Notifica – an app for if you're at risk of being detained by ICE agents
notifica.us
notifica.us
It's basically a warrant canary. The purpose of a warrant canary is not to refuse to comply with the law: on the contrary, it only communicates something nontrivial if you intend to comply with the law!
At best, though, it seems like it could aid a lawful purpose. I don't have a particular problem with it if that is even a fifth of the intended use case.
It doesn't help the person being detained, but it might help others.
It's right in the example message being sent (from the front page):
> "This is Julia’s last known location. Do not go there now."
The idea being that the person being detained, is being detained, but the can warn their friends and loved ones to stay away from the area so they are not caught as well.
I think we are supposed to read between the lines.
Of course, if they intend to be able to keep the app running they can't say "this is to notify others to avoid the area so they are not caught" and they have to present it as a "notify my lawyers" kind of app.
But then why erase the contacts when message is sent if it is to notify lawyers? Is the identity of the attorney secret, how are they supposed to file on behalf of the client?
The example of message on the front page also kind of indicates the usage:
> "This is Julia’s last known location. Do not go there now."
Why emphasize the last known location in the app, but then admonish recipients to not go there.
It might be better if it is re-framed as an emergency location group broadcast app without focusing on immigration and lawyers. Maybe re-use the wording that those "life alert" systems use and then spread the app name through the word of mouth or other channels.
That said, they could just seed their system with a ton of fake users to make it more useless for ICE purposes.
In the most cynical case, sharing your contacts and location via this app could make ICE's job much easier.
How can people tell which it is?
I do imagine there is some legal red tape to get around if you actually want to use it as evidence in immigration investigations. Then again, you don't need to use it as evidence -- all you need is a lead and you can get all the evidence necessary when you detain them.
Of course, that doesn't account for possibilities like United We Dream being an elaborate ICE front (a la 1984's Brotherhood), the app developers being compromised by / secretly working for ICE, the app or its servers being compromised by ICE, etc.
If this thing used anything like GCE or AWS that would be pretty negligent.
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/09/dark-side-fbi-dea-illega...
The organization behind it looks legit enough, but that doesn't stop one guy with a USB stick from exfiltrating the whole database.
Really, what you'd need is a very popular app to add a feature like this so that the percentage of users of the app that are potentially undocumented immigrants is the same as their proportion of the population. Then you do all the other crypto and hopefully don't store whether individual users have the feature enabled.
Does this really stop the inevitable deportation? and other than informing others.... what else is the outcome that the app helps with?
While I see the value of having an attorney the site isn't clear what else it can do or help with.
I can still drag the scrollbar to scroll, but on many systems there has been a move to having the scrollbars hidden by default.
Which is terrible for those of us without scroll wheels. The user agent can implement scrollbars in unpredictable ways to accommodate local needs. Reimplementing scrolling will always have compatibility and accessibility issues.
(scrollwheels were a major source of my RSI issues, so I have to disable the scrollwheel. I sometimes have it mapped to thumb buttons 8 & 9, but that isn't practical for scrolling long pages)
You might be interested in trying a touch-scroll mouse—it's somewhat like touchpad scroll, only needs a gentle sweep of the finger and a bit easier to scroll continuously a desired distance.
Personally, I'd particularly like to try Logitech Zone Touch T400 (https://i.imgur.com/cjmP0tc.jpg), but it disappeared from the local market so I'm using a meh Genius mouse instead, which is still better than a scrollwheel.
Basically, ransomware, but the good kind that encrypts all the data on your device and holds the key until:
A. You've passed the border (or checkpoint)
B. You've securely authenticated yourself
C. Are sure your device wasn't tampered with
Probably is going to be a fatal flaw, since it leaves you open to the "rubber hose" sector of attacks (in various legal forms).
D. Have a second person, not traveling with you, vouch that you're safe.
If you had a robust solution to time-locked encryption, that in itself would be worth a lot! (Anybody keeping up to tabs on that stuff know about whether or not its achievable / what the SOTA is?)
Locks the files, sends a message to your peeps telling them to tell you this keyphrase next time they see you.
Based on the website, it looks like they are trying to appeal to young people at a cafe in leisure rather than at-risk people on the run from government agencies lol. It doesn't look like anything I would put my trust in if I were in that situation.
[1] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/do-i-really-need-car...
So, I'd just show my green card instead of pulling out an app.
That seems... foolish? Like allowing a root/intermediate CA to sign leaf certs to be valid after their own expiration.
Either print and carry the I-94 around with you, or save the PDF of it to your phone (and hope you have battery life if you ever get stopped by these people).
If you're a citizen, my understanding is that you only have to show some form of ID (e.g. a driver's license).
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/2019/07/22/dalla...
so it sucks he stayed there so long but are you gonna say this is normal? can you find any case where a legal person with no false papers or illegal family members while crossing the border got detained?
The point is that you must have clear legal status and documentation, whether that's physically on you as a person (for green card holders) or available to be looked up (for everyone).
All of this relies on a judgement call by ICE, and many people do not trust their judgements. Not unjustifiably.
Here are a few that came up in a search.
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/30/643218390/report-u-s-denies-p...
https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/396923-trump-adminis... -- opinion piece citing this: http://apnews.com/1da389a535684a5f9d0da74081c242f3
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/17/686188335/ice-tried-to-deport...
Then of course there was the widely reported fact that the travel ban initially intentionally affected people with valid visas, green cards, and dual citizenship.
The short version is if you are legally in this country (either by visa, green card, naturalization or native birth) but have any reason to think somebody would ever believe you might not be (perhaps due to accent, skin color, name), it is very understandable that you may be concerned with everything going around in the headlines.
News is designed to sell the worst possible outcome. It's why people think terrorism is a big deal when you're 100x more likely to die of heart disease.
But ignoring that, it's all a bunch of isolated incidents until it happens to you. And it is happening to people. A lot of people would not like to take chances with their civil liberties.
People in cages
From the FAQ:
Who is the intended audience for Notifica? A: Primarily, young people and family members of undocumented immigrants (a group estimated to be at least 16 million people). Secondary, attorneys and advocates that want to ensure their clients have an efficient and safe way to make contact prior to a deportation event.
It's not any more "help you break the law" than an app that helps you find or communicate with defense lawyers, IMO. It's significantly less useful for breaking the law than Signal or even Safari.
But even for that purpose, flashing your lights on the highway to inform oncoming drivers of speedtraps has been found to be free speech (iirc), I don't see how this is different.
Hell, I don't even know if actual illegals living on the low over here would even be able to find this and know what to do with it lol. Are there illegals browsing HN? Genuinely curious.
Also the moral culpability of people brought to the US illegally as a child is approximately the moral culpability of a passenger in a child seat in a speeding car IMO. Continued presence in the US without authorization is (again AIUI) not a crime. My understanding is there are quite a few "dreamers" in tech.
People who are in this situation speak to other people and share good resources - if this app is useful and trustworthy (which is unclear), then it will get used.
Again, as far as I think, being somewhere illegally doesn't make you any lesser of a human than I am. But they are still here illegally. I could call them undocumented too, but they're still here illegally.
I bet it's none, because you don't see that as a defining characteristic of yourself.
(The law, I think, just uses the terms "illegal entry" / "unauthorized presence" / "inadmissible" / etc. and "illegal immigration" to describe the act in general. But USCIS, ICE, etc. do use the term "illegal alien.")
This fuss over the terminology is a trivial matter and completely inconsequential to the lives of these people.
Describing people in this way puts them into a category of 'other'. It defines people by their immigration status, diminishing their value as people.
This allows people to justify a belief that people perceived to be in this category do not require or deserve basic human rights.
Recognising that people are in a vulnerable situation is important, I agree. Happy to hear what positive action would be useful :)
The people who have trouble judging others over terminology are the same as the people who have think changing the terminology is important in anyway. It's the same group on different sides worried over frivolous matters that nobody in the subject group (illegal immigrants seeking asylum) even cares about. All this effort usually just cancels out into a big wasteful political battle that gets nothing done.
It would be much better to talk accurately and come up with a real solution, such as proper detainment procedures, making sure funds and aid are available, communicating with those that are seeking asylum about what can and will happen, and then investigating and solving the root causes (conflict and leadership) in the country they're coming from.
I don't like helping others drive extra fast. But I like the app and I hope the immigrants can stay.
Having no residence permission usually is a circumstance you can hardly change, there is no choice, your mere existence is outlawed, you are destined to live on the run or get thrown back to hell for the rest of your life if you get caught.
Either way, when it comes the law, illegal entry is still a voluntary action.
You may disagree but I hope you understand why I refuse to equate an person who has not left the country after their residence license expiration to a violent criminal or a crazy person speeding around risking innocent people's safety for sake of their madness.
Green card holders are obviously not the intended audience of this app. I'm not sure how you missed that.
Also, considering how extraordinarily difficult[2] it is to get to a green card, your comment came off as a bit condescending.
extraordinarily difficult
See 18 U.S. Code § 911
Detention of US citizens with passports has become increasingly common:
https://twitter.com/repbarragan/status/1152359133330444288 (citizen daughter taken into custody along with undocumented parent, released after congressperson intervened)
https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/ohare-standoff-border-p... (citizen children detained at airport for 12+ hours on arrival to US, CBP insisted on only releasing them to their undocumented mother)
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Young-US-Citizen-Deta... (citizen 9-year-old in possession of her passport detained for 32 hours with no coherent reason provided)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/us-is-deny... (passport applicants with valid US birth certificates who were born near the Mexican border placed in deportation proceedings)
What makes you think your green card will keep you safe?
You are right that you have the legal right of habeas corpus, but whether you have the practical ability to convince government agents to lead you alone is quite a different thing, and has always been that way under every government.
The 2nd link is about an illegal immigrant mother who didn't want to come to the airport to pick up her children. They were released once she showed up, and the only reason they were stopped was because they were travelling with another person who had no legal status and was not admitted to the country.
The 3rd link is about preteen children who were told to "walk across the border instead" because the line was moving too slow, leading to questioning to verify the identity.
Not following the rules/law is the cause of 2 of those stories.
A child crossing the border alone might make any country worried about them.
Deportations overall are significantly lower they they were in 2010, and steady the last several years.
From the stories I’m reading (WSJ) ICE is not even able to successfully deport illegal immigrants where final deportations orders have been issued.
[1] - https://www.wsj.com/articles/immigration-enforcement-raids-b...
And multiple presidential administrations ignoring the rights of citizens absolutely doesn't make it magically okay. I have my problems with Trump, but that doesn't imply that I think everything Obama and Bush did was good and just.
(In any case, even one US citizen unlawfully detained, let alone deported, seriously concerns me as a citizen. Either the rights of citizenship are guaranteed, or they're not. They can't be mostly guaranteed.)
While there’s no doubt these stories are magnified more than ever, I’m wondering if there’s any reason to believe this is actually an issue that is statistically becoming more common over the last 4-, 8-, 12- years, or if in fact, many of these practices are actually becoming less common but they are also becoming more widely discussed?
Two unaccompanied kids walk across the border near Tijuana carrying US passports, one with a picture from many years before which makes her hard to identify and are detained. The brother signs papers (under duress) “admitting” the sister is actually his cousin and not a citizen. The girl is held for 36 hours before being released.
A bad situation all around. Is it more common, or do we just hear about it now?
There's also the issue of this data coming from ICE itself (if it's the same dataset I think you're referring to), which is sort of like asking wolves to tell the farmer how many sheep they've ate over the last month. With how little accountability and data ICE. But that's the best data we have, unfortunately.
This is a biased source, but seems to have some decent overview of some of the statistics ICE has released [1]
[1] https://immigrantjustice.org/staff/blog/ice-released-its-mos...