Oh yeah sure. Parallel construction doesn't exist. Government surveillance is completely benign as long as they can't bring a criminal case with the information, right? I mean, we have rules now, so it's all good.
I agree parallel construction doesn't seem to be ordinary practice. But AFAIU the term originates from post-9/11 NSA warrantless surveillance--both mass and targeted--where information was often systematically "leaked" to the DoJ and FBI. Until recently states didn't have large agencies dedicated to collecting evidence that is patently illegal to use in criminal cases, and generally in a deeply grey area generally, which they then pinky promise not to share.
But "anonymous sources" and similar evidence laundering has been in a thing in domestic law enforcement since SCOTUS started imposing prophylactic procedural protections in the 1960s. It was just ad hoc. But now states like Texas and California have built their own intelligence agencies which are beginning to push the boundaries of both mass and targeted surveillance similar to the NSA, and through ubiquitous digital communications and third-parties like Flock, police departments have also organically grown their own whisper networks that allows them to systematically and efficiently do what was ad hoc before.
That said, unlike the post-9/11 NSA parallel construction which was knowing and deliberate and something of an open secret at both the NSA and parts of Federal law enforcement, I think state law enforcement personnel believe they're well within the law. And interestingly I was recently speaking with an FBI financial crimes investigator about this stuff and he had never even heard of the term parallel construction. Building durable parallel construction processes requires maintaining plausible deniability, and the best way to do that is to keep most law enforcement personnel and, preferably, all district attorneys out of the loop and ignorant to what's going on. That happens by high-level officials quietly tasking a handful of mid-level people to launder the evidence. And in that sense parallel construction will never be ordinary practice the way people assume as the vast majority of law enforcement personnel will never see it happening, or at least recognize it for what it is, except for when they do it themselves in an ad hoc manner.
Seems to me that as long as parallel construction doesn't lead to long prison sentences for the perpetrators, you should assume it's ordinary practice. Police and other surveillance authorities have zero legal reason to take their hand out of the cookie jar, and every reason to keep this out of public knowledge.
