Is the Los Angeles Police Department accessing data from your phone and social media accounts without a warrant?
That’s what is being claimed in a new report published by the nonprofit news outlet Knock LA.
That report says the LAPD’s partnership with the Israeli company Cobwebs Technologies uses “warrantless access to your personal information” and artificial intelligence and machine learning to surveil members of the public. While Cobwebs is Israeli in origin, it was reportedly purchased by American private equity firm Spire Capital for about $200 million.
“LAPD purchased the nearly $200,000-per-year subscription to the technology in 2022 with the help of a $600,000 DHS grant that focuses on terrorism prevention in urban areas,” according to Knock LA.
This purchase came after Meta — parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — banned Cobwebs accounts due to its status as a “surveillance-for-hire company” that targeted “activists, opposition politicians, and government officials in Hong Kong and Mexico,” Knock LA explained, citing a Meta report.
“The report pushes back against the surveillance company’s claims that it tracks only criminals and terrorists,” Knock LA added.
In a statement, the LAPD said it uses Cobwebs to “consolidate open-source, publicly available information and commercially available anonymized data in relation to criminal investigations.
“These investigations include serious felony crimes (i.e., murders, robberies, etc.), along with threats to public safety (i.e., mass shootings) and critical infrastructure,” the statement added. “Cobwebs Technologies greatly aids the LAPD in these investigations and acts as a force multiplier in the processing of this pertinent and lawfully obtained data. This technology is extremely limited in its deployment and usage. The LAPD has implemented an oversight, audit and review process with its usage of the Cobwebs Technologies platform.”
The LAPD is not the only government agency in a contract with Cobwebs. The IRS also paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to “conduct undercover investigations online,” as reported by Motherboard.