6 January 30 - February 5, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents public safety and special events” and to aid in ongoing criminal investigations. The soft- ware’s geofencing application — a tool that allows users to track the movements of a mobile device within a specific area — is available but “not widely used” by DPD, the spokesperson said. Dallas City Council Member Gay Don- nell Willis, a member of the council’s Public Safety Committee, added that access to the software is limited to a small group of offi- cers who serve in the department’s intelli- gence-focused Fusion Center. “[Cobwebs is] only available to real-time crime center personnel. They are held to a higher standard, and the monitoring must have a criminal nexus,” Willis said. “Since [the program] is based on scouring publicly avail- able information, I am 100% in favor of giving our DPD law enforcement this tool that can hopefully stop a crime before it starts.” Willis said she believes the software can be used to improve efficiency in the depart- ment’s investigatory work. In addition, dur- ing large events, such as a parade or marathon, it can provide officers with a “real-time assessment” of communications related to the event rather than leaving the department to rely on a “see something and call it in” process. Cobwebs has also been critical for inves- tigating threats made against schools, Willis said. Often a name or social media handle used to make a threat can be enough for Cobwebs to find a phone number or other contact information that can be used to lo- cate the individual. Dallas’ contract with Cobwebs is rela- tively small — around $304,000 out of the general fund over the next three years — but the larger contracts of organizations like DPS and ICE — which the Texas Observer reports pay $5.3 million and $2.7 million, re- spectively, for the Cobwebs service — have drawn scrutiny from privacy and surveil- lance experts. The Cobwebs Controversy Cobwebs bills itself as a threat-identifying security tool capable of scanning the open, deep and dark web, but it has faced accusa- tions of enabling more sinister uses than those advertised by local law enforcement agencies. Facebook’s parent company, Meta, identified Cobwebs as a part of the wide- spread, international “surveillance-for-hire industry” in a 2021 threat report. The report states that Meta found evi- dence that “cyber mercenaries” operating under the guise of crime fighting or anti-ter- rorist work “regularly targeted” journalists, dissidents and human rights activists around the world. The report accused Cob- webs of engaging in the shady targeting of “opposition politicians and government offi- cials” in Hong Kong and Mexico. “To support the work of law enforce- ment, we already have authorized channels where government agencies can submit lawful requests for information, rather than resorting to the surveillance-for-hire indus- try which indiscriminately sells these ser- vices to anyone willing to pay, including known bad actors,” the report states. “For their targets, it is often impossible to know they are being surveilled across the inter- net.” Six companies — including Cobwebs — were banned from operating on Meta plat- forms as a result of the report. Others point to the Cobwebs geofencing application as a legally and ethically murky area. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter v. United States that police are required to have a warrant before getting cellphone location data from data providers. With Cobwebs, geofencing offers a work- around because the owners of tracked de- vices are technically left anonymous. “In Texas [GPS tracking] is illegal but geofencing, which is almost the same, is not. So it’s a very big gray area on whether [po- lice officials] are going to need a warrant for that,” Andy Reggio, a Dallas-based private investigator, said. “It’s very handy in protests or riots when you get groups of people. From my professional opinion, that would be where [police departments] use it.” And when it comes to gang-related in- vestigations, Reggio added, Cobwebs can likely benefit officers by identifying an indi- viduals’ associates through obscure social media data. Reggio’s law enforcement career began with the London Police Department before he moved to Dallas and started his private firm, AFR Investigations, in 2017. Like Cob- webs, he often turns to social media for pub- licly available information to learn about individuals involved in his investigations. Most people, Reggio warns, aren’t aware of just how much information they have left online. A quick Google search can turn into Facebook and Instagram pages that reveal a rabbit hole of information, he says. Even those who have turned their social media profiles to private have often left bread- crumbs of information that a professional like Reggio — or Cobwebs — can use. “I can find comments [a person has] made on posts and I’ll see who likes those comments. Or their profile picture will have a lot of likes. I’ll find who those people are and then eventually I’m going to get to someone who’s a lot less diligent about the security of their profile and yeah, you’ll be tagged in some photos,” Reggio said. “We socialize so much and social media being so- cial, you have to rely on everyone else in your circle being the same [privacy level]. Otherwise I can find out where you work, what you like, who your family members are.” Despite the privacy concerns of some, Reggio and Willis both believe Cobwebs in- troduces a much-needed level of efficiency into DPD’s policing. “People are idiots. They will tag their friends in the most crazy clues that they com- mitted a crime, because they like to boast,” Reggio said. “Back in London we didn’t have this type of software available, but it would have been a huge help. With regards to peo- ple saying, ‘Hey is it going to be intrusive?’ The information can be garnered anyway.” ▼ CRIME LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED OATH KEEPERS LEADER RELEASED FROM PRISON FOLLOWING TRUMP COMMUTATION. BY KELLY DEARMORE S oon after being sworn-in on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation granting clemency to more than 1,500 charged in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection. It had long been expected that Trump would grant clemency to many Jan. 6 partic- ipants charged with nonviolent offenses, but the scope of the proclamation extended far beyond that to include offenders found guilty of sedition as well as violent felonies against law enforcement officers. The two men with the longest sentences related to Jan. 6 convictions, Proud Boys leader Enrique Terrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, a Granbury resi- dent, were released from prison on Jan. 21, according to reports. Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison in May 2023 for seditious conspiracy, among other charges. “There have been few instances in our nation’s history when our fellow citizens have engaged in a seditious conspiracy — a conspiracy to use force to oppose the func- tioning of our government,” said U.S. Attor- ney Matthew M. Graves for the District of Columbia in a 2023 statement upon Rhodes’ sentencing. The release of the prisoners that Trump called “hostages” during Monday’s inaugu- ration activities was one of many so-called “Day 1” promises Trump made in the run-up to Jan. 20, along with executive orders aimed at restricting border access and re- scinding a number of former President Joe Biden’s executive orders. On Monday night The New York Times wrote about Trump’s apparent change of heart. “Mr. Trump appears to have decided to grant an expansive form of clemency rela- tively recently and after a debate among his advisers,” the report reads. “In recent months, he has said different things to dif- ferent people about how he planned to pro- ceed, sometimes suggesting he would grant pardons to violent offenders, sometimes in- dicating that they would be reserved for those who did not act violently and were only charged with misdemeanors.” But on his Inaguration Day, in the Oval Office, Trump issued a short, blanket state- ment when referring to those charged with Jan. 6 crimes, saying, “They’ve already been in jail for a long time. These people have been destroyed.” The release of Rhodes also represents a new danger to his own family. According to Rhodes’ ex-wife in a recent USA Today report, she said she would for her own life and that of her children should Rhodes be one of the pris- oners released after Inauguration Day. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Oath Keepers is one of the many extremist groups active in Texas today. “The Oath Keepers organization claims to be defending the U.S. Constitution and fighting tyranny, but as former Oath Keepers spokesman Jason Van Tatenhove describes, the group is actually ‘selling the revolution.’” states the SPLC. “The threats to American liberties that Oath Keepers say the federal government is responsible for are in reality a set of baseless conspiracy theories.” A number of North Texas residents were in prison as of Monday, with their release now seemingly imminent. Texas was amongst the leading states in the number of residents arrested for their roles in the Capi- tol attack that sought to keep Congress from certifying the 2020 election of Joe Biden. ▼ HOUSING BIG D SHRINKING HOUSING PRICES TANK DALLAS’ PERFORMANCE RANKINGS. BY EMMA RUBY T he city of Dallas just got demoted. For the first time in three years, Dallas is not listed as one of the top 10 economies in the U.S., according to the Milken Institute’s annual report. Between 2024 and 2025, the Dallas-Plano-Irving area dropped from eighth place to a lousy No. 19. Just two years ago we nearly broke the top five, coming in at No. 6 — surely it would have taken something dramatic to drop Big D 13 spots in two years. The Milken Institute evaluates cities’ performance and advancements through 13 metrics that fall under three categories: la- bor market performance, high-tech impact and access to economic opportunity. It seems that Dallas’ Achilles heel on this scale is the same as many other cities experienc- ing the kind of rapid population growth Dal- Unfair Park from p4 pixabay.com Cobwebs is able to build dossiers of information on crime suspects by scraping various social media platforms.
