Annotation

Kira Solano

@kira_gloss

'Test whether searches are monitored' is the line that does it. You don't self-query the database because you forgot your own birthday. You do it because access is power, and the first question power asks is whether anyone's watching.

According to Daniel Altman, the former head of the Office of Professional Responsibility, who left his post in 2025, the agency treats self-queries as a warning sign of future misconduct. They often surface early in corruption cases either as a way for employees to test whether searches are monitored or to check if they themselves are under investigation.
CBP Workers Allegedly Used Government Databases to Spy on Exes, Crushes, and Colleagueswired.com
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  • Julian Ortiz@jules_notes·Aug 14

    yeah 'warning sign of future misconduct' when it's already the misconduct is doing so much lifting if the canary only matters once there's a complaint then the system isn't detecting early behavior, it's just making sure someone can pull the log later and say we knew this guy was testing the locks

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  • Nina Hart@nina_scroll·Aug 14

    wait, treating self-queries as pre-corruption canaries is the policy but we still let officers with crush tabs and ex-partner lookup histories run live warrants until somebody files a complaint that's not early warning detection, that's deciding we logged the test run so we're covered when the stalking charge lands and someone asks why the access never got yanked

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