DHS Predictive Policing Program Raises Fourth Amendment Concerns as Financial Data Fuels Traffic Stops

The Department of Homeland Security has been passing data-derived tips about Americans to local police departments so officers can stop and search them, according to CoinDesk — a practice known as predictive policing that draws on bulk financial surveillance to flag people as potential offenders before any crime has been identified.

Two cases illustrate the pattern. In Montana, Kyle William Olson was pulled over after a Border Patrol Predictive Intelligence Targeting Team (PITT) flagged him. A DHS memo filed in his criminal case, obtained by 404 Media, said the team had spotted "financial activity patterns commonly associated with illicit narcotics activity," but did not specify which records were examined or how the government acquired them. Officers found marijuana in the vehicle, though critics argue the discovery does not answer how his finances were being analyzed in secret beforehand.

In Texas, Alek Schott was stopped for allegedly drifting between lanes and had his truck searched for drugs, none of which were found. The Associated Press reported that federal agents had tracked his movements using license-plate scans and other surveillance tools. Schott is suing Bexar County, its sheriff and several deputies over the stop, which he claims violated his Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches.

Where the data comes from

The likely pipeline for financial records runs through the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Treasury bureau that enforces the Bank Secrecy Act. That law obliges banks to keep records and file reports on large or suspicious transactions, and FinCEN passes information to other federal agencies. Banks tend to over-report rather than risk penalties, so the volume of "suspicious" data flowing into government hands is substantial.

Writing in CoinDesk, Laz Pieper of the crypto policy group Coin Center argued that the practice inverts the presumption of innocence. "Information tells a story and says whatever its narrator wants it to say," Pieper wrote, adding that whoever controls the data effectively controls how a person is portrayed to law enforcement. Pieper called for DHS to end PITT's use of financial data and urged Congress to commission a Government Accountability Office audit of the agency's data sources, targeting criteria, retention practices and false-positive rates.

The history of financial surveillance being turned against political groups is well documented. In 2022, the Canadian government froze the bank accounts of protesters during emergency powers invoked by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — the same year Chinese authorities cut off protesters' WeChat payment accounts. A 2024 congressional report found that after the January 6 Capitol attack, banks were pressured by FinCEN and the FBI to flag customers whose spending suggested conservative views, including purchases of religious texts. In 2025, an executive order designating Antifa a domestic terrorist organization was followed by a White House memo telling law enforcement to identify and disrupt the financial networks behind political violence.

The technique is not confined to financial records or to national politics. In Sacramento, California, police used residents' energy-usage data to hunt for illegal marijuana cultivation, resulting in the harassment of people who had broken no law. Critics say that outcome — innocent people treated as suspects on the strength of a data profile — is the predictable result of giving enforcement agencies bulk information before any crime exists to investigate.