Police Invested Millions in Shadowy Phone-Tracking Software Won't Say How Used

Summary

Editor’s Note: This story is the third installment in a series produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network. Goliad County police kicked off one human smuggling investigation not with a suspect’s name, but with a discarded receipt and cell phone surveillance software. In June 2021, Chief Deputy Tim Futch chased a speeding F-150 headed toward Houston on U.S. Highway 59; he believed the vehicle was carrying undocumented immigrants, concealed in the truck bed beneath plywood, according to a police report. Trying to evade the cops, the driver pulled into a ditch, and around 10 people bailed out and took off sprinting. In the aftermath, Roy Boyd, the sheriff in this county of 7,000 situated halfway between Laredo and Houston, surveyed the scene. The driver proved hard to identify via the pickup’s plate. But, on the ground, he spotted a fresh receipt from a liquor store in Pasadena, a Houston suburb, he recalled in a June 2024 interview with the Texas Observer. The stub of paper was enough, Boyd said, to justify deploying an expensive—and controversial—artificial intelligence-powered surveillance tool called Tangles. A specially-trained analyst used the receipt, Boyd said, to conduct warrantless surveillance on the suspected driver—and on other smart phone users—by utilizing a Tangles add-on feature called Webloc, which tracks mobile devices’ movements in a client-selected virtual area through a capability called “geofencing.” After the bailout incident, Boyd acquired a license for the tool with about $300,000 in state border security grants—though the sheriff admits that he’s not a tech guy: In 2024, he still used a hand-me-down iPhone 10, which hit the market in 2017. A tall, slim, seventh-generation Texan, Boyd fits the archetype of a small-town Southern sheriff with his firm handshake and light drawl. He usually wears his sand-colored cowboy hat, leather belt, and a matching holster manufactured by prisoners in a neighboring county. The...