampant physical abuse, inhumane treatment within detention centers, and on occasion summary executions of dissenters in the streets.

Despite the immense pushback, the state sanctioned terrorist organization and the despotic regime behind it is only doubling down on its heavy handed tactics of repression.

As we have reported previously, the efforts taken by the Trump administration to erect an all encompassing mass surveillance panopticon are expanding by leaps and bounds. This includes but is not limited to: the integration of artificial intelligence pre-crime algorithms used to flag citizens as potential threats before they commit any wrongdoing; autonomous police surveillance drones; facial recognition technology which has a history of inaccurate identifications; the implementation of flock cameras nationwide with its own growing epidemic of misidentification and false arrest; and a slew of domestic spying operations targeting political dissidents.

All of this is compounded with the rising implementation of even more secretive Axon cameras, while the administration works to build the standing army for a domestic occupation by normalizing the presence of US troops on American streets.

Even more recently, The Free Thought Project has reported that the latest tool of forced compliance in the arsenal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement comes in the form of electric shock gloves, using electrocution as yet another form of violence to keep the unruly citizenry in line.

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The Trump Administration Is Building A Pre Crime Panopticon Unlike Any Authoritarian Regime Before It

As of late American citizens have been more concerned with surveillance and privacy than ever before. Rightfully so, as we see an explosion of surveillance equipment being installed across the country.

For decades, liberty activists have diligently watched and warned of the slowly encroaching mission creep of domestic mass surveillance seeping its way into everyday American life. Opposition to such violations of fundamental liberty have been one of the few causes to transcend the false left / right paradigm, with instances such as leftists opposed to the surveillance of civil rights groups during the days of COINTELPRO and conservative opposition to the surveillance of Second Amendment activists.

Even today, amid rising concerns of the mass implementation of Flock cameras across the nation, these concerns are actively creating a bridge of solidarity among the polarized political chasm.

While surveillance of the American citizenry has existed in some way for more than a century, the persistent punitive pervasiveness of such violations of privacy have been perpetually on the rise since the passage of the Patriot Act following the false flag attack of September 11th, 2001.

Interestingly enough, the provisions of the Patriot Act with all of its violations of constitutional protections had already been cooked up well before the September 11th attacks but was projected not to pass a congressional vote until such attacks took place. Indeed, the Patriot Act simply served as an expansion of surveillance authority circumventing the Constitution implemented in the 1996 Antiterrorism Act, itself only justified following the Oklahoma City false flag attack just a year prior. Simply a coincidence, surely. 

The conversation surrounding concerns about domestic mass surveillance reached mainstream dialog following the explosive revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013, when leaked documents provided to journalist Glenn Greenwald revealed a sprawling network of illegal spying against American citizens through the National Security Agency’s PRISM program.

Despite Snowden’s revelations and warnings, and subsequent surveillance scandals in the years since, next to nothing has been done to curtail this campaign of illegal mass spying against the American people. In fact, it has only continued to worsen.

This brings us to today. Oftentimes in discussion of illegal mass surveillance, the cynical statist would posit a straw man argument to the likes of “What does it matter? If you’ve done nothing wrong you should have nothing to hide.” As if an all encompassing surveillance state simply exists in a vacuum. As if history has not demonstrated again and again the kind of atrocities enabled by repressive regimes who track, trace, and database their citizenry.

Mass surveillance does not simply exist to “keep an eye on people”, it serves as a tool of the state to suppress dissent, identify and silence dissidents, and centralize control over the populace.

Here at The Free Thought Project, we have warned for years about the dangers of integrating artificial intelligence with law enforcement. 

Now, it appears the Trump administration is diving head first into a Minority Report style pre crime surveillance system powered by AI to throw a digital dragnet over the entirety of the American people.

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FBI’s New Political Pre-Crime Center

President Trump’s budget request to Congress contains the largest counterterrorism spending increase in years — and buried inside it is a new FBI-led center dedicated to “proactively” hunting Americans the government classifies as so-called domestic terrorists.

The new center and funding boost represent the implementation of Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), the sweeping federal order I’ve been covering since it was signed last September.

Though public opposition to ICE succeeded at forcing the administration to back down in Minnesota — even firing both Kristi Noem and Gregory Bovino — the FBI is doubling down its domestic terrorism obsession.

Now, Trump’s budget request reveals, the FBI runs a dedicated “NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center”; with personnel from 10 federal agencies, it is busy “proactively” identifying domestic terrorists motivated by any of the following beliefs:

  • “anti-Americanism,”
  • “anti-capitalism,”
  • “anti-Christianity,”
  • “support for the overthrow of the U.S. Government,”
  • “extremism on migration,”
  • extremism on “race,”
  • extremism on “gender,”
  • “Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,”
  • Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on “religion,” and
  • Hostility towards those who hold traditional views on “morality.”

In other words, if your political views are practically anything other than MAGA, you’re on notice, courtesy of the FBI.

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Precrime: Months Before Massacre, OpenAI Worried About Canada’s Trans Mass Killer

Months before a Canadian man in a dress went on a Feb 10 rampage, killing his mother and half-brother at home before slaughtering five students and an education assistant at a secondary school where he was formerly a student, employees at OpenAI were deeply troubled by his interactions with the firm’s ChatGPT AI chatbot.   

As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, Jesse Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT activity was flagged by the company’s automated review system. When employees took a look at what he’d been up to over a several-day period in June 2025, they were alarmed. About a dozen of them debated what they should do.

Some were convinced Van Rootselaar’s descriptions of gun-violence scenarios signaled a substantial risk of real-world bloodshed, and implored their supervisors to notify police, according to the Journal’s unnamed sources. They opted against doing so, and a spokeswoman now says they’d concluded Van Rootselaar’s posts didn’t cross the threshold of posing a credible and imminent risk of serious harm. Instead, the company decided only to ban his account. 

About seven months after his disturbing series of interactions with ChatGPT, police say he killed 8 people and injured 25 more before killing himself in the school he’d attended earlier. Van Rootselaar’s social media and YouTube accounts contained transgender symbolism as well as the online name “JessJessUwU” (a meme phrase that people may recognize from the bullet casings tied to the gay suspect charged in the assassination of Charlie Kirk). 

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Palantir’s ELITE: Not All Maps Are Meant To Guide Us

Many memorable journeys start with a map. Maps have been around for ages, guiding humanity on its way in grand style. Maps have helped sailors cross oceans, caravans traverse deserts, and armies march into the pages of history. Maps have been staple tools of exploration, survival, and sovereignty. And today? Today, they’re on our devices, and we use them to find literally everything, including the nearest taco truck, coffee shop, and gas station. Yet, today’s maps don’t just show us where we are and where we are going. Increasingly, they also tell someone else the gist of who we are. What does that mean exactly? It means not all maps are made for us. Some maps are made about us. Case in point—the objective of Palantir’s ELITE demands our immediate attention. ELITE is a digital map used by ICE to identify neighborhoods, households, and individuals for targeted enforcement, drawing on data that was never meant to become ammunition.

No, Palantir’s ELITE is not strictly limited to use by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but its primary and reported use is specifically for immigration enforcement. ELITE, which stands for Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement, is a software tool/app developed by Palantir for ICE to find, classify, and prioritize presumably illegal immigrants for deportation. It was rolled out in late 2025, with reports of use starting in September 2025. Essentially, ELITE is a map that pulls data from across federal systems—including agencies like Medicaid and Health Department information—and uses it to compile dossiers on people, complete with address confidence scores and patterns of residence density. It tells ICE agents where individuals live and how likely they are to be there so that ICE can prioritize “target-rich environments” for raids.

In other words, data that was once siloed for entirely different purposes—health records, public assistance, demographic lists—is now being fused into a single dashboard designed to help federal agents decide where to show up and who to detain. While no one wants criminal illegal aliens freely roaming the streets of our nation, the result of the operation is not “analytics”—it is anticipatory policing dressed as operational efficiency. One might think the scenario sounds like something only seen in dystopian fiction, and others agree. Advocates for freedom have pointed out that ELITE’s model resembles (in unsettling ways) systems designed to anticipate behavior rather than respond to actual wrongdoing. Beyond that, what else could it be used for, and when will that next step begin?

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CIA and Mossad-linked Surveillance System Quietly Being Installed Throughout the US

Launched in 2016 in response to a Tel Aviv shooting and the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, Gabriel offers a suite of surveillance products for “security and safety” incidents at “so-called soft targets and communal spaces, including schools, community centers, synagogues and churches.” The company makes the lofty promise that its products “stop mass shootings.” According to a 2018 report on Gabriel published in the Jerusalem Post, there were an estimated 475,000 such “soft targets” across the U.S., meaning that “the potential market for Gabriel is huge.”

Gabriel, since its founding, has been backed by “an impressive group of leaders,” mainly “former leaders of Mossad, Shin Bet [Israel’s domestic intelligence agency], FBI and CIA.” In recent years, even more former leaders of Israeli and American intelligence agencies have found their way onto Gabriel’s advisory board and have promoted the company’s products.

While the adoption of its surveillance technology was slower than expected in the United States, that dramatically changed last year, when an “anonymous philanthropist” gave the company $1 million to begin installing its products throughout schools, houses of worship and community centers throughout the country. That same “philanthropist” has promised to recruit others to match his donation, with the ultimate goal of installing Gabriel’s system in “every single synagogue, school and campus community in the country.”

With this CIA, FBI and Mossad-backed system now being installed throughout the United States for “free,” it is worth taking a critical look at Gabriel and its products, particularly the company’s future vision for its surveillance system. Perhaps unsurprisingly, much of the company’s future vision coincides with the vision of the intelligence agencies backing it – pre-crime, robotic policing and biometric surveillance.

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New York Is Quietly Rolling Out Precrime Surveillance Tech

Picture this: it’s rush hour in New York City. A guy in a Mets cap mutters to himself on the F train platform, pacing in tight circles. Nearby, a woman checks her phone five times in ten seconds. Overhead, cameras are watching. Behind the cameras? A machine. And behind that machine? An army of bureaucrats who’ve convinced themselves that bad vibes are now a crime category.

Welcome to the MTA’s shiny new plan for keeping you safe: an AI surveillance system designed to detect “irrational or concerning conduct” before anything happens. Not after a crime. Not even during. Before. The sort of thing that, in less tech-horny times, might’ve been called “having a bad day.”

MTA Chief Security Officer Michael Kemper, the man standing between us and a future where talking to yourself means a visit from the NYPD, is calling it “predictive prevention.”

“AI is the future,” Kemper assured the MTA’s safety committee.

So far, the MTA insists this isn’t about watching you, per se. It’s watching your behavior. Aaron Donovan, MTA spokesperson and professional splitter of hairs, clarified: “The technology being explored by the MTA is designed to identify behaviors, not people.”

And don’t worry about facial recognition, they say. That’s off the table. For now. Just ignore the dozens of vendors currently salivating over multimillion-dollar public contracts to install “emotion detection” software that’s about as accurate as your aunt’s horoscope app.

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‘Cyborg 1.0’: World’s First Robocop Debuts With Facial Recognition And 360° Camera Vision

Thailand has debuted the world’s first ‘Robocop’ designed to detect and prevent crime with advanced AI.

Equipped with 360-degree cameras for eyes, the cutting-edge cyborg maintains constant surveillance with real-time monitoring. The robocop, named Police Colonel Nakhonpathom Plod Phai, meaning “Nakhonpathom is safe,” was unveiled during the Songkran festival in Nakhon Pathom province on Wednesday. The debut was announced via a Facebook post by the Royal Thai Police, according to a report by The Sun.

The robocop is also able to detect weapons, such as knives and wooden batons. In neighboring China, humanoid robots have started supporting police patrols.

Interesting Engineering reports:

In Shenzhen, PM01 model robots developed by EngineAI have been deployed alongside officers, wearing high-visibility police vests. These robots have been seen engaging with pedestrians—waving, shaking hands, and responding to voice commands—according to local media reports. A recent video shows a PM01 robot waving to a crowd, sparking curiosity about its purpose in law enforcement.

First launched in December 2024, the PM01 features agile mobility, an interactive touchscreen, and an open-source platform. This design allows developers worldwide to contribute to its evolution by adding new features and capabilities through secondary development.

Last year, Logon Technology, a Chinese robotics company, unveiled the RT-G autonomous spherical robot, described as a “technological breakthrough,” with an army of these spherical robocops spotted rolling through cities across China, The Sun said. The robocop’s debut underscores the growing importance of robot technology. During Tesla’s Q1 2025 All-Hands meeting, CEO Elon Musk revealed the the company is preparing aiming to begin the production of its own humanoid, Optimus, this year.

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