#texas
#texasdps
#asshat
#typicaltexas

This is so typical of the police force all around that backward ass state.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/15/sport/football-ncaa-south-carolina-trooper-altercation

Fulfilling a longtime objective proposed during John Whitmire's mayoral campaign, the state plans to deploy Department of Public Safety troopers to Houston in an effort to curb violent crime. 

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/law-enforcement/2025/10/01/532340/we-are-coming-for-you-abbott-announces-harris-county-task-force-targeting-repeat-violent-offenders/

#HarrisCounty #LawEnforcement #Local #News #DepartmentOfPublicSafety #TaskForce #TexasDPS #ViolentOffenders

Two people were killed Sunday afternoon when a small plane crashed near an airport north of Houston, according to local authorities.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/local/2025/09/28/532086/2-killed-in-fiery-plane-crash-north-of-houston/

#Airports #HarrisCounty #LawEnforcement #Local #News #Transportation #Cessna #HooksAirport #KleinFireDepartment #PlaneCrash #TexasDPS #Tomball

From the @TexasTribune, the Department of Public Safety has shifted from Biden-era border enforcement to helping expel people from the country, a job once exclusively done by federal authorities.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/immigration/2025/09/12/530717/operation-lone-star-2-0-dps-arresting-undocumented-immigrants-across-texas-to-aid-trumps-mass-deportation/

#Border #HarrisCounty #Houston #Immigration #Local #News #Politics #Texas #FIELHouston #OperationLoneStar #TexasDepartmentOfPublicSafety #TexasDPS #TrumpImmigrationPolicy

Texas DPS said it continues to investigate a threat against state lawmakers who attended a "No Kings" protest in Austin on Saturday, but noted that a man arrested in connection to the threat had not been charged with any related crimes.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/civil-rights/protests/2025/06/17/524180/man-arrested-in-threat-against-lawmakers-before-no-kings-protest-not-facing-related-charges-texas-dps-says/

#News #Politics #Protests #Texas #DepartmentOfPublicSafety #NoKings #NoKingsProtests #TexasDPS #TexasLawmakers #TexasStateCapitol

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says Colony Ridge, a residential community near Houston that’s been accused of being a safe haven for people in the country without legal status, was the focus of a federal immigration enforcement operation on Monday morning.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/immigration/2025/02/24/514644/texas-gov-greg-abbott-says-colony-ridge-community-target-of-immigration-enforcement/

#Immigration #LawEnforcement #Local #News #Politics #Texas #ColonyRidge #ColonyRidgeDevelopment #FIELHouston #GovGregAbbott #ImmigrationEnforcement #TexasDPS

Along with DeSantis's Florida, privacy advocates and observers frequently acknowledge GOP-controlled Texas as being on the cutting edge of the installation and operation of an authoritarian, surveillance-based police state in our increasingly Cyberpunk-esque society. This ongoing transformation and installment of surveillance infrastructure has the full-throated support of Governor Gregg Abbot who has argued that it's necessary both to police the border, and stop domestic terrorism (read: protest) by a largely imagined "radical left" - which more or less means anyone who opposes his fascist government and its policies. Now, the Texas Department of Public Safety is planning to spend millions of dollars on contracts with a company offering a surveillance tool that uses commercially-available information on the internet to track the location of mobile devices without the oversight of judges or courts; and if they get away with this, you can guarantee Texas DPS won't be the last government entity to use this data to install a mass surveillance state targeting anyone they don't like.

https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-dps-surveillance-tangle-cobwebs/

Texas State Police Gear Up for Massive Expansion of Surveillance Tech

"Tangles is an artificial intelligence-powered web platform that scrapes information from the open, deep, and dark web. Tangles’ premier add-on feature, WebLoc, is controversial among digital privacy advocates. Any client who purchases access to WebLoc can track different mobile devices’ movements in a specific, virtual area selected by the user, through a capability called “geofencing.” Users of software like Tangles can do this without a search warrant or subpoena. (In a high-profile ruling, the Fifth Circuit recently held that police cannot compel companies like Google to hand over data obtained through geofencing.) Device-tracking services rely on location pings and other personal data pulled from smartphones, usually via in-app advertisers. Surveillance tech companies then buy this information from data brokers and sell access to it as part of their products.

WebLoc can even be used to access a device’s mobile ad ID, a string of numbers and letters that acts as a unique identifier for mobile devices in the ad marketing ecosystem, according to a US Office of Naval Intelligence procurement notice."

While some of this may seem like dry technical information, it's important to realize this story sits on a nightmare nexus of important issues in our society; not the least of which is the targeted surveillance of activists and government critics, but also the alliance of private sector companies, exploiting online data collected for marketing purposes, with motivated state actors looking to bypass legal checks and balances on their powers. This is the scenario privacy advocates opposed to online data collection have been talking about for decades now, made manifest under the watchful eye of a fascist government that has already displayed a desire to engage in political repression; namely the State of Texas under Greg Abbott.

As the story goes on to note, the company that Texas DPS is hiring to help them conduct this surveillance (PenLink) using Tangles, is doing so because it acquired another company that developed the technology, an outfit known as "Cobwebs Technologies." That company was founded in Israel, by three former members of Israeli spec-ops, presumably working in military intelligence. If you guessed that Cobwebs Technologies already has a dark track record, you win a gold star; in 2021 Meta accused the company of being a surveillance-for-hire operation, and banned it (and 200 accounts associated with the company) after an investigation revealed it was being used to target activists and government officials in Hong Kong, and Mexico, at a minimum. Naturally, Texas DPS claims that the purpose of contracting to use this software isn't about repressing opposition to the Abbot government, instead it's about preventing mass shootings, but there is no available evidence of Tangles being used for that purpose, and plenty of evidence that it's a popular tool among states and agencies trying to silence dissent.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this story however isn't that Texas is spending millions to track migrants and potential dissidents using geofencing, so much as the reality that numerous government agencies in America are already using this software themselves.

"Cobwebs Technologies, now part of PenLink, has scored contracts through its Delaware-based subsidiary Cobwebs America Inc. with various federal agencies, including ICE, the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Indian Education, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. ICE holds Cobwebs America’s highest-dollar federal contract so far, according to usa.spending.gov."

In the modern surveillance state, the Eye of Sauron never sleeps.

#Facism #Surveillance #TexasDPS #Abbott #MigrantRights #Protest #Privacy #PoliceState

And this morning the #TexasDPS scheduling system is completely broken. Looks like they forgot to pay their #google recaptcha bill.

#fail