A court used an app called Covenant Eyes to surveil the family of a man released on bond.

“This is the most extreme type of monitoring that I’ve seen,” says Pilar Weiss, founder of the National Bail Fund Network, a network of over 90 community bail and bond funds across the United States. “It’s part of a disturbing trend where deep surveillance and social control applications are used pretrial with little oversight.”

  • girlfreddy
    51·
    2 years ago

    Jayzuz. If the app’s EULA specifically states it’s NOT to be used as a judicial tool, why in the f*ck are cops using it anyway???

    Murica is so far down the Big Brother rabbit hole rn I fear for its survival.

    • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
      20·
      2 years ago

      The app is clearly done by religious nutjobs that get off on societal voyeurism, they don’t mind the cops, they are just covering their legal asses.

      • girlfreddy
        6·
        2 years ago

        True … but again if the EULA clearly states the app will not hold up in court, why use it? At the very least it’s a waste of taxpayer dollars and at worst it’s a blatant abuse of constitutional rights.

        • Notyou@sopuli.xyz
          10·
          2 years ago

          It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t hold up in court. Most of the time it is enough to scare someone into taking plea deals.

          • girlfreddy
            8·
            2 years ago

            And this is how innocent people spend 20 yrs in prison or end up on death row.

            Murica and her justice system are FUBAR.

        • mycelium_underground@lemmy.ml
          1·
          2 years ago

          It does add to the conversation. Cops ruin lives, or end them illegally and only get let go from their current position and offered a new one somewhere else. Cops do not have to follow the laws, it’s not cynicism. Sometimes the truth just sucks. You have the same chance of being killed by the police as you do from any other stranger.

          ACAB

      • reverendsteveii@beehaw.org
        3·
        2 years ago

        not a mistrial, this isn’t happening during trial. It might be interesting if they do arrest him for violating the pre-trial terms to see what sort of civil liability the courts may have if it turns out they were wrong, but even then these are often drawn up as ‘consent decrees’ which are essentially contracts you enter into with the court where a lot of things are possible that wouldn’t be normally.

    • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
      2·
      2 years ago

      Isn’t cops another word police in the US? In the article they write it was the probation office who mandated the app and then a court prosecuted him because of it.