{"id":15616,"date":"2018-09-19T09:25:23","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T09:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15616"},"modified":"2018-09-19T09:25:23","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T09:25:23","slug":"us-police-force-ends-use-of-tiger-text-self-deleting-message-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15616","title":{"rendered":"US police force ends use of Tiger Text self-deleting message app"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A US police force has suspended the use of a self-deleting text messaging service after an Al Jazeera investigation<\/a> found it could have been used to conceal evidence.<\/p>\n

The Tiger Text application, which permanently and irretrievably deletes messages after a set period of time, was used by officers belonging to the Long Beach Police Department in the state of California.<\/p>\n

Serving and former officers told Al Jazeera that police-issued phones had the software installed on them and that it was used to share details of police operations as well as sensitive personnel issues.<\/p>\n

Two officers said supervisors told them to use the app to have conversations that would not be discoverable.<\/p>\n

All the officers Al Jazeera spoke to requested that their identities be kept secret for fear of reprisals from the Long Beach Police Department.<\/p>\n

The revelations have raised concerns that the police force may have used the software to avoid potentially incriminating information being disclosed to courts.<\/p>\n

Police in Long Beach had the fifth-highest officer-involved shooting rate in the US per capita in 2015, and the city has paid out tens of millions of dollars to families of those shot.<\/p>\n

Al Jazeera spoke to lawyers who said they were unaware that the department was using the software.<\/p>\n

The city denies the app was used to conceal evidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a statement on Tuesday, the City of Long Beach said it was ending use of the software, which had been in use since 2014, after a review initiated by “Public Records Act requests and media inquiries”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Use of the application began when the Police Department transitioned to iPhones, which did not have a built-in secure communication feature sufficient for the needs of the Department,” the city’s statement read.<\/p>\n

“The primary purpose of the Tiger Connect [Tiger Text] application was to allow for a continued means of transitory, immediate, and secure communications regarding operational and personnel matters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Police Department employees have been trained to and do document any exculpatory\/discoverable evidence in a police report or other formal departmental communication. “<\/p>\n

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) believes the use of the software may have breached laws that require records be preserved and disclosed to courts if needed.<\/p>\n

Thousands of verdicts could potentially be at risk, according to the ACLU.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Simon Boazman and Jeremy Young<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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An invoice from 2016 shows the city of Long Beach paid about $10,000 a year for the text messaging platform [Al Jazeera]<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A US police force has suspended the use of a self-deleting text messaging service after an Al Jazeera investigation found it could have been used to conceal evidence. The Tiger Text application, which permanently and irretrievably deletes messages after a set period of time, was used by officers belonging to the Long Beach Police Department…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":15617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}