DHS Program Analyzes Americans' Finances to Flag Drivers for Traffic Stops: Report 9SEP26 & ( VIDEO ) Unit is Analyzing Americans’ Financial Habits and Pulling Them Over

 

This is another example of what the neo-nazi fascist pigs of the gop / greed over people-republican party and their "religious" right wing extremist will continue and expand if we do not win control of the US Congress in the 2026 midterms. Sadly too many police don't hesitate to profile people to stop them without just cause. I have been stopped for DWH ( Driving While Hippie ) and then accused of smelling of pot and so probably having pot in my vehicle and so my vehicle was going to have to be searched. Following the advise of a friend who is a retired state policeman I refuse to grant permission for my vehicle to be searched and tell the officer(s) to bring the dogs and that results in nothing being found and no arrest or ticket. The danger now is with the lack of quality officers in DHS / Dept of Homeland Security, the neo-nazi fascist mentality of the current DHS Sec fotze trunt markiewayne mullin and the level of neo-nazi fascist authoritarian corruption of the drumpf/trump-vance administration, aggressive "policing" actions by the ice hsi & cbp gestapo agents will increase, endangering the human rights, civil liberties and even lives of every person stopped by these federal agents. The video is from 404 Media, the article from Military.com.....

 Unit is Analyzing Americans’ Financial Habits and Pulling Them Over

JOSEPH COX  SEP 8, 2026 at 9:10 AM

Here is a clip of a Wisconsin man 404 Media spoke to being pulled over. In it, the cop says he’s being pulled over because his license plate was “a little bit obstructed.” That wasn’t the real reason. Court docs show it’s because of predictive policing units.

The real reason is mentioned in this document: a secretive Border Patrol Predictive Intelligence Targeting Team was analyzing Americans' financial activity and other details and came across the driver. It then gave his name to the local police who pulled him over www.404media.co/a-secretive-...

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DHS Program Analyzes Americans' Finances to Flag Drivers for Traffic Stops: Report

A new report claims one Border Patrol team is in the Spokane Sector in Washington, and another in the Laredo Sector in Texas.

DHS

Published Sep 9, 2026, 12:28 PM EDT

By Adam Gramegna

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is allegedly analyzing Americans' financial data to conduct traffic stops of drivers, some of whom were never flagged of committing any crimes.

DHS is allegedly conducting operations through a U.S. Border Patrol program that feeds intelligence to local police who then pull drivers over, according to an investigation by 404 Media, a news technology outlet.

The units are reportedly called Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams, or PITT, revealing the program's name for the first time. They are allegedly run by Border Patrol, part of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) within the DHS framework, according to the report.

Military.com reached out to DHS and CBP with questions about the program, including what financial data the teams review, whether the agency seeks a warrant before accessing Americans' financial records, whether a person must be suspected of a specific crime before a stop, and whether the financial data of service members, veterans or their families can be swept into the analyses.

“The U.S. Border Patrol utilizes intelligence-informed analysis to enhance national security, optimize resource allocation, and identify threats to public safety," a CBP spokesperson told Military.com. "A key component of this effort is the Predictive Intelligence Targeting Team (PITT) within the Border Patrol, which monitors indicators of potential smuggling and other criminal activity. Utilization of predictive intelligence is not unique to the Border Patrol; it’s used by other law enforcement organizations, too.

The spokesperson added that PITT "operates in strict accordance with all applicable laws, privacy protections, and oversight mandates."

It also addressed reports such as those from 404, saying that PITT’s intelligence-led functions are focused on securing the border and identifying high-risk threats.

"For operational security, we do not disclose specific analytical methods, targeting criteria, or investigative techniques," they added. "Public release of law enforcement sensitive information could compromise ongoing operations, jeopardize investigations, and create significant safety risks for our agents and the public.”

Two Sectors Investigated

404 identified one team in the Spokane Sector in Washington, which patrols the border with Canada, and another in the Laredo Sector in Texas, along the border with Mexico.

The teams review financial records and other data, and then pass leads to local law enforcement.

The program's stated purpose is to identify people who may have already committed crimes, according to 404 Media. But the outlet reported finding no instances of that happening.

Instead, it reported that the program appears to generate pretexts for police to stop and search people, raising questions about whether the stops meet the legal standard of probable cause.

One Stop Exposed the Program

The program reportedly surfaced through the case of Kyle Olson, who was driving across Montana when he was pulled over.

A Border Patrol targeting analyst named Matthew Phelps had flagged what a Homeland Security document described as "financial activity patterns commonly associated with illicit narcotics activity" and relayed it to the Montana Highway Patrol, the outlet reported.

Troopers stopped Olson, citing that his license plate was obstructed. He was charged with driving under the influence and later with possession with intent to distribute after marijuana was found in his vehicle.

The reason for the stop emerged during the discovery phase of his case, when Olson received a DHS document explaining that Border Patrol instigated it. He shared that document with 404 Media, which is how the program and subsequent reporting came to light.

What the Government Has Said

A CBP spokesperson told 404 Media that "U.S. Border Patrol uses intelligence-informed analysis and planning to support national security operations, allocate resources, and help identify potential threats and bad actors to public safety."

The agency declined to tell the outlet what financial activity it monitors or whether it had obtained a warrant before analyzing Olson's records.

Civil liberties advocates have raised alarms.

Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told 404 Media that "genuine probable cause cannot be synthetically generated," adding that Border Patrol appeared to be using "parallel construction" to conceal the real reason for its stops.

Military.com reported last month that DHS had collected the DNA of some 3.3 million people, including U.S. citizens, for an FBI database. Critics say this program could enable broad genetic policing.

The findings build on a broader pattern of federal data collection that has drawn scrutiny.

A 2025 Associated Press investigation found Border Patrol using automatic license plate readers as part of the same predictive-policing effort.

UPDATED 11:50 a.m. ET, 9/10/26: This story was updated with remarks from CBP.

Trump Threatens Suit Over Report He Doesn’t Like, Aiming to Intimidate a Critic 21AUG26

 

Neera Tanden, the president and chief executive of the Center for American Progress, said that the center would “neither cower nor bend in the face” of legal action.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

NOT MY pres drumpf/trump is a fat diaper wearing pants shitting stinking neo-nazi fascist pig drippings. He is a corrupt repulsive selfish greedy authoritarian narcissistic psychotic sociopathic child raping sexual predator. He is a cowardly draft dodging genocidal war criminal also guilty of crimes against humanity. He is a misogynist bigot racist compulsive liar fear monger. Don't ever be cowed by him or his ass licking cabal minions so that you are afraid to remind America and  the world just what he really is, no class trash. As I have said before I do not wish any harm on him but I know we and the rest of the world will be better off when he is gone. This from the New York Times.....

Trump Threatens Suit Over Report He Doesn’t Like, Aiming to Intimidate a Critic

It was the latest example of President Trump’s bid to use the legal system against those who voice unflattering facts and opinions generally protected by the First Amendment.

By Alan Feuer

Aug. 21, 2026Updated 10:51 a.m. ET

President Trump has opened a new front in his campaign to intimidate political foes, threatening a prominent liberal think tank with a $5 billion defamation lawsuit over a report concluding that his deployment of the National Guard to cities across the country has had little effect on reducing violent crime.

The threats against the think tank, the Center for American Progress, were Mr. Trump’s latest effort to use the legal system to punish critics for voicing unflattering facts and opinions generally protected by the First Amendment. And while it is unclear how far any suit the president might ultimately file will get in court, it could force the organization to spend money fighting it off and make it even more of a target of his allies and supporters.

On Monday, one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, Alejandro Brito, wrote a letter to the center warning that he would file the suit if the group did not fully retract the report, which was published on its website on July 13. The letter, viewed by The New York Times, was addressed to the group’s president and chief executive, Neera Tanden, a longtime Democratic official who served as a senior adviser to President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and to several of its board members.

Mr. Brito claimed that the report about the National Guard was full of malicious and false statements. He gave Ms. Tanden and members of her board until 5 p.m. on Friday to retract it and apologize to Mr. Trump.

Ms. Tanden pushed back, saying in a statement that the center would “neither cower nor bend in the face” of legal action. She also defended the report, asserting that while its findings might have been “inconvenient to the Trump administration,” they were “grounded in rigorous, evidence-based research and analysis.”

“This threatened lawsuit’s attack on facts and evidence is baseless,” she added. “A fundamental protection of the First Amendment is to allow for the publication of facts and analysis that is contrary to the arguments and claims of any administration. A lawsuit is a transparent attempt to silence us.”

Mr. Trump has often lashed out at scholars and commentators for reproaching or critiquing him in the news media. And since winning re-election, he has filed a flurry of lawsuits against news organizations like the BBC and The Times, claiming they defamed him. He has even filed suit against the Des Moines Register, arguing that a poll the paper published before the 2024 election indicating that he would lose the vote in Iowa amounted to consumer fraud and election interference.

(The Times has filed its own suits against the administration, including two seeking increased access for its reporters at the Pentagon.)

The president has repeatedly claimed that his administration is the most transparent in American history. But he and his aides have used lawsuits and executive actions to go after law firms, universities and television networks. They have also used criminal tactics such as search warrants and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to pry loose sensitive information from reporters.

Many of these efforts have faltered once they reached court and faced judicial scrutiny. Mr. Brito himself has filed multiple failed suits on behalf of Mr. Trump. Last month, a federal judge in Florida referred Mr. Brito for potential disciplinary proceedings after ruling that a suit he filed for the president against the Internal Revenue Service amounted to an improper exercise in self-dealing.

The Center for American Progress report accused Mr. Trump of seeking to take credit for a nationwide decline in violent crime that began before he returned to the White House. The report determined that there was “no evidence” that the National Guard deployments had affected the crime rate, adding that they were poised to cost taxpayers more than $1.7 billion if they continued through the end of 2026.

The report asserted that the “primary goal” of the deployments was “never to stop crime.” Instead, it said they amounted to “a dangerous power grab by the Trump administration.”

The team that put the report together used an analysis based on homicide, violent crime and gun victimization data in cities where the National Guard was deployed — Washington, Los Angeles and Memphis — over the period from January 2023 to this February.

“This approach was employed to identify any statistical changes in crime trends associated with the deployment of the National Guard in specific cities,” its authors wrote.

Mr. Trump referred to the report on social media last week after watching a television segment about the report, which he described as “another Radical Left SCAM.” In the post, he threatened to sue the center and several of its funders, including the liberal financier George Soros, who has long served as a boogeyman for the administration.

A week later, Mr. Brito’s letter arrived at the center, saying that the president would sue if Ms. Tanden and her colleagues did not retract the report, issue an apology and give Mr. Trump unspecified financial compensation.

The letter ended with an all-caps salutation: “PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELVES ACCORDINGLY.”

On Friday, a lawyer for the center fired back in a letter of his own, deriding Mr. Trump’s accusations that he had been defamed.

“This is utterly absurd,” the lawyer, Kevin H. Metz, wrote to Mr. Brito. “Truth is not and cannot be defamation.”

Mr. Metz went on to say that the center welcomed the opportunity to make its case in court and receive more information on the National Guard deployments through the process of discovery.

Other think tanks of various political stripes have rallied to the center’s side.

“Independent organizations across the ideological spectrum must be free to express their analysis and opinions, and to challenge those in power without fear of political retaliation or legal intimidation,” said Peter Goettler, the president and chief executive of the libertarian Cato Institute. “Disagreements on matters of policy should be settled through open inquiry, evidence, and debate — not threats designed to silence criticism.”

Alan Feuer is a reporter for The Times who covers the effects President Trump has had on the courts, the Justice Department and the broader rule of law.

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