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I'm not sure it's very good parallel construction. They say they only got the picture after subpoenaing data from his cloud account. So the police talking about this picture doesn't eliminate any public discussion of how the police got enough suspicion and evidence in order to get a subpoena in the first place.

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The purpose of parallel construction is to not disclose the actual methods used by law enforcement because they may be illegal and/or disclose sources of information that they would like to keep confidential. It only needs to be minimally believable as a “stroke of luck” to the court. Law enforcement doesn’t particularly care if the public believes it or not as long as the methods aren’t disclosed.

I'm not saying anything about whether it's believable or not.

I'm saying that parallel construction is an explanation the government gives of how they found someone. But the government isn't saying they found him from this picture. They're saying they first found him, then subpoenaed his cloud account, then found this picture. Since this picture isn't an explanation of how they found him, it's not parallel construction.

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