Ex-Cop: ‘A Trust Police Have Not Earned’

Technology and the ways it’s used and abused is all very interesting, but any good story concerned with technology is going to focus on how it affects actual people. The Associated Press knows this, and so it tracked down a character to help readers better understand Fog Reveal’s implications: Davin Hall, a former police data analyst with the Greensboro, North Carolina, police force.

Hall is depicted as a cop with a conscience who fought against his department’s use of Fog Reveal, going as far as to voice his concerns to members of the Greensboro city council. In one quote, he tells the reporters: “The capability that it had for bringing up just anybody in an area whether they were in public or at home seemed to me to be a very clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.” As we’ve already mentioned, many legal scholars agree that there is little daylight between police demanding access to data and purchasing it, in so far as actual citizens are concerned.

Hall eventually resigned from the force, saying he’d grown angry about being “betrayed and lied to.” Hall also points to the fact that one of the sheriff’s departments in the area — in rural Rockingham County — has acquired Fog Reveal, adding he’s no longer shocked to learn small police agencies are paying for powerful surveillance tools, even if they don’t really need them.

“Anyone with that login information can do as many searches as they want,” Hall told the AP. “I don’t believe the police have earned the trust to use that, and I don’t believe it should be legal.”